In human history, automobile bring a great convenience to everyone daily life.  With the great benefit that modern society provided, we now need to rethink about our driving behavior and fully utilize our traffic system.  Traffic Congestion is and always is a big headache that every modern society developer.  No matter it is in China, US, UK or Canada.

A revolutionary plan has been carried out in EU, both Netherland and Germany are planning to apply the Meter Plan.  The originally idea of using GPS technology to measure automobile moving distance comes from Netherland.  Unfortunately, as 2010 new election in Netherland, the GPS meter plan was put on the shelf. New elected Netherland leaders use the term “tax burden of people” to describe this revolutionary technology.  But actually, using GPS meter plan has several advantages.  The first one is cutting the necessary cost for taxpayer.

I know, this sounds ridiculous.  How come the meter plan will cut the cost of driver?

In fact, GPS meter plan will decrease the average cost of driving.  As GPS meter system directly measure distance of driving and bill the car owner, this provides a more justified basis to collect the toll.  In another words, not everyone have to pay the same toll.  Moreover, GPS meter system will be a prefect substitute of registration fee or any other taxes for controlling the traffic.  In the country of China, most of provinces still keep the administration team to collect the bill.  After apply this new opportunities will substantially decrease cost of maintaining road.

In Germany, the name of this project is “LKW-MAUT Electronic Toll Collection System”.

Two main services to collected the toll:

“ On Board Units (OBU) or Manual payment terminals, OBS work via GPS and the       on-board odometer as backup to calculate how far the Truck have travelled by reference the digital map and GSM to authorize the payment through internet or wireless link.

Manual payment is for those trucks without OBU, there will be over 3,500 toll payment terminals at motorway service stations or rest areas where driver can enter the details of their journey.” [1]

Here is the diagram illustration about how this system works:

Of course, there is an administration team to enforce this new toll system. 300 cars and 540 officers formed the Federal Office of Freight.  Those cars were equipped with high resolutions camera, Dedicated Short Range Communication system and IR detection system.   In one sentence, those administration teams will enforce the new toll system, collected the evidence and stop the violation behavior.

The Coverage of Toll System:

Germany new toll system only covers the trucks.  There are some hidden issues to explain why these systems only cover trucks.

1. Privacy: One of the biggest drawbacks of this system is GPS will allocate your position whenever you go. Privacy issue is a big headache for the program developers.  This drawback directly influences the public support for this toll system.  However, from my perspective, this concern is unnecessary as modern technology could easily track people’s location by checking cellphone, Internet connecting point.

1. Capacity: Now the performance of this new system is well.  LKW-MAUT system can monitor about 1.3~1.5 million trucks.  Now, the registered driver is approaching to 1 million.  However, the total number of cars in Germany is about 56 million. [2]  It will be too ambitious to apply this system to all type of cars.  The whole system will face a lot of challenges both form public and current technology.

The Environmental and Distribution impact of LKW-MAUT

First thing I need to emphasis is LKW-MAUT was not only tax on distance truck driver moving but also tax on the carbon emissions.[3]   From my perspective, this is a brilliant idea in design phrase.  As it serve for the purpose of changing driving behavior and cut for the carbon emission.  This tax will also encourage people to adopt oil-efficient technology.  The reason is quiet simply, as the marginal cost of emitting growing higher, people have the incentive to adopt greener technology in order to maintain profitability.

Moreover, I do believe this a revolutionary technology. As drivers were taxed by the distance they drive and their carbon emission, drivers who drive less do not need to pay the same amount of toll or registration fee.  This is a better platform compared to current one, as people are who drive for a longer time and longer distance share more responsible of traffic congestion.

The distribution effect of LKW-MAUT is obvious, logistic company have to pay more under new system.  Citizens or taxpayers are the beneficiaries as they could pay fewer tolls.  Poor people are not touched by this new system yet.  But if the coverage of this system were expended, people who cannot afford the cost will drive less.  Poor people will live near to urban area, public transportation system will expended as more people are using this travel system.

The performance and Effectiveness of LKW-MAUT:

From my perspective, the performance of LKW-MAUT is very well.

There are two indicators:

1. Constantly updating the monitoring system

Germany administration teams are trying their best to close the loops of this system.  Companies’ undated new digital maps increase the accuracy of satellite system.  “In 2007 Toll Collect extended the scheme onto major trunk roads in Germany to prevent what was seen as toll avoidance by some truck drivers.”—- (Roadtraffic-technology.com)

1. Number of registries driver:

The Number of driver is increasing. Now is approaching to 1 millions. This indicates new toll system is become popular in Germany.

The effectiveness of LKW-MAUT

LKW-MAUT effectiveness is mainly dependent on enforcement team.  As the design of this system is the best option for us, truck drivers are taxed by the distance and carbon emission.  The enforcement team is the key to make sure this system is operated as its designers’ idea.

In Conclusion, I do believe LKW-MAUT is a very good system to solve the traffic congestion.  As GPS tolling system still in its early age, there are still many obstacles in its implementation.  Privacy concern for the public is one the key problems need to be solved or compromised in the future.

EU landfill Tax: (France)

Many EU states have introduced landfill taxes.  The highest rates are found in the Netherlands, (86 euros per tonne for low density waste and 14 euros per tonne for non-combustible high density waste), Flanders (62) and Denmark, (more than 50 euros per tonne), Austria and Sweden (40 euros per tonne), Wallonia, UK and Finland (more than 20 euros per tonne).  Ireland, France, Czech Republic, Italy and recently Cataluna have introduced landfill taxes of 7 to 15 euros per tonne (CEWEP, 2004).

Aim:

A major reason for assessing the success of landfill taxes across EU countries is a countries ability to comply with the 1999 EU Landfill Directive (99/31/EC).

It has set targets for existing sites to:

l   Reduce biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill by 75%, 50% and 35% of that produced in 1995 by 2010, 2013 and 2020 respectively.

l   Ban landfill of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes together from July 2004

l   Ban liquid waste, and certain hazardous wastes by 2001

l   Ban landfill of whole tyres by 2003 and shredded tyres by 2006.

France Aim:

The direct aim of the tax was to have a significant incentive effect through the “price signal” passed over to landfill users. It was implemented to streamline French waste management through increasing waste recovery, and providing for full cost recovery of waste management. It is one of the policy instruments of the national strategy to restrict disposal to landfill to final waste only that cannot be recovered by any other treatment by 2002. An indirect aim is to finance the Modernisation Fund for Waste Management (MFWM), created in 1993 and run by ADEME.

Tax Rate Detail:

Revenue:

Basically the revenue will be collected from every householder.

All persons or legal entities operating a household and assimilated waste landfill site – whether they have been granted authorization or not – are liable to pay the tax.

But is it revenue neutral?

France Landfill tax is not revenue neutral.

The landfill tax payments received by ADEME were up to 1999 fed into the MFWM, instituted by a decree of March 1993 (number 93-744) and administered by ADEME. —Economic Instruments.com

Coverage is very clear but far away from perfect:

One of the issues about France Landfill tax is definition about “waste”.  Fortunately, France waste definition has been improved after authorities acknowledging the “grey area” in waste, and the lack of data in this respect.

The type of the waste is classified into four main types:

l   Household Waste (HW)

l   Other Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) waste

l   Mixed Industrial Waste (MIW) inert and harmless industrial waste e.g. paper, board, metals, wood and plastics from industry, administrations, retail, services which do not require any special treatment (disposed on Class II & III landfill sites). Other type of waste (not municipal)

l   Other type of waste (not municipal), mixed industrial waste (MIWS) collected separately amounts

Within 150 million tons of wasted been taxed, MIWS account for 100 Million tons. However, the disposal pattern is not well known as these do not follow the municipal Waste Path. (and so are not in the control of local authorities).  It is estimated that 90% of MIWA is disposed in owner-operated landfill sites. Only 8% of total MIW is disposed of in public landfill sites.

But how to deal with the landfill waste, which is harmful to environmental, is unknown. Moreover, MIWS was not control by the municipal.

l   Appropriateness of land fills tax (France)

Because there is lack of data, we are can observe the appropriateness of land fills tax from the performance of this tax.

ADEME estimated that 59% of total household, municipal and mixed industrial was still being landfilled in 1997 against 61% in 1989 and 63% in 1993 (Ecotec, 2001). Although municipalities typically have fixed-term contracts with landfill operators, some have switched to incineration and sorting / recycling since 1997. In 2005, new targets were set by the French Government on the amount of household waste going to landfills or incinerators. The aim is to reduce from 290kg per head in 2005, to 250kg by 2010 and to 200kg by 2015 (ENDS, 2005). The new landfill campaign intended to feature increased information available to the public as well as the fiscal measures. The tariff for electricity produced from waste-derived biogas is to be increased by 50%. The national tax on polluting activities (TGAP) is to be doubled for waste dumped in uncontrolled landfill sites (ENDS, 2005). It is hoped that this increase in TGAP will speed up the closing of all uncontrolled sites at least within the target of 18 months. French local authorities will be given powers to levy their own taxes on waste sent to dumps and incinerators. A national plan for the development of composting is hoped to be in place by mid 2006 (ENDS, 2005).

Even though the French Landfill tax is relatively low and landfilling is often still the cheapest option, the mixture of the landfill tax with regulations (including a ban on the landfilling of untreated waste in 2002) has meant that the amount of waste going to landfill did not increase and the patterns that existed in the 1990s continued into the early 2000s (Bartelings et al., 2005). Over the years 1993 to 1997, the share of landfilling in waste disposal in France decreased from 64% to 59%. Since 1997, some municipalities have switched to incineration and sorting/recycling, even though they probably have fixed term contracts with landfill operators (Bartelings et al., 2005).

References

ADEME, 1998, Taxe parafiscale sur la pollution atmosphérique – Rapport d’activité 1997.

Bartelings, H., Beukering, P. van, Kuik, O., Linderhof, V., & Oosterhuis, F., 2005. Effectiveness of landfill taxation. IVM report R-05/05, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Ecotec, 2001. Study on Environmental Taxes and Charges in the EU. http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/enveco/taxation/environmental_taxes.htm

ENDS, 2004, Environmental Daily 13/2/2004.

ENDS, 2005, Environmental Daily Issue No. 1946, September 2005.