A FEDERAL Treasury paper has looked at the benefits of mass-distance-location pricing for trucks.
Mass-distance-location pricing would require trucks to be fitted with a regulatory GPS system and mass sensors.
The report said vehicle telematics technologies are becoming more and more available, enabling road managers to price road use on the basis of time of journey, distance travelled, type of road and loaded ‘axle-load’ weight.
According to the report, such technologies can potentially be developed to capture all externalities generated by both light and heavy transport usage which are subject to different substance and congestion-based externality costs.
The report added pricing of vehicle-induced road damages on a mass-distance-location basis could happen over the next few years
But Australian Trucking Association (ATA) Chairman Trevor Martyn said the cost of implementing mass-distance-location pricing would be enormous.
He said there are about 512,000 trucks in Australia and under mass-distance-location pricing, every one of these would need to be fitted with an in-vehicle tracking unit and mass sensors.
Furthermore, Martyn added trucking operators would need to install and operate new accounting systems to keep track of their charges, and of course the regulatory agencies would need to set up and run billing systems.
He commented it would have very high compliance and administration costs, would lead to endless arguments and lobbying about how individual roads and streets should be classified for charging purposes, and would not do anything at all to fix one of the key issues in road funding.
The report was compiled by the Henry Tax Review by Professor Harry Clarke and Dr David Prentice at La Trobe University.
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