With taxes, rego, green slips, high petrol costs, toll road charges and fines for everything from parking to speeding, the luxury of keeping a car in Australia seems to get tougher every day.
Soon it may become even more expensive. The Grattan Institute suggests in its new report ‘Productive cities: Opportunity in a changing economy’, that Aussies should be charged to use the roads some argue they have already paid for. The report says that Australia’s traffic congestion problems cannot be solved by simply building new roads, and argues that existing roads need to be managed more efficiently.
In order to cut congestion in Australia’s major cities, the report suggests “introducing a pricing system such as road-user charges, congestion charges or time-of-day tolling,” to cut down on the number of people using the roads. It is suggested that this kind of road-pricing system will make the costs of driving more apparent to drivers. Nice for those collecting the money, not so nice for drivers forced to shell out even more to use their cars because there is no viable alternative to driving.
Improving Public Transport
At the end of last month, The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) made claims that “governments across Australia are spending at least four times more on building roads and bridges than on public transport infrastructure.”
In its report, ‘Australia’s public transport: Investment for a clean transport future’, on the subject of the transport capital works budget, the ACF suggested that “two thirds should be spent on public and active transport measures and one third should be spent on roads”. Meanwhile, the Grattan Institute report came up with a different idea – to use revenue raised by its road-pricing system to improve the public transport system, particularly buses.
“While expansions of the heavy rail network require very large up front investments and take a long time to be completed, buses can be deployed more quickly at lower cost,” the report said. Sounds good in theory, but as the report suggests, any government putting a road-pricing system in place would have to be brave – as it’s likely to come up against some active opposition.
Former mayor of London Ken Livingstone, famous for introducing London’s congestion charge in 2003, said recently, “Political cowardice is always going to be a problem. People think they might lose votes if they do it.”
Do congestion charges work?
Various cities throughout the world have adopted a congestion charge, including London, Singapore, Oslo, Stockholm, Milan, and the capital city of Malta, Valletta. The longest running congestion charge system was introduced in Singapore in 1975. With entry into the zone costing about $1.50, the Singapore government insists the charge is for traffic management purposes only.
Unlike in Oslo, where a charge to use the city’s ring roads was introduced in the 1980s, with the explicit purpose of raising revenue for road building and improvements.
In Stockholm, congestion charge trials in 2006 helped to cut traffic by 20-30%, which led to a permanent system being introduced in 2007. Following its success, Gothenburg will have a similar system introduced this year.
London’s congestion charge has also seen success, with traffic levels falling 10.2% in the past decade. However, journey times for drivers have apparently stayed the same since 2007.
Whether Australian cities will adopt a congestion charge, whether Aussies will allow it, and whether politicians will even be brave enough to ask, is still unknown. With the high cost of living being borne by Aussies, should they be asked to pay even more to use the roads they’ve already paid for?
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