– By David Brown –
At the recent National Conference of the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management (AITPM) a paper was presented titled “Rationale for a Central Business District Cordon Pricing Scheme in Sydney”.
In 1975 Singapore started the trend that charged drivers a flat rate for unlimited entries into their central area. Other cities such as Stockholm, Milan and most notably London have subsequently implemented their own systems.
The justification for these systems is usually based on traffic engineering measures such as the reduction in traffic volumes and the increase in vehicle speeds in the inner areas. These are important points but we need to also look at the overall impact of such a scheme. It is not only journey-to-work trips but also includes business and freight trips typically done with fleet vehicles.
The devil (or at least the impact) is in the detail.
The daily charge for crossing the cordon is reasonable in Stockholm ($6.00) and Milan ($7.75) but in London it is a hefty £11.5 which translates to $19.50. When our exchange rate was less favourable it climbed as high as the equivalent of $24.00 a day.
The charge is usually for extended periods of peak demand rather than all the time. London, for example, operates between 07:00 and 18:00 Mondays to Fridays.
There are usually a range of exceptions. In Stockholm approx 15% of vehicles are exempt from the charge, Milan 24% and London 35%. Exceptions can include vehicles with 9 or more seats, motor-tricycles, two-wheeled motorbikes (and sidecars), mopeds, accredited breakdown companies and roadside recovery vehicles. Discounts can also be given. In London businesses with six or more vehicles can register with Fleet Auto Pay, and will be charged £10.50 rather than £11.50 per vehicle per day for each vehicle detected within the zone.
Another purpose of the charge is to encourage low polluting cars. The exception figure to London could reflect the time that they allowed low polluting internal combustion engine vehicles could avoid the toll. The environmental exception is now only for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Sydney’s CBD is relatively small, being only about 3 square kilometres compared to Milan (23 km2); Stockholm (26 km2) and London (40 km2).
Modern technology, including number plate recognition, has made the collection of the charges more effective and more efficient and the schemes can generate positive revenue returns. But it is still expensive to operate the system. Based on figures for 2011 mentioned in the AITPM paper, the London system cost $170 million to run for the year but they collected $272 million in tolls.
The paper recommended that Sydney should have a charge of between $10.00 and $15.00 but they thought that consideration should be given to removing the toll on the Cross City Tunnel to allow a free alternative that by passes the city. Consideration should also be given to dropping the $9 per day off-street commercial parking levy in the CBD.
In my opinion the Sydney CBD congestion charge (and indeed any major city in the country) is a bit of a blunt instrument. It is a big toll focused on a small area. The CBD is significant but in Sydney it represents less than 13% of all the jobs in the Sydney region (Melbourne it is likely to be only 10%) so it is not an wide reaching policy.
A user charge across the whole system is being considered (and strongly pushed by some organisations) for a range of reasons, which will mean that we will not have to set up a system for one specific area.
It is worth noting that Singapore proudly proclaims that they now have 65% of commuters using public transport to get to and from work in their central area. Sydney is already world leading with something like 75% of journey-to-work trips already using non-car transport.
Quite a number of cities have voted against implementing a similar system. Hong Kong tried and removed a cordon charge while Edinburgh did not go ahead when 74.4% of people rejected the idea.
There can be huge reduction in traffic when a cordon charge in introduced but we really need to understand what is the variety of reasons, vehicles are accessing the city and how can we ensure the economic viability of the CBD.
