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.
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