Pressure grows to make motorists pay for roads

[ltd_on20s]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/pressu...-1226383986648

"The Commonwealth gets the fuel excise and the RAA estimates motorists were paying 38c per litre excise and 7c goes back into roads"


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ADELAIDENOW readers are unhappy at the prospect of introducing toll-roads to pay for future road projects - as proposed by the state's top transport bureaucrat.


Transport Department CEO Rod Hook in The Advertiser today called for a debate on the topic because of pressure from the Federal Government to find private sector funding for future road projects.
However, only around one in every three adelaidenow readers who voted and commented this morning supported the idea.

Reader Brenda George said motorists had already paid for road works through car registration.

"They should better manage their money so roads can be paid for and not wasted on stupid projects that can wait to be done,'' she said.

But another reader, Richard Jenkinson, was one of the readers who supported the idea. "Apply toll roads and you'll probably get a two-way road from Elizabeth to Victor with no lights. Didn't every other state do this 20 years ago?'' he said.

Mr Hook said the issue would come to a head when South Australia went to the next round of funding submissions in 2014/15 because the Federal Government had told the state it must have alternative funding.

On ABC radio he said an application for Federal Government funding for two connection roads to take traffic off South Rd were likely to include a toll proposal.

"It (a toll) may be for instance on future stages of South Rd, and I am talking a northern connector linking between where the northern expressway hits Port Wakefield Rd, we would like to duplicate that road at some stage in the future,'' he said.

"It may be we have to grapple with tolling on that road, or maybe the section of South Rd from Regency Rd to Anzac Hwy.''

Mr Hook said SA did not have enough traffic to justify an entire road constructed by the private sector and funded with a toll.

He said motorists should always have an option and toll roads interstate had proven unpopular because traffic had been forced on to the new road without an option of staying on the old road.

When asked on ABC Radio about the Opposition's toll roads policy, transport spokeswoman Vickie Chapman ruled out a future Liberal Party government introducing tolls on cars.

But when asked about Mr Hook's suggestion of a freight toll on a northern interconnector with South Rd, she said: "If that is the case (that it may not be funded by the Federal Government) it is a freight option and that is matter we will have a look at''.

Mr Hook said it was harder to lobby the Federal Government for increased funding from fuel excise for road projects when SA refused to consider toll roads.

"In SA, the motorists pay for their registration and for their licences and the money from that goes into the highways fund and it cannot be used for other purposes.

"The Commonwealth gets the fuel excise and the RAA estimates motorists were paying 38c per litre excise and 7c goes back into roads. States were critical of revenue raised by the Commonwealth through fuel excises going into general revenue and not being directed into roads or broader transport issues."

Mr Hook said last week's Budget, which included mothballing some major projects, showed the deteriorating budget conditions would affect infrastructure.

"All state CEOs (at the roads conference) made the point about the reduced revenue flows for their respective governments and the associated difficult financial position we are all in.

"There are only two ways to funding infrastructure, one for the user to pay through tolls and the other for taxpayers to pay."