Road pricing and road provision in Australia: Where are we and how did we get here?

In the Beginning.
Road pricing is not a new concept—toll roads have existed in Australia since Governor Macquarie established one from Sydney to Parramatta in 1811—and distance-based charging schemes have been trialled and implemented with varying success overseas.
But how would full market reform of roads look in a federation like Australia? In its responses to the 2016 Australian Infrastructure Plan and the 2015 Competition Policy Review, the Australian Government explicitly supported investigating cost-reflective road pricing as a long-term reform option, and has committed to establishing a study chaired by an eminent Australian to look into the potential impacts of road pricing reform on road users. The challenges we face in this space are manifold and complex, and we still have a long road ahead of us. However, with advocacy for reform coming from interest groups as diverse as governments, private transport companies, peak industry bodies, policy think tanks and state motoring clubs, there is now more support than ever before for changing the way we provide for and fund our roads. consumer charging.1 Arguably, command-driven public provision and the arbitrary governmental regulation of transport infrastructure came at a cost to the overall productivity and efficiency of each type of infrastructure and the interconnectivity between them. And we are still living with the legacy of this pattern of state activism in the funding and provision of transport infrastructure.