Pro-car body says congestion tax 'a failure'... oh really?

In a nutshell Sydney's congestion tax isn't perfect - it doesn't target all vehicles that enter the CBD, and the effect - after admittedly a fairly short period of use - has been restricted. But it has had a small effect, and it has brought to local prominence the possibility of using variable charges to influence traffic congestion. Given the inelastic nature of the car-use demand curve, and the relatively modest impost involved, you could say it's actually been quite a success. But the opposition pollies, the lobbyists and the tabloid press - and even the broadsheets are tabloids nowadays - are howling about an(other) abysmal failure by the State government. But the complainants all have vested interests, don't they?

Now this is a world-wide issue, but I'm looking at Sydney as my example for the moment. The basic problem here is that we are at the cusp of a major change in attitude to transport planning and energy use, and it hurts. There are many lobby groups fighting these changes, trying to get the best deal they can for their special interest; and then there are the forces of change themselves that are making a nonsense of the lobbyists and their self-interest. History tells us that a compromise will be made, but that it will be a short-term one, followed by either radical change that will better our society long-term, or a succession of similarly poor compromises until we arrive incrementally at the same radical solution. Occasionally change doesn't happen fast or deep enough and the society perishes.

How's that for an overview? Could that actually happen? Well (mostly for reasons of land degradation, vulcanism and war) it's happened to big cities, nations and cultures in the past, so it can happen again. It sounds grim, but let's look at Sydney's planning, or perhaps non-planning as an example of a big city that has grown immensely over the last 200-odd years. For the last 70 years or so developed countries like Australia have chosen to vastly expand their road infrastructure, mostly at the expense of mass transport systems. Older, more established cities (especially in Europe) have mostly resisted, but all have had to face the challenge of the car. In many cases funds have been diverted from rail and tram building, mostly to road construction. Now this has largely been a popular move, at least up to now, and one based on 2 basic tenets: (1) that individualism is good and should be encouraged, even if that means encouraging the adoption of personal, individualised mechanised transport and (2) that fuel is cheap. Societies basically invested in the motor car by subsidising the road building and even the car-makers themselves. (And with each bail-out, import duty imposition, 'innovation funding' or tax concession to car manufacture or use we dig ourselves deeper.)

Well if we didn't wake up with the fuel shock of 1973 we started certainly doubting our basic premises in 2008. (Not that it's stopping us yet.)

Not every culture so worships individualism, indeed there's a sliding scale at work here. But Australia is a new-ish country, built along British lines but with an Irish urge to thumb the nose at authority. So we have the knack of falling into line like the British - or perhaps especially the English - whilst doing our utmost to pour scorn on our elected officials. So when Britain largely dumped trams and adopted buses, so did Australia - mostly. Melbourne resisted, at least a bit more than most Aussie cities. But Sydney had absorbed the English and Irish influences as well as a love for the USA and its individualistic 'freedoms'; thus the NSW capital not only adopted the bus but the car as well; and in so doing threw away its extensive - 2nd only to London in scope and size - tram infrastructure. Literally burning the carriages and burying the tracks under tar. All achieved by 1961, a brilliant result for the car and petroleum lobbyists in particular.

Now that was a radical change, but coming out of WW2, anything individualistic and "free" was looked at as "good". It felt good. It looked prosperous, fresh and new. Out with the old, in with the new!

But now, in 2009, let's face some facts. Sydney's inner-city road network was largely designed for horses, carts and pedestrians. For at least 150 years we didn't make wide boulevards, build garages or parking lots, indeed we didn't even pave main roads. But since then we have gone car-crazy, seemingly relegating the walking shoe, the bicycle and the horse to both the sporting pages and the lunatic fringe. And somehow convinced ourselves that fumes, noise and ferocity are acceptable prices to pay. It's OK to have cars and trucks travelling at 40, 50 or even 60 kilometres an hour just inches from pedestrians and cyclists. It's OK - even good- that we don't have to walk to the shops anymore. It's been so successful a deal - or brainwash - that we have closed down our corner stores and congregated our shops in huge malls that are largely out of walking range anyway. We have made the car a planning instrument in our daily lives.

And it's been a seductive sales pitch. Cars are comfortable and convenient and can reflect our moods. We are in control and can go where we please. Cars are a valued extension of ourselves, our prosperity and our personalities. But now we are tiring of the sheer sheetmetal involved - Aussie cars in particular are too big, too thirsty. We don't have big families like we once did and we fear that petrol will rise in price. Cars are becoming a dead weight around our necks. We fear also that we are doing something wrong to the planet by turning all of these fossil fuels loose in the atmosphere. Some of us fear calamity and are looking to change our habits.

Which brings me to the lobbyists that are fighting hard for "us". Groups such as the grandly-named National Roads and Motorists Association (of which I am a long-standing member), or NRMA for short. Although they claim to represent road users they do little or nothing to support bicyclists sharing those roads, or even cyclists having their own infrastructure. Although they claim to represent motorists they remain fixed on the old belief that car use should be subsidised by all (even the cyclists and pedestrians), to better grow the network of roads and encourage even more congestion. They say that they are against congestion but then again they don't want to pay for any decongestion: : PREMIER Nathan Rees' city congestion tax is a spectacular failure with a study revealing thousands of drivers now clogging alternative suburban routes to get to work to avoid the $4 toll.

Now logical analysis tells us that the CBD congestion tax will not be 'perfect' until we are charging it to all road-users who enter the CBD. That will be a technological and road-designing solution that I suspect will come to pass, but will cause even more political pain - something the NSW politicians in particular (on either side) do not want right now. However what we have now targets 2 congested roads - a bridge and a tunnel - and is effective. It has raised the cost of travelling along those arteries and put the minds of the motorists to work on solving the equation - is driving to work still worth it? In a year or so we will have the data and can assess its overall effectiveness at shifting congestion, either by time-shifting the road traffic or by moving people onto public mass transit. Tentatively it is doing both, yet the NRMA thinks not - although it states the opposite in its own analysis. Logically, if a small charge increase in peak hour drives some change, albeit a small one, a larger charge will drive more change. Whilst car use may be a fairly inelastic thing, a hefty enough charge will have an impact. Now that will drive more motorists to change their habits - and thus will reduce congestion. But the NRMA appears to want the opposite - no charge, and by logical extension, more congestion.

Go figure. Do we wind back road charges and build even more roads, or start asking a fair price from road users for public infrastructure?

Social and economic cost of speeding

What are we doing speeding? I just read this: NSW motorists are losing their licences at a record rate of 110 a day, because of accumulated traffic and speeding fines. If petrol prices are hurting, as our media and politicians tell us daily, why are we speeding? Wouldn't it make sense to slow down and save fuel? Hmmm. Maybe fuel remains too cheap?

Anyway, according to that report "the proliferation of speed cameras is blamed for the surge in suspensions", so it's not the drivers' fault, it's just that we are catching more speeding drivers. Ah-ha. They are not in control sufficiently to actually obey the law, apparently, or were distracted by their MP3 player, their cell phone or their passengers. Or they just didn't see the camera. Or they deliberately and consciously law-break by habit. Or whatever.

But wait, there's more. "Peak motoring group NRMA says the rising rate of licence suspension was also a threat to economic productivity, with a recent survey of business showing 23 per cent had workers who were currently off the road." Wow, who cares about the lives that are impacted by suspended licences, it's the economic consequence that matters. Is the NRMA for real, or simply misquoted?

In any case 23% sounds absurbly high and we don't know the sample size or error, but it could just be one person in each firm (how can we know?); so the economic impact is not actually revealed usefully by that stat at all. It looks big but is actually a rubbish number designed only to mislead. Ask instead 'what percentage of workers does this represent?' and 'what percentage of those suspended workers are thereby unable to satisfactority perform their work or an alternative?' They don't use those stats so the actual economic impact is probably small.

Let's also not forget that speeding itself has a social and economic cost measured in increased fuel consumption, noise and social dislocation, and in the cost of fixing smashed cars and people. Whilst punishment may not be the answer - no-one wants to see people forced out of jobs because of repeated lapses in concentration or a basic misunderstanding of the importance of road laws (hmmmm) - we can't ignore a problem that creates both ill-feeling and disrespect for authority and a rough-house bullying attitude by one group of motorists that sets them against the law-abiding and the non-motorised.

So let's get real. Balance punishment and education, sure, and start a cultural change in our society that increases care and respect for our community, including respect for laws designed to regulate and improve traffic flow. Yes folks, speeding stuffs up the traffic. You speed, you catch the guy in front and queues start. So just slow down, save gas and improve traffic flow. That's my 2 cents worth.