The organisation of roads and road transport around the world follows many similar trends, whilst at the same time displaying marked and seemingly random differences. The common factors are important to pursue.
For instance, road planning is, with a few exceptions, a government task. Even when a non-government group might propose the construction of a road — typically a toll road — the road itself would be assessed as fitting within the overall transport and development system planned by government for the relevant region. A lesson which appears to have been almost universally learnt (Section 3.4.3) is that the control of such road issues must lie with government groups having a wider power base than those immediately affected, e.g. local government does not have the deciding role in arterial road issues which transcend local boundaries.
At another level, planning is recognised as an issue wider than roads and so interactions and decision roles commonly lie, at least in part, with planning, transport, developmental, economic, and environmental authorities. In many countries the Road Authority is part of a larger transport Authority, in order to ensure that roads are seen as part of a multimodal transport operation. The principle often works more in a titular than an effective sense.
The management, operation, and maintenance of roads are, with a few notable exceptions, government tasks, at least at the administrative level. The agencies responsible for these tasks, and for the planning role discussed above, are therefore responsible to elected officials and controlled by government ministries or departments. The major exceptions to government management and operations are the extensive systems of independent toll roads in operation in France, Italy, and Japan. In the Republic of South Africa a separate national agency — South African National Road
The Management of Roads 41
Agency — was established to provide overall management of that country’s toll roads. Another common exception is found in the access roads to specific facilities such as mines and ports. Even these are usually under overall central government control, to ensure consistency and compatibility of any joint operations. For example, insurance risks are minimised if common operating procedures are followed.
It is common for the road system to fall into three categories (Section 2.1): (a) national and strategic roads (or highways in the terms of Table 2.1);
(b) inter-urban and urban arterial roads;
(c) local sub-arterials, distributors, streets and farm roads.
A common pattern is for the major Road Authority (or Authorities in a regional or federal context) to be responsible for managing roads in categories (a) & (b) in fairly total manner, possibly receiving external funding and direction for category (a) roads; and, in the opposite way, to pass on some responsibility and financial assistance for roads in category (c) to local government bodies. This last issue is discussed in Chapter 7.
In most federal systems of government — such as Australia, Canada and the United States of America — the national government takes only a broad, policy-oriented interest in roads in category (a) and, although they may be national roads, the routine and operational decisions occur at a State level. The process is coloured by the fact that in most cases the major taxing and fund-raising powers lie with the national government.
Road Authority administrations follow a common overall pattern which is to a large extent reflected in the structure of this book (Figure 1.1). This pattern is illustrated in Figure 4.1. There have been occasional examples where police have been given traffic management powers, and/or where Road Authorities have been given police powers. These have rarely been successful. The main successful exception has been in giving the Road Authority the power to police truck operations (Chapter 27).
The internal structure within an Authority is usually modelled along the lines of box I in Figure 4.1, although not all the facets need necessarily be present. For example, the extent to which planning and financing roads and the management of traffic, vehicles, and drivers is part of the role of the Road Authority varies from region to region.
Three key support activities are:
* data management/computing/information supply/library,
* quality management/performance measurement/standards setting, and * setting forward vision and policies.
In making this distinction, it is assumed that all the other groupings, e.g. surveyors and accountants, are covered within the key parts of box I. The execution of the individual tasks in box I may be done either in-house or contracted out to external groups. For example, there are many consulting engineers who undertake road and/or bridge design. There is wide variation in the degree to which tasks are contracted outside the Road Authority and this often reflects political rather than technical attitudes.
Within a Road Authority there is considerable divergence of practice with respect to regional authorities (sometimes called Divisions, Regions or Districts) and how much independence they are given. Administrations appear to go through cyclic patterns of favouring regionalisation or centralisation of administration, although the trend towards information networks would seem to tilt the balance towards centralised recording and decentralised decision-making. Some authorities further subdivide their regions into sub- regions (or residencies).
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political leadership (see Table 4.1) treasury planning authority transport authority Road Authority police Tasks resting predominantly with the Road Authority, but with input from the
other four authorities:
* planning, prioritising, designing, financing, building, operating, and maintaining roads,
* regulating traffic, vehicles and drivers,
* ensuring that the road system meets non-transport objectives for community welfare, the environment and sustainability,
* monitoring and reporting on the operation of the road system.
⇓ ⇓ ⇓
regional centre regional centre regional centre
Figure 4.1 Road Authority contextual organisation.
The pattern of road administration in different countries can be grouped as shown in Table 4.1. To some extent grouping represents the overall political pattern in the country. Another dimension to the pattern occurs when the Road Authority is deliberately separated from Government. Such a ‘separated’ Authority might only manage part of the entire road network in an area. This separation might include giving the Authority its own fund-raising powers via hypothecation of road-related revenue (e.g. fuel taxes) either directly or via:
• a dedicated road fund, • loans,
• tolls and other charges for road use,
• shadow tolls (the Government pays the operator on the basis of the number of vehicles using the road),
• rewards for service availability and/or quality, and/or • road pricing.
Such charging and revenue-raising methods for roads are discussed further in Sections 29.3&4.
There are a number of ways in which the Authority can be structured, other than as a conventional government department. The possible models depend on the way in which the Authority is linked to the Government by its:
• sources of finance,
• political exposure and involvement, • managerial control,
• adherence to Government policy, • degree of underwriting of risk, and • independence as a decision-maker.
The Management of Roads 43
Table 4.1 Pattern of road administration in various countries.
Pattern Countries 1. Some national government funding and standard-
setting;
2. State, provincial, or county Road Authorities; 3. Local government manages streets.
Australia, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, U.S.
1. No national government role; 2. State or provincial Road Authorities; 3. Local government manages streets.
Belgium, Canada, Switzerland
1. National Road Authority;
2. County, region, and/or local government manages streets and some highways.
Finland, France, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, U.K., New Zealand
2. County and/or local government manages streets and some highways.
Ireland
For instance, whilst formally and legally separated from Government, the Authority might still be totally owned by the State. Independence would then depend in part on the independence of the Authority’s directors. It might also borrow money independently of Government, although in this case lenders would be particularly interested in the extent to which the Government guarantees loan repayments. Two key risks are:
1. the accuracy of any predictions of future traffic flows (Section 31.3), and
2. the funds invested are ‘sunk’ in the construction of the project, and cannot later be withdrawn or re-allocated.
Risk allocation is thus a critical component of all links between Government and the private sector.
Another variable in the separated Authority model is the degree to which ownership of the road asset, particularly the land involved in the right-of-way (Section 6.3), is handed over to the Authority. For example, what does the Authority own and for how long? In the completely privatised model, the Authority would own and operate all parts and components of a road network.
When the separated Authority has some level of private ownership, it is rare for Governments to grant the Authority full ownership of the road assets. For example, a toll road company may be required to give the entire road asset to the Government after a time (the concession period). This period is typically many decades and is set to at least allow investors to gain sufficient income from their investment.