Whilst road pricing has been a hot topic in recent months in various states across Australia, the evolution of charging commuters for roads across Australia’s has been a long series of developments. With many challenges to defining how to charge commuters – including competing priorities and governance, and new technology such as EV’s, we unpack this topic below.
The challenges to tackling road pricing
Road pricing has made its way into the news recently for a number of different reasons.
Firstly, in 2021 the Victorian government introduced the Zero and Low Emission Vehicle (ZLEV) charge which levied electrical vehicle owners 2.8c for each kilometre they travelled. The intent was to charge EV users for the costs they impose on Victoria’s road network.
However, in October the High Court of Australia ruled the charge invalid, as it amounted to an excise duty, which under the Constitution, can only be levied by the Commonwealth.
Secondly, in the last year the NSW Government also announced the Independent Toll Review. This has come about because of emerging public concerns about the affordability of current tolls on Sydney motorways, particularly given the rising cost of living. Concerns have been accentuated by the inequities in tolling, whereby some motorists on their daily commute face quite significant charges, while other motorists in Sydney, pay very little.
The Independent Review has released a discussion paper which considers the efficiency and fairness of existing tolling arrangements that are set out in PPP contracts with road concessionaires.
The challenges posed by toll roads are merely a subset of the broader issues in road user charging. Whilst governments think that users should pay more directly for roads, developing a comprehensive set of road prices that applies across Australia’s road network is challenging.
Frontier Economics’ has been providing economic consulting advice in the transport sector – and on the development of road user charges – for many years. Here, we unpack the challenges of road pricing and discuss a possible path forward.
Why is pricing road use challenging?
Our Local, State and Federal governments are entering into a challenging space when it comes to the pricing roads. There are multiple reasons why pricing road use is challenging:
Firstly, there are multiple objectives to consider when pricing roads which are sometimes conflicting. Road charges can:
- Fund the development or expansion of a new motorway – as is the case with tolls.
- Be used to recover the ongoing costs of maintaining or operating the road network more generally – by accounting for the wear and tear vehicles impose on the road pavement, or
- Help manage congestion and reduce emissions – by encouraging better decision making when it comes to reducing vehicle use; to limit these third-party costs.
The second reason is that we have Local, State and Federal Government roads. This creates challenges because you immediately have multiple governments involved, and we have motorists travelling, potentially in one trip, on multiple roads that are owned by different governments. The charging arrangements for that entire network therefore becomes far more complicated.
The final layer to this is that is that different governments have different powers in respect to vehicles, vehicle use and charging. The Federal Government has responsibility for the importation and design of new vehicles, and the power to levy the fuel excise, which is often argued to be the main mechanism for implicitly funding the road networks. The State Governments are far more confined in their ability to levy state-based road charges, however, they are in charge of things like registration. So, this limits the ability for any one government to create a comprehensive charging structure on its own.
Electric Vehicles (EV) and road charges
It’s necessary for all governments to consider a reformed approach to road pricing now, because of the emergence of Electric Vehicles (EVs) – who don’t pay the fuel excise. And currently the main mechanism used to implicitly fund road development is this fuel excise. This funding is expected reduce over time, as more motorists take up EVs. Essentially, motorists will be using less fuel, and as we use less fuel, this funding source will disappear.
The time to deal with this is now. Solving this problem means moving away from current arrangements which is challenging. States, such as Victoria, have tried to go it alone by implementing road use charges for EV. But this approach has been struck down in the High Court Challenge. So, you can see states acting on their own isn’t really a great option.
What can be done to create fairer and more efficient road pricing
The first step is to acknowledge that road pricing is an issue across governments and one that might benefit from intergovernmental co-operation. An intergovernmental agreement could be developed, that sets out:
- Principles for pricing – what governments are hoping to achieve with different road use charges to deal with the problem of multiple objectives, and
- The role of different governments in this charging space. So, we don’t get competing actions – which tends to happen in part because different governments are all not empowered to act on their own.
Some pricing improvements for heavy vehicles have already been achieved. It’s been a slow process with incremental improvements but there is no reason why that process, which we have been heavily involved for the last 15 years with can’t be expanded.
Given the outcomes of the High Court Case, governments need to work together on this emerging issue, and a better, intergovernmental, solution is required if we are to create road charges that are more efficient and fair for all motorists across Australia.
