Scott Charlton Network pricing will inevitably have a place in the transport network to manage demand and upgrade transport infrastructure, says Transurban Chief Executive Scott Charlton. Infrastructure has been a constant in my career, and I am very keen in my role to advance our industry, and for Transurban to play a big part in that policy debate. I’ll get straight to the point that I’d like to make. In the not-too-distant future, we will see variations of network pricing in Australia in order to better utilise our transport infrastructure. Whether it’s corridor charges, congestion charges, demand pricing or distance-based tolling, network pricing will have to be introduced to fund infrastructure, manage demand and promote public transport alternatives.
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It’s very important to talk about all three of those, because people will hear what they want to hear. The contractors will hear, ‘great, we’re going to fund infrastructure with this’; the press will hear: ‘managed demand – you’re talking about congestion tolling,’ so that is going to be difficult publicly. The government will hear ‘you want to promote public transport,’ and that’s positive. I think it’s important that all three of these things are managed together. Looking at our major motorways, it’s obvious that we need new capacity and we need to find better ways to utilise our existing assets.
Volume 3 Number 2
3/25/13 12:45 PM
