[LINK] e-movers

[Harry McNally]

   On 21/11/23 06:20, Tom Worthington wrote:
> On 20/11/23 12:51, Harry McNally wrote:
>
>> I found a Wikipedia article a long time ago that said road wear has a
>>  fourth order relationship to vehicle mass.
>
> Fourth power law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
>
>> It quoted a US study and I haven't found it since.
>
> Highway Research Board (1962). The AASHO Road Test: Report 7, Summary Report 
> (PDF). Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences—National Research 
> Council – via Transportation Research Board. 
> https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr61g/61g.pdf
>
> The firmer tires used on electric vehicles, to make them more efficient, 
> might make the situation worse.
>
> ps: Just to get this back to Link's area of interest, the Internet could be 
> used to implement road use charges, to better reflect the usage of vehicles. 
> Perhaps electric scooters could also weigh the rider and impose a suitable 
> penalty for increased road wear. ;-)

Thank you Tom, I wasn't sure if this was off-topic for Link and I'd only 
opened my mouth to change feet (again).

The issue I have with all of the internet vehicle monitoring is privacy. Our 
Main Roads in WA are being scrutinised for harvesting Bluetooth MAC addresses 
on local roads (Google stylez) so I think another letter is brewing on my 
keyboard.

I had wondered if an old-school annual odometer inspection could be used to 
assess the total road distance maintenance fee. The higher weight would impose 
a higher cost on battery EVs but they make savings in other ways. It might 
also encourage daily commuting EVs with 100km range but also lighter batteries 
to reduce road charges. But the original post got me off researching and I 
found The Conversation article I'd remembered (posted below since that is what 
Linkers do to avoid link rot ?).

If we imposed the real cost of road wear based vehicle mass, then suddenly the 
economies of rail change and heavy vehicle movements become shorter journeys 
from the closest rail terminal. That won't get any push-back from powerful 
lobby groups of course ! But it would also increase the role for electric trucks.

Here is The Conversation article from 2017:

https://theconversation.com/trucks-are-destroying-our-roads-and-not-picking-up-the-repair-cost-79670

Trucks are destroying our roads and not picking up the repair cost

It’s high time Australia changed its current road user charges for trucks. The 
shortfall between the charges for heavy vehicles and the money spent on things 
like road system maintenance, construction costs, road crashes involving heavy 
trucks, emissions, pollution and urban road congestion amounts to a taxpayer 
subsidy for the industry of at least A$3 billion per annum.

The current charges, like those of cars, rely only on annual registration fees 
and fuel taxation. Instead Australia should be following the lead of New 
Zealand, Switzerland and some other European countries and introducing a 
charge system based on mass and distance.

There have been many inquiries over the years into changing the system, and 
there’s yet another one underway by the National Transport Commission and the 
federal government. In the meantime, heavy vehicle charges have been frozen at 
2015-16 levels for an initial two-year period.

The costs of heavy vehicles

In Australia, the road user charges for trucks are currently determined on a 
national basis by the National Transport Commission. The annual registration 
fees depend on factors including the number of axles and gross vehicle mass.
Make better decisions - find out what the experts think.

By way of example, the current annual fee for a six axle semitrailer is 
A$6,334 and for a nine axle B-Double is A$15,016. With rebates, most trucks 
pay fuel excise of 25.9 cents per litre (this will change to 24.8 cents per 
litre on 1 July), whilst motorists pay 40.1 cents per litre.

The registration fee seems steep. However,a B-Double can cause, per kilometre 
travelled, 20,000 times the road wear and tear that a family car does.

In New Zealand a heavy six axle semitrailer pays 56 cents NZ (about 52 
Australian cents) per kilometre in mass distance charges. In Australia, the 
same truck hauling 100,000 km a year or more pays registration and fuel road 
user charges of less than 17 cents per kilometre.

New Zealand’s road user charges, which are mostly made up of mass distance 
charges levied on heavy truck operations, account for some 37% of all revenue 
to their land transport fund.

In Australia, National Transport Commission data shows that in 2014-15, heavy 
vehicle operators paid combined road user charges and registration fees 
revenues of about A$3 billion. However this only makes up about 12.5% of all 
government outlays on roads that are now over $24 billion per annum.

It’s hard to see why Australian charges for heavy vehicles should continue to 
be set at about one third of the respective New Zealand charges. Also it’s not 
the hard working truck driver who benefits from these subsidies, but those 
companies who choose to consign big loads by road.
Low charges increasing traffic

The ongoing hidden subsidies for heavy long distance trucks is one reason why 
there has been a steady drift from rail to road for interstate freight.

By way of example, more than 15 million tonnes per annum of freight is now 
moved between Sydney and Melbourne, by more than 3,000 B-Doubles and 
semi-trailers each day and night. On this corridor, rail now moves about 2% of 
intercapital city freight in containers along with some steel and other bulk 
freight. This has decrease since the early 1990s, when rail had over 20% of 
Melbourne-Sydney freight

The decision of Shell Oil in 2009 to cease using rail for long haul movement 
of petroleum products in New South Wales and to use B-Doubles is yet another 
shift. It was in part due to the subsidies for most B-double operations, along 
with ongoing concessions to mass and dimension limits for heavy trucks, 
leading to heavier and larger trucks.

There have been some minor changes in road user charges for truck over time. 
However even modest increases have been successfully opposed by the road 
freight industry, meaning this situation of under-recovery of road system 
costs has persisted for decades.

Although the necessary reform has proved to be difficult in Australia, there 
are indications some changes may start to happen.

In July 2016, the Victorian government requested the National Transport 
Commission review how road costs are allocated for heavy trucks. At the same 
time the South Australian Premier, Jay Wetherill, called for a national heavy 
vehicle road-user charging system, run by the Commonwealth. In this proposed 
system state-based registration and federal based fuel-excise charges would be 
replaced by a charging system based on mass, distance and location.

In August of that year, Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher suggested 
that trucks weighing more than 4.5 tonnes should pay road user charges that 
more accurately reflect the damage they do to our roads, with the option of 
establishing an independent price regulator.

With Australia’s population growing, road outlays now costing more than A$24 
billion per year. Road congestion is due to cost over A$20 billion a year by 
2020. This means real progress on road pricing reform for heavy trucks is now 
long overdue.