Brian Rudman: Tax collectors coming to a toll booth near you

I guess we should have seen it coming from a mile off. First came the good news. Transit New Zealand, with a little help from a third-term-seeking Government, plans to accelerate its road-building activities round Auckland.

Then came the "fooled you" whammy from Prime Minister Helen Clark. "The precise timetable of this work will depend on the willingness of Aucklanders to accept some tolling."

The new work she was referring to was the $1.2 billion project to bury State Highway 20 under her Mt Albert electorate, and a $184 million second Mangere Bridge.

As I said, we should have seen it coming. It was inevitable that the tolling bug that has been exciting road-builders round the world would eventually reach these shores. And what a head of steam it's got already. This year the Government gave the nod for tolling Alpurt B2, the Orewa to Puhoi motorway. Now it's softening us up for other sites in Auckland.

Cabinet papers released a month ago reveal why the road-builders are so keen for tolling to spread. The officials confess that a standalone electronic tolling system for Alpurt B2 would need continuing subsidies to cover operating costs. In fact, $1.35 of the $1.80 toll would be gobbled up in administration.

Even if the electronic tolling system was to be shared with another toll road, it would need operational subsidies from Transit for up to 16 years after Alpurt B2 was opened.

In March, when the papers went to the Cabinet, Transit was seeking $53.5 million to set up a Toll Systems Project aimed at "developing the toll management system for state highways and other toll roads".

The Cabinet was told "Transit have recommenced their 'coarse screening' process to look for potential toll roads but it is unclear at this stage whether there will be other toll roads completed within 10 years".

Regular users would be expected to install an electronic transponder in their car that would be read by overhead monitors. Casual users would have their number-plates scanned and be billed. If you didn't pay within 72 hours, the toll doubled - and an additional $5 fine would be added.

All of which makes you wonder, what's wrong with the existing method of "tolling" - the petrol tax? The cynic in me says the politicians know we're programmed to scream every time taxes go up, but think we could be tricked if they called it something else. Something like tolls.

But a tax by any other name is still a tax, however fancy the wrapping. And the toll-tax being proposed seems a very inefficient and cost-intensive way of raising more funds for road-building. The cost, for example, of collecting the tolls until the Alpurt B2 loan is paid off will total $71.5 million. That's separate, if I've followed the arithmetic correctly, from the $53.5 million it will cost to set up Transit's planned network-wide tolling system.

Compared with these collection costs, surely siphoning the extra impost via the petrol pump, as has been done from time immemorial, would be both simpler and cheaper. Alternatively, we could borrow to cover the shortfall, and leave it to those who will eventually enjoy the benefits, to pay their share.

Either of the above would be more equitable than tolling. The planned tolls are solely for revenue-gathering purposes. So why should drivers on one part of Auckland's integrated network be forced to pay more than those using another part of it? After all, we get told often enough that the motorway network is one organic system, and that a stoppage in one place causes chaos all over.

Also, there's general acceptance that completing the western bypass from Manukau City through Mt Roskill to the north will greatly relieve pressure on the existing highway through the city and across the Harbour Bridge. How ironic it would be if tolling at two stages of the western link persuaded people to continue using the old route.

By then, of course, Transit might have become so seduced by tolling that there was no escape. Newmarket Viaduct, the Harbour Bridge, Victoria Park tunnel, wherever you drove, there was the tollman. You have been warned.