Paul Fantham, the New Zealand Transport Agency’s senior manager, commercial licencing and revenue, spoke about how the agency engaging with the industry to deliver better, safer roads. This included simplifying the process of working with the NZTA and evening the playing field by dealing with operators who had created a commercial advantage for themselves by ‘not paying their fair share’.
Fantham said the NZTA was trying to push the regulator on these issues. “To get this done, we’re going to have to make some changes to the way we regulate road-user charges. The first thing on my to-do list is to create an RUC compliance strategy that will take us on a journey to where we want to be in a few years. Don’t expect that change to happen overnight. There is a lot to do that we’ll work on over the next few years, but we need that strategy to form the way that we do it.”
So what can the industry expect from the NZTA? First, “expect us to come to talk to you”, said Fantham.
“We don’t have all the answers, and we certainly need your help in developing this strategy, so you can expect to see our people engaging with you on various things over the next short while. We want to hear what you have to say.”
Fantham said the agency had already begun conducting surveys with operators. “We’re looking at what drives compliant behaviour and what is it that drives non-compliant behaviour.”
He said conversations with the Ministry of Transport had also started. “Some of the feedback we have from industry says that rules are complicated, that often compliance can come down to guesswork. So we’re working with the ministry to simplify the rules and make that side of it a little bit easier to understand and be compliant.”
Among the immediate changes the industry could expect to see, said Fantham, was increased frontline activity. “Ordinarily, we do a small number of fleet assessments across the country each year. We’re going to increase the number of those,” he noted.
Naturally, the agency was investigating how to drive better compliance behaviour, he said.
“It’s really good to be getting feedback from drivers, from the small number that we’ve done, around what’s working and what isn’t. We want to hear that because it feeds into our strategy.”
