Re: NRC

[telljb@OZozemail.com.au (< Tell >)]

Excellent Maurie.  
One other thing needs to be emphasised, the legal
ramifications of applying "punitive" measures against
road transport.  The Federal and High Courts would be
very busy with government attempts to balance up the
past incompetence of railway admins who were unable or
unwilling to cope with road transport.

Trucks like the motorists pay huge amounts of taxes to
which only a fraction goes back into roads, contrary to
aus.rail urban myth.
Of course trucks should pay an equitable amount to use
the roads, but as you have pointed out, a nightmare to
implement and force.

The answer is with rail, not road, no matter what it
takes, even full privatisation of the SG national rail
network, especially since both flavours of national
politics in Australia feel that governments can not run
a business in this day and age. Remember, the Federal
ALP began the sell off with Qantas and the part sale of
Comms Bank. 
As somebody said here some time ago, nationalise the
road transport industry and it would go broke real
quick.  .........Many a true word spoken in jest.!

----Terry Burton
[clear OZ in address for email reply]


>mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly) wrote:
> 
> The answer to make trucks pay more is an obvious but very difficult one to set 
> up and administer.
> Currently some trucks are paying their way (usually small non articulated 
> trucks that are used in the cities) but most of the large semi trailers that 
> utilize the highways arnt.
> The difficulty with charging them a realistic rate is all based around 
> enforcement, ie how do you determine how many GTK per annum a particular truck 
> carries.
> You would need a major army of enforcement police plus a national grid of 
> weighbridges on all major highways to simply enforce any mass - distance 
> charging regime.
> I dont think anything should be done to the trucking industry as its simply 
> too late, there are already far too many trucks on the roads and simply 
> legislating them away with higher fees will be extremely unpopular 
> (politically wise) , and the truckies will, as they have done in the past with 
> their blockades of the highways will get a lot of sympathy.
> Its also not clear that any increase in trucking taxes will cause any great 
> movement back to rail , the additional taxes will simply be passed onto the
> end user in the form of higher costs for the things we buy.
> Its much better to let market forces fix the problem , ie we fix the Rail 
> Access Regimes which increases the competitiveness of trains. 
> 
> Its imperative however that the charging regime for trains be fixed.
> Simply charging track access fees which are based around arbitrary cost 
> structures set by various state govts is totally unacceptable.
> Even ARTCs charges based around flagfalls and GTK essentially favor 
> larger rail companies who can afford the flagfalls .
> Rail costs are primarily fixed , around 80% with only 20% variable which means 
> that the more trains that run ,the cheaper it should get per train.
> Its pretty obvious why this is the case , especially on lines that have a high 
> required staff density.
> Train controllers are needed as are signallers whether we have 1 train per day 
> or 100 trains per day.
> Its also worthwile from a track owners perspective to distribute train load 
> over their tracks in a uniform manner and not to have a lot of trains all 
> leaving around the same time of the day and then nothing for many hours.
> Unfortunately this is exactly what we have on the National Network.
> Most trains arrive early in the mornings and leave late in the afternoons so 
> that there is very poor utilization of the track during the day, even worse 
> utilization at the weekends.
> If one looks at the utilization of the Hume Highway one sees that at night 
> there are a lot of trucks ,but still quite a few during the day and 
> importantly they still run at weekends,the trucking industry doesnt stop at 
> weekends like the rail industry does.
> 
> I beleive there are two scenerios to the charging regime.
> 1/ Something similar to the existing ARTC regime with a flagfall + a GTK 
> component,but with an allowance for the time of day, ie we try to encourage use
> of the rail facility by a reduction in rate during times when the network is 
> underutilised, eg a weekend reduced GTK rate.
> The flagfall component needs to be just enuf to cover the costs of producing 
> the timetable for the trains.
> Operators could , if they so wished pay a higher flagfall to allow priority 
> over trains running with a lower flagfall.
> This would benefit operators like Countrylink who currently have to pay a 
> premium flagfall simply because they run a hi speed train.
> On weekends , especially Sundays where there arnt many other trains priority 
> isnt such a problem and Countrylink could save by paying a lower rate.
> 
> 2/ We treat railways like we treat the road freight industry.
> A registration charge is levied on every locomotive which is accredited to run
> over the National Network.
> The charge would be payable annually and be based on a locos weight,max speed 
> and HP .
> There would still be a minimal flagfall , but no GTK component.
> This would encourage railroads to haul as much as possible with a minimum loco 
> fleet and would discourage hoarding of locos.
> 
> The feds allocate a fixed percentage of road funding per annum to rail, to get 
> the above scenerio up and running , and  to improve all the National Track 
> to at least 60 kg/m on concrete.
> After this is done , I beleive that Rail can fund itself simply from the 
> revenues received.