ITS Monday: Edition 38, 2023

National road-user charges are needed – and most people are open to it, our research shows

A week on from the High Court of Australia’s ruling on Victoria’s “electric vehicles tax”, Swinburne University of Technology’s Hussein Dia, Hadi Ghaderi, and Tariq Munir have penned an article for The Conversation about it being well past time to consider road user charges.

Current road taxes are blunt instruments that don’t reflect the true costs of driving to society. The fuel excise does not properly account for traffic congestion or emissions. It makes no allowance for people’s ability to pay. Car registration fees are also not related to the amount of travel, congestion or emissions produced by driving.

A similar clarion call for road use charging was made by The National Road Transport Association, in NatRoad warns road network risks falling into financial pothole

Related iMOVE content: Road pricing reform: a thorny issue

National Road Transport Technology Strategy – draft for public consultation

Infrastructure Australia last week released its National Road Transport Technology Strategy—draft for public consultation document. “This Strategy is the collective vision of Australia’s Infrastructure and Transport Ministers for a safer, more
efficient, productive, sustainable and accessible transport system for all Australians, through deployment and uptake of new road transport technologies to enhance social, environmental and economic well-being.”

“The objective of this Strategy is for Australian governments to take a nationally consistent approach to technology deployment where this is needed to achieve the Strategy’s vision.”

The document is downloadable from the links here.

Related iMOVE content: Autonomous Driving Info, Projects & Resources

Estonia’s capital made mass transit free a decade ago. Car traffic went up

“What I learned: Going fare-free has accomplished little in Tallinn. Transit’s share of local commutes has fallen steadily over the past decade, particularly among those with low incomes. Residents today own more automobiles and are more likely to drive than ever before.”

Choosing Victoria’s future: 5 urban development scenarios

Yes, this is Victoria, but feel free to substitute you location of choice for these approaches. It’s work from Infrastructure Victoria, where it “… modelled 5 different, possible urban development futures for Melbourne and our largest regional cities over 30 years. We explored the impact of different city shapes on where people choose to live and work, the jobs and services they can access, how much land is used for housing, travel patterns, the impact on our environment and the infrastructure that is needed.”

Improving transportation project evaluation by recognizing the role of spatial scale and context in measuring non-user economic benefits

A new paper from Glen Weisbrod and David Hensher. “The usefulness of transportation project evaluation depends on the completeness of its benefit measures. Since transportation networks are intrinsically spatial, transportation improvement projects have spatial access and location characteristics that can lead to a variety of non-user economic benefits. Recent research has enabled us to better understand how spatial context and spatial heterogeneity play further roles in generating efficiency gains for non-users, in the form of productivity, income, and cost savings for both private and public sectors of the economy. This paper draws upon that body of research to expand our understanding of the means by which transportation projects can generate economic efficiency gains, and approaches needed to measure them. It covers topics beyond those captured by current definitions of “wider economic benefits,” including additional sources of scale economies associated with freight distribution and connectivity, and further public and private sector economic gains enabled by environmental and social inclusion improvement.”

Doctors warn of serious injuries as e-scooter crash presentations spike

I recall at least one story on this telling the story of Brisbane’s e-scooter injury toll. Here it’s Melbourne’s turn.

Related iMOVE article: Micromobility Info, Projects & Resources

Help Improve Road Safety on Inkerman Street

This one didn’t come from my usual trawling of online and social media, instead it came straight into my personal email inbox, a tale of work going on in my local area.

“Inkerman Street has a high number of crashes compared to other Council-managed roads, with 33 recorded crashes between St Kilda Road and Hotham Street in the 5-year period ending June 2022. 14 of the 33 crashes resulted in a serious injury.”

Have a look at what’s the City of Port Phillip has in mind, and the quite nice use of images showing the before and after of the proposed designs.