On the wrong track

Gee, I thought our taxes paid for roads. But apparently not. Apparently roads are free and we ought to be paying to use them.

I am not talking toll ways here but those roads we use every day to get to clients, deliver goods, chase debts, visit branch officers, get to meetings, market our products and get home as quickly as possible to cook dinner and spend time with our kids.

It is starting to look increasingly likely that the Federal Government’s tax review will recommend charging motorists more to drive in peak hours. Treasury secretary Ken Henry is already floating user-pays charges. A paper on road pricing, written by Treasury Officer Paul Hubbard, says that roads are unpriced and over-exploited. This has apparently frustrated road users.

Putting a price on access to roads at busy times might encourage individuals to change their travel plans and reduce their vehicle’s contribution to congestion, the paper concludes. Apparently Singapore is leading the way with new technologies allowing for more efficient charging, such as automatic plate recognition cameras and GPS devices that can track your vehicle use around the city and then whack you with the bill.

To make all this politically digestible, the bureaucrat argues that compensation could be in the form of cutting registration fees or fuel excise and investing in public transport.

Faced with the true costs of their decisions, a potential motorist who is indifferent to taking public transport, travelling at a different time or not travelling at all will leave the road at peak times, he concludes.

But what about the motorist who is not indifferent to taking public transport but just can’t afford to be late to appointments? What about the small and medium business owners and their staff who would rather stick pins in their eyes than travel around at peak hour but simply have no choice?

I know that some public servants have flexi-hours and can choose when to get to work, thereby avoiding peak hour. But most of us have no choice. I mean, who the hell chooses to drive at peak hour unless you absolutely have to?

Australia is not Singapore. Our public transport is not nearly as reliable and we have longer distances to travel. Let’s get the alternatives right before we start to charge. That is far more politically digestible.