Article: RACQ may back pay as you drive

[#Metro]

I can't believe I am reading this. This can't be true?! Can it?
No way...

I'm all for this plan. Absolutely.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/racq-may-back-payasyoudrive-tradeoff-20100430-tz17.html

[ButFli]

I was once told that the automobile clubs "support" these seemingly anti-automobile schemes because they are so far fetched they will never be implemented anyway. That way they seem a bit more cuddly and a little bit less pro-automobile-at-all-costs while never actually supporting anything that has half a chance of being put into practice. I don't know if I completely agree with it, but every time one of these far-fetched types of schemes is proposed I always take note when the automobile clubs support it. But when a scheme that actually has half a chance of being implemented is discussed like a toll or a bus lane somewhere, the automobile clubs are against it.

I for one think this scheme would be great. Frank Zappa once said that we should tax the f*** out of the churches. I personally think we should tax the f*** out of the roads.

[Derwan]

GPS trackers in every car... government tracking your every move.  Sounds like a good basis for a science fiction movie!

Honestly, taxes on fuels are essentially a per-kilometre charge anyway - and correctly penalises people who buy guzzlers.  A GPS tracking system would be an expensive way to do essentially the same thing.

Introduce a congestion charge (not km based) in congested areas using toll gantries.  It's a simple, cheaper solution to help pay the significantly increased costs in heavily congested areas.

[#Metro]

Honestly, taxes on fuels are essentially a per-kilometre charge anyway - and correctly penalises people who buy guzzlers.  A GPS tracking system would be an expensive way to do essentially the same thing.

This sounds right. But how high is the charge per kilometre?
This is true, but if electric cars catch on there won't be petrol to sell.

[Derwan]

This is true, but if electric cars catch on there won't be petrol to sell.

Hmm... perhaps you've hit the nail on the head.  With such a focus now on reducing fuel consumption and providing energy alternatives, the revenue the government receives from fuel taxes will decrease.  They need some way of maintaining the revenue.

[Emmie]

But currently most electricity is generated from coal, and the new post-Henry tax on mining will help to take care of that.

I agree with Derwan.  A fuel tax (whether on petrol or power generally) seems much simpler than tracking every car.

[johnnigh]

There's history and economics behind this...

The RACQ fell under the influence of a very passionate, indeed almost obsessive, economist who might be thought of as a bit in favour of market solutions. He convinced them that roughly the following was the case: The idea that roads should be supplied by subscription, ie, buy your registration and use as much as you like, is akin to buying membership of a supermarket and being allowed to fill your trolley as full as you like as often as you like. Fuel tax is a partial and approximate way to ration roads, the result is as we see, congestion, roads not well maintained and alternatives ignored. A direct price for usage, varying by the degree of congestion at the time of the trip, the weight of the vehicle and km driven, appearing on your meter on the dashboard, would change behaviour, just like raising the price of fags cuts down smoking (yes, it really does! Trust me, I'm an economist, I've read the research ). The RACQ adopted support for road user charges only if all other taxes and charges are abolished. And only if proceeds of the charges are used to supply road maintenance and new roads, with PT as well if there's money left over.

There's a lot to be said for this in terms of getting value for money paid over and services enjoyed in return. We don't get value at the moment, and we don't get the services we should get. Instead we get tolls on excessively expensive tunnels and bridges that mean the money spent building them is wasted and toll companies going broke. Road user charges would mean the end of tolls on special roads. It's easy to deal with the private owners of toll roads - govts pay them the tolls until they can get out of the ridiculous contracts govts gave them, called shadow tolling.

Brisbane doesn't have congested roads 24/7. Doesn't even have peak hour, just some highly publicised and annoying 'peak minutes', except for accidents. No way is Brissie like London, Singapore, NY or Tokyo. Cordon tolling would be silly as there's no 24/7 congested zone as in those cities. Holland is introducing GPS logging for user charges where the logging is done by a variety of companies that supply the usage profiles for the govt to levy the charge on, an attempt at dealing with privacy concerns.

But who cares? We've been under the gaze of big brother for a long time. Internet usage is an example of various big brothers knowing what we've been up to.

[Golliwog]

I agree with Johnnigh. I support a pay as you drive road tax. Its true that it would change driver behaviour. Yes they currently pay rego, etc, but those are paid for either once a year or at the bowser, and so are not thought of when your actually driving. I seriously think this would also help alleviate some of the problems with parking at stations. I'm not proud of it, but I live a relatively easy 10 minute bike ride from my station, however I don't ride purely because I'm usually lazy in the morning and its jsut that much easier to hop in the car and drive over.

[somebody]

Or they could just increase the fuel "excise".

[Golliwog]

But that would be just a short term solution. As was pointed out earlier, cars are becoming more and more fuel efficient, plus theres the possibility of electric cars (IMO, doubtful anytime soon but its possible) so for this to be used in the long term, you would have to modify it wrt the efficiency of cars, but then you'll have the people who can't afford to buy the new efficient cars pay far too much of this excise just because they don't have a new car.

[somebody]

But that would be just a short term solution. As was pointed out earlier, cars are becoming more and more fuel efficient, plus theres the possibility of electric cars (IMO, doubtful anytime soon but its possible) so for this to be used in the long term, you would have to modify it wrt the efficiency of cars, but then you'll have the people who can't afford to buy the new efficient cars pay far too much of this excise just because they don't have a new car.

I can live with that.  Older cars using more fuel are better off in the scrap metal yards, and their drivers on PT.  Newer thirsty cars like full size 4x4s deserve everything they get.

[johnnigh]

All very well to push old cars off the road by making them too expensive to use, but it's a pretty regressive tax. Old cars are used by low income folk, usually living where there's no decent PT so they cop it both ways. They are the vulnerable. We can do better than that.

[Golliwog]

I think that the whole GPS transponder thing is a bit much, but couldn't they just use something like the tags that are currently used for toll roads? Would really only need the detectors at intersections in the major cities, although rural areas would be harder to do.

[johnnigh]

Hmmmm, not sure that GPS units would be dearer than tags and detectors. Looking at prices of GPS navigators at electrical discounters suggests that they are now commodities.  The main part of the price seems to be the intellectual property in the maps, which basic location recording units would not need.

I've even got one on my pushbike (much more expensive than the Harvey Norman discounted car models, sadly), without maps, to put maps on it more than doubles the price, and that's purely IP, not software let alone hardware.

[somebody]

We can do better than that.

Can you suggest a practical way?

[justanotheruser]

personally i am against the gps idea because of its ability to track you. I know you can be tracked through the internet but I also know ways to make that difficult or not work depending on how determined they are.

Secondly I think there would be an outcry because people in the city would say it is unfair to impose it on them but not country areas. Of course my view is that it should NOT be imposed at all on country areas. My brother in law was denied rent assistance because he was told he could live at home with parents and travel to work each day. The only way for this would be to catch one of the two XPT's that go through the town to travel the 30kms to the nearest town he could actually find work. So cars are a neccisity in some places and I think it is unfair to tax them for driving further when there are naturally longer distances to drive. Besides the problem is in the cities and that is where the solution should be aimed. Certainly if in the future some country areas got large enough and had viable public transport as an alternative.


in sydney they have a tax on city car parks. Simply introducing that here would be a start. It would mean parking would cost even more than it does now. When it was introduced in sydney many companies told employees who parked at work that they would have to pay the tax themselves unless they used a car for work in which case the company would pay the tax. Start it off at $100 per month and then like everything else increase it each year.