🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <4fu6tb$11f@grissom.powerup.com.au>, by addinall@I_should_put_my_domain_in_etc_NNTP_INEWS_DOMAIN (Mark Addinall):
> Followup-To: aus.archives,aus.aviation,aus.cars,aus.books,aus.computers,aus.culture.china,aus.education,aus.electronics,aus.enviroment.misc,aus.foodtech,aus.games.bridge,aus.gardens,aus.general,aus.invest,aus.legal,aus.motorcycles,aus.personals,aus.radio.

> David Maddison (maddison@connexus.apana.org.au) wrote:
> : On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, gravityboy wrote:
> : Virtually none of that tax goes to roads. Most of it goes to consolidated
> : revenue. If it did go to roads we wouldn't have so many dangerous ones
> : and the road death toll would be lower.

> You got that right. And wasn't the initial concept of 'Registration' 
> going to pay for roads. Come to think of it, what does registration
> do any more? Another tax...

  These figures below illustrate the fallacy of the above claims pretty well.
Certainly, much of the petrol tax goes into consolidated revenue.
  And the consoldiated revenue is used to fund the States and Local Authorites
who spend it on, among other things, ROADS!!!!
  Anyone care to sign a petion to raise petrol tax to what is spent anually
on road costs, and the health costs of pollution?

Assessment of Road Costs - Aus and Elsewhere
--------------------------------------------
from a report "Costs and Benefits of Motor Vehicle Traffic in Western 
Australia" perpared by Felix Laube and Michael Lynch of Murdoch University's 
Institute for Science and Technology Policy.  

   Basic findings:
* there are over $6 billion worth of subsidies to the WA road system overall
* over $2 billion subsidises the metropolitian road system, with about
  $1.25 billion absorbed by cars only
* the subsidies equate to $5,500 per registered WA vehicle (annually)
                          ------
* the bulk of the subsidies lies in the infrastructure and the land taken
  up by it.

    The Victorian EPA, with the Bureau of Transport and Communication 
Economics and the Department of Environment, Sport and Territories, undertook
the "Victorian Transport Externalities Study", aimed to estimate external
costs of transport.  The selelcted a subset of externalities - noise, 
emissions, accident and congestion and "tentatively" and "conservatively"
estimated the cost of these at 2% of GDP.

Even the most basic costs are not covered by road taxes.
Basic Australian Road Costs 
---------------------------
Australian Road Costs $mill(1986-87)
Road construction and maintenance    4200
Trafic facilities and policing        783
Accidents                            5520

Total                               10503

In the same period, total road payments (Commonwealth + States) totalled 
$(mill)7100, including registration, fuel excise payments etc.  

> : And _please_ don't tell me that Australia has relatively low petrol
> : prices compared with "other countries". Mostly these comparisons are made
> : with Europe which has about 30 times or more the population density we have,
> : where people live in tiny high density apartment complexes and a 1 hour
> : drive can take you across several countries. It is more appropriate to
> : compare our petrol prices with the US or Canada, which are similar sized
> : countries to Australia, and have petrol prices of about half or less. And
> : they still have a higher population density than we have.

I would expect sparsely populated countries to have higher road costs
than areas with high population density because the amount of road required
per vehicle is likely to be higher.  This would seem to be a reason for
Australia to have higher fuel taxes, rather than lower because the roads
cost more.  Otherwise we are effectivly subsidising road transport at
the expense of rail and other modes.
   Dorre
> : David Maddison
> Mark.