Pay As You Drive road pricing is closely related to PAYD insurance. Both are instruments that public policy makers can use to improve congestion, road usage and the costs associated with it. The concept of road pricing is charging road use on a usage base, and using the pricing to control or curb congestion. A good example of it is the inner London flat fee when you drive into London. A crude but effective way of making you think before you jump into your car and drive into London (like the traffic isn’t enough).
The problem with road pricing is that it is highly unpopular. I am always amazed that a change in toll fees for the cross-city tunnel in Sydney makes front-page news for a week (page 16 has children dying by the millions due to the Food Crisis). The voting public hates it when something they have for free suddenly has a price on it. And that is the problem. It is politically challenging for a politician to introduce sound policy in this space, particularly when people have to pay for it.
Two recent examples of success and failure are in the Netherlands and Manchester. In the Netherlands they announced a bold and spectacular program to get every car wired by 2016 and have accurate road pricing, linked to type of road, time of day and type of vehicle. PAYD insurance is so obvious once you’ve made that mind shift. Add to this the fact that the Netherlands has the highest use of bicycles in the world (having no hills has its advantages…), and you have a society where transport is going to be seriously responsible.
Contrast that with Manchester, where a public referendum said no in very certain terms to a road-pricing scheme), to the tune of 4 to 1. It is being heralded as the last rites to road-pricing (and slated as being a major step backwards for the Government (who established a multi billion dollar fund to support this) and for other cities with similar plans.
It will be interesting to understand the dynamics of how the Netherlands went about it, and what the factors were that made it successful, versus the Manchester stuff-up.
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