THOMAS A. RUBIN, CPA, CMA, CMC, CIA, CGFM, CFM Consultant
Governmental Transportation & Public Sector Finance
California


With vitually no exceptions, residents and taxpayers derive benefits from the road system other than that of transport of themselves.  These include, but are not limited to

(1)    Transport of goods that they consume.
Nigels reply
However, when I purchase products I consume, I expect part of that price to be the transport costs which I expect to pay for.

(2)    Use of the roads by police, fire departments, and other emergency vehicles.
Nigels reply
I pay for emergency vehicles through taxes or direct charges - I want their full costs to be transparent. That part of emergency services costs due to use of roads - I don't want to be accounted for as road costs - I want it accounted for as emergency services costs.

(3)    Service providers coming to their residence & transport of other peoples to their jobs, jobs that provide goods and/or services to the residents.

Nigels reply
In the UK the subsidisation of transport has encouraged employers to centralise their operations forcing people to travel much larger distances to and from work. This transport still has to be paid for. The choice is do we pay for this through our taxes or pay directly? I would prefer to pay directly and for the economic balance to shift in the direction of business locating close to where people live. I want an end to transport subsidy - I want the money in my pocket so that I can choose whether to pay to drive my car or where available purchase locally produced goods and services.

In terms of cost of construction and maintenance of a roadway network, a strong argument can be made that the cost of goods movement exceeds that of people movement, in that higher weight vehicles require far more substantially constructed roadways and higher maintenance costs.

Nigels reply
I agree see Part 2  1.2 for details about the costs of goods transport. "It is worth noting that LGV’s cause many thousands of times the amount of road damage that can be attributed to the private car. The formula most widely used suggests road damage is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight.

The New Zealand charging regime reflects this. The charge is distance related by a sliding scale e.g. 1ton 2 axles $13.61 per 1,000km, 30 ton 2axle $9,867.9 per 1,000km, 30ton 4 axle $564.64 per 1,000km."

In the UK the value of the Highway network is about £337billion much of which has been purchased by borrowing which represents 40% of the UK national debt. The interest payments alone represent £150 per year for every UK citizen. An asset of this value should not be making the loss it does as represented by the amount of taxes we pay for roads. Roads should be commercial, economically priced - making a profit for reinvestment and sharing out as a dividend to the owners. Read my web site and you will discover how all UK citizens could become much better off with an economically sustainable road network - less congestion and lower taxes.

For such users, do you propose to charge the "vehicle" for the roadway costs, and then assume that the economic system will result in such charges eventually winding up paid by ultimate consumers (which, due to the change in costs of various goods and services, at least some shifts in spending that will benefit certain economic sectors and harm others)?  For non-private sector users -- emergency vehicles, local and municipal government (using the U.S. terminology), national defence, etc. -- would these costs be added to their budgetary requirements?
Nigels reply,
The simple answer is yes. For more detail please Part 2  Costs and Price of Transport

Obviously, I've set forth one way of allocation of such costs, you may have another -- how would you handle these users and the costs of their road use?
Nigels reply,
The ideal for pricing is electronic tolls - allocation of costs is quite involved see Part 4 Commercialisation of  the UK Road Network for full details and the references I used in my research.