Oral hearings start today on a toll system for the M50 that Conor Faughnanreckons will be a monster - and an unreliable one at that
Today the National Roads Authority is holding an oral hearing into the proposed new barrier-free toll scheme on the M50 motorway. Those numbered among the 89,000 drivers who use the M50 each day might be forgiven for thinking this is good news, but it is not.
What the NRA and the Government are planning is a monster in the making. It will be an enormous ongoing waste of money. It will cost a fortune to set up and run, and it is so prone to error and to complications that it is frightening.
What is proposed is essentially an enormously expensive and complex mechanism for collecting a tax from motorists. Their own figures envisage a set-up cost of €13 million and an operating cost of €25 million annually, based on 2008 prices. This would mean that of the €80 million collected in revenue, more than 30 per cent would disappear in costs. This is scandalously wasteful.
The scheme envisages tolls being charged via electronic toll tags, and it is hoped that charging people extra if they do not have a tag will encourage them to install one. For those without tags, an automated system will read registration numbers and cross reference them with a database of people who have paid in advance. Defaulters will be charged extra for paying afterwards, and those who do not pay at all will have to be pursued, fined or ultimately taken to the courts.
The money involved will go on overhead gantries, electronic detection devices, cameras, video imaging technology, ANPR software, systems integration, cabling, private-sector consultants and experts to make the whole thing work and a multitude of other requirements that would make your head spin. All to collect tolls.
It would be far simpler and easier to add 2 cent per litre to fuel excise duty as an infrastructure levy. There is no more genuine "usage tax". This would raise more than €90 million per annum without any complications, and would do so without the need for the enormous, complex and error-prone architecture the NRA is planning.
I believe the NRA estimates are optimistic. Cost overruns on huge new electronic systems are hardly a surprise these days. As yet we know nothing about how the system proposes to deal with people who don't pay nor how it proposes to deal with the growing number of out-of-State registration numbers that the system will not be able to read.
The arguments against charging via fuel are twofold. Firstly, the charge falls on other road users outside of Dublin. But the M50 is not the only motorway blighted by tolls. The national development plan will see new roads constructed across the country. Toll schemes already exist in Fermoy, Drogheda and Enfield and more are planned. If the M50 is allowed to give birth to this electronic monster then there is every chance it will spread to roads countrywide. It is in everybody's interest that funding infrastructure is not done wastefully, in Dublin or elsewhere. Co Clare could be covered with new buses for the sort of money this will cost. The laudable rural bus scheme proposed by Éamon Ó Cuív could genuinely provide a service. It would buy 83 new city buses a year.
In 10 years the bill rises to €250 million. That would pay for the Western Rail Corridor and the Cork to Midleton line combined with money left over.
It is argued that the new system could in time be extended to provide a price-based deterrent or control mechanism for the road. This is not what the NRA says the toll is for; it is supposed to wash its own face, with enough money left over to fund the cost of the M50 upgrade and the buyout of NTR.
The very best way to manage traffic on the M50 is to provide alternatives. Spending motorists' money, raised via fuel, on the metro systems, the Navan rail line and on bus services is genuinely useful to us all. Spending it on paying for the cost of toll collection is not.
The State has already entered into a contract with the private sector to design and operate the toll scheme, which the cynic would argue makes today's oral hearing a redundant exercise. But the Automobile Association still does not believe it is too late. As Napoleon once said, you should never reinforce defeat.
Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey should intervene now and end this mess before it gets out of hand. Remove the M50 toll entirely and replace it with a far more efficient infrastructure levy on fuel.
Conor Faughnan is public affairs manager of the Automobile Association, Ireland