Road pricing in the UK

Imagine one day, the North-South Expressway is toll-free. Imagine seamless travel from Bukit Kayu Hitam to Singapore without having to worry about Touch n Go credits. But also imagine the toll-free condition of the highway during festive and school holiday seasons. Yes, a picture of delight and nightmare.

NSE

This is exactly what the UK is at the moment. The NSE is equivalent to the M1 in the UK. It provides seamless toll-free connection between the north and south of the country. But during festive and school holidays, the M1 is a giant parking lot.

M1 is one of many highways that need to be expanded. The M25 which is equivalent to Malaysia's MRR2, is already expanding sideways in notorious junctions. All of the expansions are funded with taxpayers' money regardless of which part of the country people are living. In Malaysia, the government has conceded that Sabahans and Sarawakians, who live more than 2000km from the capital and across the South China Sea, can't be made to pay for infrastructure they have no access to. So Peninsular Malaysians have to pay for their own.

M1

The British government has not had this problem like us, but unfortunately, it is now broke owing more than £900 billion (or 63.7% of GDP) to the private sector and whoever bought its gilt. It's decided to cut its debt by cutting spending and taxing more. The axe will inevitably fall on road expansion programmes. In short, there is no more money to spend on roads.

There is a critical need to improve and expand UK's road infrastructure as capacity limitation is crippling productivity and growth of the country's economy. The idea to pay for road expansion programmes was first mooted in 2006 by Sir Rod Eddington who did a transport study for the British government. He reported that tolls will be inevitable in future implementation of road expansion programmes.

I attended a briefing two months ago by Stephen Glaister, Director of RAC Foundation who recently published his findings that tolled roads will be the future of UK's spending on road infrastructure.

Coming from a highway toll concessionaire background and project managing one of the most controversial tolled highways in the Klang Valley, I have encountered and seen enough of public outcries the idea could potentially lead to. First, the public will question the need to pay for existing roads they have never needed to pay before; Sprint Highway's Damansara Link and NPE's Dato Harun's section are case in point . Second, the public will demand their income taxes be lowered to reflect public services they no longer pay for.

What is interesting in Glaister's report is the rearrangement of taxes. His idea of road pricing is not a top up of existing taxes that people already pay with their income. His idea of road pricing will come with a reduction of fuel and road taxes. This means taking taxes associated with road usage out of the equation and making motorists pay as they use. Which is a brilliant idea as long as the net effect will result in lower carbon emissions and getting more people to use public transportation. However, this is not always the case as there are many places not reachable by public transport yet. Studies in Glaister's report have found that rail accounts for only 7% of total passenger miles in the UK. So it will be interesting to know how Glaister's idea of road pricing can solve carbon emissions.

The purpose of road pricing must be clear. It must identify if it is new build or building on existing network for capacity enhancement. If it is new build, I have misgivings about private financing initiatives (PFIs) being keen on building parallel roads to UK's established road network. The reason NSE is successful in Malaysia is due to several factors. The alternatives to NSE are the longer route, more dangerous, flood-prone, under-maintained and badly lit trunk roads that motorists would gladly pay to avoid.

However this is not the case for the UK. UK's existing road network is far more established than developing countries like Malaysia. The M1 for example, is of impeccable quality. Any tolled alternatives must top that before motorists will consider paying for using the new M1. The market for new tolled highways is fairly limited to say the least. This leaves me to think that road pricing can only be possible on capacity enhancement and asset maintenance programmes.

And if the government does intend to go ahead with road pricing, I will be most happy to contribute to ideas on plugging toll leakages and designing road schemes that will only lead to one destination - the toll concessionaires.