A report issued last week by a western think- tank says heavy road users should pay more to use rural roads.
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy said the energy, mining and forestry industries, for example, should pay for the damage they cause.
“The user-pays principle should be extended to certain sectors and industries that create heavy-traffic road damage and that impose exceptional infrastructure maintenance costs,” said the report called Getting a Better Bang for the Pothole Buck.
David Seymour, the centre’s Saskatchewan director and co-author of the report, said taxpayers are on the hook for repair costs on road damage they didn’t necessarily cause.
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The study says roads that carry mainly private motor vehicles could be considered a public good, while those that carry heavy industrial traffic are best viewed as a private good. User fees are a preferred funding mechanism because there is a direct cost-benefit relationship.
Some municipalities in other countries have employed the user-pay system.
In New Zealand, for example, one rural council undertook an investigation of road damage and how to pay for it. A targeted tax was imposed on heavy users such as milk tankers and logging trucks.
Seymour said a study would have to be done in Canada to determine how best to proceed, but there are options. These include wheel hub odometers, satellite tracking systems and adjusted property tax ratings depending on use.
In Saskatchewan, the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities said the user-pay concept would have a definite impact on the energy sector.
David Marit said the heavy oil industry clearly puts a lot of pressure on roads but it also contributes a lot to the economy.
“How do you ask them to pay an astronomical fee when they’re just developing?” he said of the industry that is expanding into non-traditional areas.
Some rural municipalities have road maintenance and haul agreements in place with industries but they generally don’t come close to the cost of repairing or replacing infrastructure.
In the provincial budget earlier this spring, the Saskatchewan government recognized the problem by allocating more money for roads in resource development areas.
“It’s all getting used up,” Marit said.
“It was oversubscribed.”
He said some municipalities are generating as much as 100 million in provincial general revenue because they are resource-rich and get little back.
“Somewhere along the way general revenues from the province have to come in,” he said.
Seymour said the system should be fairer and more balanced considering how much money RMs spend on roads and how small their tax bases are.
People continually complain about the state of rural roads, he added, which led the centre to look at what could be done.
“As a think-tank we don’t do lobbying,” Seymour said. “Our job is to introduce ideas to the debate.”
