About RUC Hub
New Zealand's practical home for Road User Charges news, explainers, data, market intelligence and tools.
Road User Charges are a national system, but the information around them has never lived in one tidy place. Rules sit across legislation and agency guidance. Policy changes move through Parliament and consultation. Market activity is spread across provider websites, public records and technical material.
That makes a system affecting more than a million vehicles much harder to follow than it needs to be. RUC Hub exists to fix that.
RUC Hub brings together news, explainers, statistics, policy timelines, source documents, market intelligence and practical vehicle tools. It is built for drivers first, while still being useful to journalists, researchers, policymakers and people working in transport.
The aim is not to replace official sources. It is to make them easier to find, connect and understand. We cite public material, separate confirmed settings from proposals, and update the platform as the system changes.
At its core, RUC Hub is public-facing infrastructure for understanding RUC: useful enough for a quick answer, structured enough for serious research, and transparent about who built it.
RUC Hub is owned and operated by RUC on Rails Limited, a New Zealand technology company founded in Dunedin by Adam Johnston and Briyarne Pascoe.
RUC on Rails also operates commercial RUC products. That relationship gives the team direct technical and market experience, but it also makes transparency important. Group-owned products are identified as such, sources remain visible, and factual coverage should stand on evidence rather than ownership. RUC Hub is not operated by NZTA, the Ministry of Transport or any other Crown entity.
The Team Behind RUC Hub
RUC Hub was founded in Dunedin and is built and operated in New Zealand by the team behind RUC on Rails.
Co-Founder & CEO, RUC on Rails
Adam is a University of Otago commerce graduate. Before starting RUC on Rails, he spent six years at Delivereasy, beginning as a delivery driver and later managing regional operations.
At RUC on Rails, he is responsible for strategy, partnerships, government and industry engagement, consumer research and bringing new services to market. He also serves on the governance board of ITS New Zealand.
RUC Hub grew out of the research Adam and Briyarne began in 2025 while trying to understand New Zealand's changing RUC system. His work on the platform focuses on source research, policy developments and coverage of the organisations operating in the market.
Co-Founder, CTO & Director, RUC on Rails
Briyarne is an AWS-certified engineer whose earlier work spans public-sector software, startups and transport technology, including New Plymouth's public transport app. He spent four years at Delivereasy, moving from operations into software development.
As CTO, he is responsible for the engineering behind RUC Hub, RUC Compare and RUC Pass. That includes the public apps and websites, along with the integrations, data pipelines and transaction systems underneath them, including Kowalski and RUC OS.
Our Wider Tools and Platforms
Alongside RUC Hub, the team also operates practical tools designed to make RUC easier to deal with day to day.
These tools focus on usability and accessibility. RUC Hub focuses on understanding and transparency. RUC on Rails also develops the Kowalski, RUC OS and Sentinel systems behind its platforms. Read about the technology.
Why This Matters Now
New Zealand is modernising RUC and intends to move the petrol fleet away from fuel excise once the system and market are ready. The final timing and many practical settings are still being worked through.
That creates room for better services, but also plenty of noise: proposals can be mistaken for decisions, dates can shift, and commercial claims are not always easy to compare.
A trustworthy RUC market depends on accessible information, visible evidence and informed debate. People should be able to understand the rules, see who is involved and tell the difference between what exists today and what may come next.
That is the job RUC Hub is here to do.