Households face extra costs to run a vehicle of $10 to $43 a year, but it is less than the increases truckers face, under a proposed revamp of road funding.
Auckland motorway Photo: 123RF
The Transport Agency is proposing to collect 40 percent more in regulatory revenues, up from $185 million now to $264m annually from late next year.
"The most common fees would go up as costs to provide the services continue to increase," the agency said.
However, there would be a rebalancing because private motorists had been subsidising the commercial sector, the director of Land Transport Kane Patena said.
"Not everyone has been paying their fair share," he said.
"Some people have been paying more than the cost for us to regulate, and other people have been paying less, or nothing at all."
Costs had to fall on people who created risks in land transport, or who benefited from it.
The first overhaul of regulatory charges in almost 20 years proposes driver licensing fees go down - the fee for resits would be dropped entirely - but car registration administration fees would go up between $4 and $12.
The cost to renew a licence would be cut almost in half to $31, but admin fees for road user charges would almost triple when done online to $12.
Road industry costs would rise two percent overall, and the impact on wider industry would be inflation of 0.2 percent, Waka Kotahi estimates.
The slew of changes are open to eight weeks' consultation, then depend on government sign-off.
Inquiries three years ago found the regulatory system was broken - for instance, it failed to properly audit the truck fleet for cracks and unsafe designs - and underfunded.
The annual funding in 2018 of $165m was "the price of failure", Patena said, plus, the system was unbalanced.
"Individuals have been paying more than what they should and we have used some of that revenue to subsidise regulatory activities in other parts of the sector.
"That's why we think it needs to change."
A third of Waka Kotahi's 150 regulatory products for the commercial sector were not even priced, while most of the common existing fees had not been adjusted for inflation for years, the agency said.
The proposals to move fees or charges up or down or introduce them for the first time cover:
- Driver licence and driver testing fees
- Motor vehicle licence and registration fees
- Administration fees for road user charges
- eRUC providers
- Transport Service Licence (TSL) holders
- Motor vehicle certifier activities
- Commercial and council data users
A big increase in checks on imports and certification to ensure trucks are safe needed to be paid for, as did new data services that had not been charged for much until now, NZTA said.
"It means the right people will pay for the right things, and we'll be able to provide better regulation into the future."
Apart from road user revenue, the agency also wants to take $35m a year for regulatory activities from land transport funds that are generated by fuel taxes.
Road regulation was exposed as in a woeful state by government inquiries in 2018-19.
The government injected $95m in loans to turn that around, for instance by hiring more inspectors, but that comes to an end in late 2023 and has to be paid back.
A review late last year said things had improved a lot.
"By contrast with 2019, there are processes in place for the escalation of issues and risks and staff feel they have the mandate to raise risks and receive timely responses," the independent review said.
It also detailed progress that still needed to be made, including to "ensure there is adequate funding".
The government cut the fuel tax take recently to peg back escalating petrol and diesel prices.