Scott Charlton Chief Executive Officer, Transurban
Key points: • Transurban’s landmark study shows that motorists will accept different pricing models if they understand it. • The study showed that a usage-based charging model could generate sustainable funding to meet future transport needs. • While stakeholder support is important, the community will need to understand the problem and the spectrum of solutions, to advance.
I am excited to present the first findings from the study on road usage that Transurban has been conducting over the past 18 months. At Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s 2015 Annual Infrastructure Oration, I announced that Transurban would undertake the first study in Australia to examine how drivers respond to userpays charging as an alternative to the current unfair system of opaque fees and taxes. As an industry, we have been talking about this for at least a decade, so it has been enlightening to hear from actual drivers. Our participants are everyday Australians who have given up their valuable time to be part of this study. While they were offered money to participate in the study, most agreed to participate because they saw it as a way to contribute to finding better transport solutions for their communities. I want to thank them all for their contribution. They are just real Australians wanting to make a contribution. 38
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Frank (participant): We are a community that’s used to paying for things, so yeah, this is something else that we have to pay for. It’s going to take a brave government to introduce it, but it will happen. Traffic is getting worse and worse, so if people know that their kilometre charge or their usage charge is a certain amount, then they might decide not to do this, or this, or this, find another means, or just not to do it. Rob (participant): I think a user-pays system, depending on the rate at which it was struck, and that’s always going to be debatable by a lot of people… but that approach is going to modify people’s driving. Linda (participant): At the end of the day, we all have to pay for the roads and their need to be maintained, so money has to come from somewhere. It can’t just be from one source, so they have to look at alternatives. Before I move on to the actual findings, I want to make clear what motivated Transurban to undertake the study. Australia faces the demands of a growing, ageing and highly urbanised population. At the same time, our major road funding source, fuel excise, is being diminished by the uptake of more fuel-efficient, and electric vehicles. And as we all know, congestion is an issue in our cities, particularly when you look at the population growth. It affects productivity but, more importantly, it affects our quality of life. Our motorways and Transurban form part of the broader road networks of our cities. Congestion in the
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