New Zealand Engineering 1997 March

Columns

Transport Reforms Not Finished Yet

Peter Goodwin is executive director of the Chartered Institute of Transport in New Zealand

After a decade of reform the transport industry faces more change. Land transport will continue to receive official attention this year with the Ministry of Transport continuing several major projects.

While the land transport pricing study continues to be debated, on the agenda is development of a long-term transport strategy, a review of the road management system, funding of alternative transport systems and a review of transport operator licensing. A major review of driver licensing begun in 1996 continues with government decisions expected to be made this year.

Environmental issues such as transport energy use and greenhouse gas emissions remain as hot issues.

Pricing Study

Sector groups are lining up on both sides of the median strip over land transport pricing. On one side of the road Tranz Rail, which has a monopoly on providing a rail network, argues that road transport operators (Tranz Rail is also a major road carrier) do not pay their fair share of the roading cost.

In the other lane, road transport operators say they contribute fully through high fuel excise, registration fees, and road user charges. They also say that roads are provided as a public good and are used for a much wider purpose than moving freight.

Central to the debate is who pays. Should the cost of the road network be lumped on to heavy transport or should it be borne by all road users? Who are all road users, anyway?

Roads are provided for a number of reasons. In the public good category there is a right for every property to have access although the level of the access is not defined in legislation and may range from first class highways to narrow metal tracks and the myriad of paper roads that cross the landscape.

Public utilities' use of roads for distribution of power, telephone systems, gas, sewerage disposal and other activities is taken for granted. While these utilities were publicly owned by local or central government that was accepted. But the privatisation of many of these services means that they pay nothing for their use of the road and profit from it as a result. When private owner Tranz Link tried to charge those same utilities a rental where their lines crossed railway land it quickly found it had little support.

The social aspects of road access must be considered. Should cyclists pay for their use of the road, particularly where cycle lanes are provided? What would a pedestrian pay and how would it be collected? If it seems unfair that these road users should be asked to contribute for their use of the roads is it fair that commercial users should be required to pay more than their fair share?

The cost of roads and pricing their use correctly is only part of the jigsaw of transport infrastructure reform.

National Land Transport Strategy

In a move that is a little like shutting the stable door after the horse bolted, a national strategy for road transport is now being developed. Regional councils have been required for some time to have regional strategies and the national plan is required to be not incompatible with regions. The regional strategies however have no coordination nor is there any requirement that neighbouring regions have plans that mesh.

The national strategy is being developed by wide consultation with industry and interest groups. Consultation with focus groups will continue for much of this year before a workshop completes recommendations to the Government in early 1998.

Safety issues are high on the agenda. The philosophy of the approach to safety has been questioned by some contributors. What level of safety (or unsafety) is acceptable to the community? What level of risk is acceptable and how much are we prepared to pay to achieve an acceptable risk? If a reasonable cost approach is maintained will that ensure that an acceptable risk is achieved?

Similar questions are being asked about access to the transport network. The public transport system has come under scrutiny. Access to the transport system raises issues of what level of service is necessary, when should it be provided and at what cost. Access for the less abled is a major question that the strategy groups have considered.

Future funding of the network will also be considered in developing the strategy. This issue is also the subject of a government discussion document currently receiving submissions.

Getting agreement from groups as diverse as commercial trade associations, environmental groups, representatives of the disabled, government departments and agencies, all of whom have particular interests to pursue, is not easy.

Once welded together the strategy should provide a blueprint of New Zealand's transport network well into the next century and is worth watching with considerable interest.

Alternative Funding

Transfund has the responsibility of providing funding for land transport projects and is charged with considering funding alternative projects to roads. This appears to open the way for alternative transport systems to be funded from the public purse. Alternative systems might include a railway instead of a new road, or a ferry service might be an alternative to a new bridge.

While the aims appear to be highly laudable there is a danger that public money is used to prop up private operators who otherwise would not invest in the schemes proposed. Some would argue that in effect this is subsidising private enterprise.

There is also concern that the motive for alternative funding might be to ensure that the available funding for roading is able to meet the demands for it by putting off the inevitable through funding alternatives. The question of alternative use funding is the subject of a Transit New Zealand discussion document seeking public submissions which closed in February.

Conference

The Chartered Institute of Transport's annual conference in November 1996 identified a range of issues affecting all modes of transport. High on the list is safety.

Aviation safety has been under recent scrutiny in New Zealand and overseas. One major aircraft manufacturer predicts that there will be one major aircraft accident a week. Yet aviation has an exceptionally high safety record when compared with passenger miles operated. Air accidents affect large numbers and are still infrequent enough to attract wide media attention.

Cut price charter operators in New Zealand have raised questions about the safety of airlines operating as New Zealand airlines with aircraft leased from and operated by overseas owners using foreign crews. Recent liberalisation of New Zealand's aviation laws enabled charter operators such as Kiwi International to grow into scheduled operators, but are they an airline or a sales operation which arranges the charter of aircraft to carry its passengers?

Because so many operators are involved under different jurisdictions difficulties lie in determining who is responsible. Quite clearly New Zealand nationals flying on what they think is a New Zealand airline want to know that they are safe and that the operator is subject to all the safety standards applicable in New Zealand. The reality may be different from the public perception.

The demise of Kiwi may see further changes which will tighten up the liberalised laws ensuring NZ standards are met but this may well result in increased costs which do not make cheap fares so attractive to offer.

Research

Transport research is poorly funded by the Government. It ranks in the lowest of 16 categories behind Antarctic research, receiving a little more than $2 million a year. This is despite the importance of transport to the national economy and the need for the country to maintain innovative and competitive transport links to deliver its exports to its markets.

One of the arguments against giving funding is that research into vehicle design can be imported from overseas. If this country relied on that argument, who would have invented No 8 wire and what would have become of its frozen meat industry if we had waited for someone else to make the first refrigerated shipment?

But vehicle design is only one aspect of research necessary. There is a great need for research into energy use and transport, including the interrelationship between land use and transport, as well as a raft of environmental issues concerning transport that need to be considered.

Studies such as the Ministry of Transport's Land Transport Pricing Study are unique in the world as New Zealand again leads the way, but where is the funding to research the economic benefits of the study? There is a strong expectation that private industry will fund research unlike other sectors of the economy which in percentage terms are far less reliant on private funding.

Each year the Transport Research & Educational Trust Board offers a scholarship for transport research. Applications closed at the end of February for the 1997 scholarship. It offers $10 000 for studies into the relationship between the Resource Management Act and transport, or a project to produce a directory of transport education.

A 1996 study funded by the Board pointed to a need for improved coordination of information in transport and for training and education. Yet despite courses being offered at Lincoln and Massey Universities specifically in transport they are often not well subscribed.

These are big issues for 1997 and in later articles I shall consider some of them in greater detail.