Do You Have an Idling Timer?

Do You Have an Idling Timer?

Ganga Prasad Rao
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar

I have been awaiting the UID enumerator to show up at my door if for nothing else but to wail my angst at the system that seems to have targeted, engulfed and victimized the ‘green-class’ in our society. But wait as I might, the enumerator gives the slip daily leaving me fuming from breathing diesel soot and benzene from vehicles passing by our dusty potholed street. Must I choke to death with ‘PAHcancer’ and turn a ‘statistic’ before I find a place in the Gobarnment database of Sheikh-subsidized citizens?

Talking of Sheikh subsidies, the other day, my hired autorickshaw lined up at the gas station behind a SUV. And while we waited, I wondered at the incongruity of the SUV revving up and leaving us in a pall of subsidized diesel soot. Vehicles that gas the immediate neighbourhood with soot or the green orb with ‘excess’CO2 for the same mile on road in fact pay less than those other clean and efficient vehicles. Call it a child’s ‘beat up the bad guy’ urge, the environmentalist’s lava of rage at the profligate, or just plain old yellow slime of the ‘have-nuts’, but why should the rich pay less to pollute more when their poorer brethren pay more despite polluting less? More to the point, what do we do about it knowing vehicles that exploit lower cost fuel will invariably cost more and therefore find favour with the rich and among ‘intensive’ users? Shouldn’t we favour a policy of environmental pricing of fuels that differentiates between ‘rich profligates’ driving gas guzzlers and ‘intensive’ users - the former being wilful exploiters of vehicle pricing and the fuel subsidy policy, the latter rather price-sensitive?

In truth, there is a built-in incentive to choose fuel-efficient vehicles to the extent fuel costs factor in the buyers’ buying and driving decisions. While that incentive is environmentally compatible, it manifests more among the less-affluent and intensive users (the incentive is 'sorta' proportional to the fuel-expenditure share in income). Affluent users stress other vehicular and driving attributes, notably safety, terrain handling, looks and upholstery, interior space, air-conditioning, to name a few, in making their purchase and driving decisions. Those attributes, found in gasoline-fuelled luxury vehicles and in upscale diesel SUVs, are likely to imply or to be associated with lower vehicle fuel economy. However, strangely and perversely, that lack of environmental incentive among the affluent is either ignored (as in the case of gasoline), or, reinforced at the pump with (diesel) fuel subsidies.

The Sheikh-sponsored government and fuel-policies notwithstanding, there must be a way to address this incongruity. Where there is a will there is a way, and where there is vile injustice, there is a wave, if not a ‘brine wave’! Could we tackle the issue of environmental mis-pricing of fuels with a VID? A Vehicle Identification Database Administration that enumerated every vehicle on the road and issued a vehicle-specific VID card. A VID card that doubles exclusively as a fuel credit/debit card and provides instantaneous access to all vehicle and owner/driver details – technical, traffic-related and socio-economic – at the gas station. Flash the VID-cum-debit card and, lo and behold, your card is debited for gas/diesel at a price appropriate for your vehicle and user characteristics.(Yes, it’d register multiple drivers for a vehicle)

With the means to identify the vehicle and user characteristics of every vehicle owner/driver no matter where or when, the challenge turns to ‘vehicle/driver-attuned’ environmental pricing of fuels. What if the price of fuel at the pump reflected not merely the 25% mark-up on the government-endorsed collusive ‘average cost’ of the month (You mean it is not transmitted every week by the Sheikhs thru CIA to Deora?!), but also the fuel economy realized with the current tank of fuel as well? Wouldn’t it be appropriate to discount fuel-efficient vehicles, and for good measure, good driving practices as well at the pump? Such differential pricing would induce environmentally appropriate, even safe driver behaviour that internalized both environmental and traffic-related externalities.

Consider an affluent diesel SUV owner with several points on his DL, a Construction contractor-safe driver owning a diesel pickup(both with approx. the same engine make and size) and a commercial tractor-trailer at a gas station. Under the extant pricing scheme all three fill their tanks with diesel and pay the same subsidized price (albeit the tractor trailer might qualify for bulk purchase/contract prices). With a VID card however, the SUV owner would be identified as an affluent and the diesel priced at a premium to him despite nominally being in the same engine size class as the pickup truck owner. If that were all there was to it, I wouldn’t be writing this blog, but the card would provide mileage readings that help determine actual on road fuel efficiency at the re-fueling point. If the pricing algorithm were calibrated to a‘fuel economy benchmark’ (preferably independent of engine size), then, deviations from that benchmark would factor in to the price – higher fuel-economy rewarded with lower price. The contractor, ever so careful with his vehicle maintenance, scores at the pump with lower diesel prices whereas the SUV owner, burdened with the dual curse of a large engine and low fuel economy, pays a hefty premium for every litre of fuel – a premium conceivably large enough to pay for the GHG externality caused by his vehicle. Factor in the DL points, (in these days of GIS-tracking),and the VID is the horse-blinded road-safety automaton the safety/insurance regulators and traffic cops are desperate for!

The fuel-pricing formula for trucks and tractor-trailers could take account of the number of axles or the load per axle in computing fuel prices. Trucks that exceed or comply with axle-loading norms would find favour at diesel stops. Even vehicle vintage could be accommodated in the formula, empowering the policy maker to offer selective discounts for the purchase and/or operation new generation vehicles, thus providing an additional incentive to replace aging, polluting vehicles.

This system of vehicle-specific fuel price-differential raises many questions: What would the impacts be? What would be the monetary incidence of the policy be? What are the efficiency issues at stake? The VID regime is likely to bring about an immediate switch in fuel choice especially in the extremes of the fuel-economy spectrum. Large, fuel-guzzling vehicle owners, in particular the intensive users, might switchover to lower quality fuel; small fuel-efficient car owners might find themselves affording premium fuel. The magnitude of the fuel quality differential will determine the magnitude of the quality switch. Beyond the fuel-quality switch, regulators may anticipate changes in driving/commuting patterns, changes in the intensity of use of vehicles of different sizes, occupancy re-adjustments in multi-vehicle families, and, a switch among car buyers to smaller and/or fuel-efficient cars, if in the medium to long run. Vehicles that boast of higher occupancy are at some disadvantage under this pricing regime, but that wrong likely petersout when evaluated against the alternative of those occupants driving separately. It’d also be necessary to rollout the program across vehicles fuelled by gasoline and diesel to avoid ‘inter-fuel vehicle competition’.

As for the critical question: Who will bell the cat?… I mean, get the pricing algorithm right?….Damn it, Isn’t the PNGRB overstaffed? Give ‘em CEOWs some fodder to chew, if not some moolah to lug home, heh? Perhaps revenue neutrality would be a good starting point for the VID regime. A pricing algorithm that preserves total revenue from fuel sales could accommodate premiums and discounts that incentivize the environmentally-preferred outcomes. The gains and losses could then be apportioned across the OMCs by market share. Over time, the OMCs would find their niche and the revenue neutrality could be discarded in favour of more complex, free market pricing.

Revenues from charging trucks with excess axle loading would accrue to NHAI/HD, and those from charging DL points to Police/Traffic Safety Organizations. The VID offers a superb collection of vehicle use and fuel consumption/choice data. Such data enhances the ability of the regulator to better anticipate impacts and design fuel/auto/traffic policies that achieve efficiency, equity and environmental goals in the road transport sector.

Now, if only the VID could record the number of start-stops and idling minutes while parked, charge it at the pump and recycle the revenues back as asthma inhaler discounts. Why! I might yet avoid a COPD death this life. Ain’t that good news for those ‘RTI terrorists’ planning a ‘vegetable harvest’ of me?
…and bad news for those others bent upon raising the sea level until the salty spray splashes on the yacht parked by their rural farmhouse miles inland from shore!