By the time this is published, the coalition government will have passed its first 100-day period. Yes, we have seen some changes as promised, but these were the easy part. Few, if any, governments are judged by what they achieve in their early days; it’s what they do and how they do it between now and the next election that they will be judged on. If they fail to deliver, they will be back in opposition. I have read that sometimes a country needs a one-term government to correct wild swings to the left or right; this government could be just that if it is not careful.

In its briefing to the Minister of Transport, NZTA warned of an increasing shortfall in income to meet its expected requirements, including road building and maintenance. The briefing expects an income of $5 billion to $6 billion, whereas the forecast spend is closer to $12 billion. This was not unexpected and will require some tough decisions to even get close to the projected income required. Only time will tell if NZTA is up to this. However, we can expect to see increases in the cost of most services, such as RUC and annual licensing. Perhaps they need to look at some of the things they have ‘invested’ in in recent years and ask themselves if they are giving the taxpayer value for money by continuing down this track.

Take, for example, the dropping of resit fees for practical licence tests for those who fail their first attempt. Somebody pays for this; if it is not the person doing the resit test, then it must be us. Whether this programme has achieved what was intended – removal of the barrier of not having a driver licence to get into employment – is not clear, but from the lack of publicity around this, one could guess that it is not achieving.

Then, of course, there is the bottomless pit for building cycleways – for example, the reported $69 million to build 3km alongside SH2 in Wellington, Melling to Petone. I recently travelled this stretch of highway midweek in both directions. Going south towards Petone at about 11am, nobody was on the cycleway for its entire length, but I saw one cyclist on their bike on the highway. Coming in the other direction at about 6pm, the only person I saw using it was somebody on an e-scooter. I am still looking for the person who can quantify its value in real economic terms and convince me this is fair value for money. We should, however, acknowledge the lobbying ability of those that set the government down this track; they succeeded and now look to consolidate their influence. There are lessons to be learnt in this by our industry associations as to how successful lobbying should be conducted.

Recently, the government has announced initiatives as to how we, the consumer, will pay for roads. These include moving away from an excise tax on fuel to a RUC-based system. Personally, I am not sure if this is the way to go as having to pay fuel tax should surely lead to more efficient use of the fuel, which in turn, will result in less emissions, something I thought we were trying to achieve. However, if a RUC-based system is adopted, such a system must be equitable across all road users. Hopefully, somebody in the bureaucracy who advises the minister is looking at a pay-as-you-go system using technology already in widespread use. Such a system could include electronic on-board scales that would measure the weight of the load at the time and charge the appropriate RUC rate. This would not be hard to do if there were a willingness to make meaningful change.

A couple of things caught my eye in the 9 February edition of Transporting New Zealand’s Dispatch. First, the title “Let’s celebrate trucks pounding our roads”. Given the rhetoric from the anti-truck lobby that there are far too many trucks on the road, and it is trucks that are making our roads unsafe, I am not sure if “pounding” was the correct word to use. Second, there was the suggestion that our trucks should be bigger and heavier for the many benefits these could bring, such as reduced emissions, reduction congestion and safety risk, and bigger trucks means fewer trucks. If I recall correctly, this was the claim made to introduce lower-bound HPMV 50MAX units in 2012. There is no doubt that 50MAX has been a winner for many, but has it resulted in less emissions, reduced congestion and safety risk and fewer trucks? I have my doubts.

The government and the industry are on notice – both need more lateral and creative thinking to solve the many issues we encounter daily; simply rehashing what we have will not do it.