The world's most despised and hated tollway is officially Sydney's Cross City Tunnel (alias: Cross City Rort). This new motorway that has opened up to take the pressure off Druitt Street and Bathurst Street in Sydney's midtown district has been virtually ignored by motorists because of the extortionate toll being charged for passage, currently $3.50 with a no-tag surcharge of $1.60, indexed to grow by 3% or at the rate of inflation (which-ever is the higher) until 2030 when it reverts to ownership of the New South Wales Government.
The latest messages we are receiving from the consortium that manages the tunnel is that the toll, originally $2.50 and then climbed to $3.50 when the tunnel opened for business, will soon escalate another 10c as the consortium is allowed to raise the toll every three months. If that is not enough to put people off using the tunnel for good, the tunnel's operator wants streets around the tunnel's portals equipped with traffic calming devices, such as humps, barriers, etc, to discourage motorists from 'doing the rat run' to avoid having to pay the toll.
Here is my chance to have my say on tollways in general. Sydney motorists are being taken to the cleaners by tollway operators. The M7 Motorway, which is due to open in December, is being wrongly touted as a 'fair' motorway because the toll charges will be based on distance travelled. It's certainly a fairer system than the Cross City Rort however charging taxpayers to use roads that have been partially funded by the taxpayer is wrong. Even before the opening of the Cross City Tunnel and the M7, Sydney has more tollways than the rest of Australia combined. Where is the fairness in motorists being charged more than $15 to do a round trip on roads that are just as congested as the 'old' roads? Lets never forget that Labor gave a core election promise in 1995 to ditch existing tolls on the M4 and M5 and to never build any further roads under Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) schemes.
With the M7 and the Cross City Tunnel being cashless tollways, there is now an incentive by all tollway operators to harvest large chunks of money from those who invest in the tags needed to use the roads, supposely without incurring extra penalties. Some of the tags are paid for with a refundable deposit, which is the fairest way of distributing them, though others are issued by the payment of a monthly fee. Tollways that accept cash, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, don't force the luxury of account keeping fees or surcharges on motorists, though when a tollway operator decides that they no longer want to hire any staff and replace the toll collectors with tags we get slugged for the privilege of dealing with more robots instead of real people.
If there are approximately 4 million vehicles registered in NSW that pay on average just over $1000 in registration taxes. Thats around $4bn a year which the State Govt has to spend on roads. Add the nearly $11bn they get from levies on petrol and they should be collecting about $15bn a year.
Now the total roads budget this year, encompassing new construction, major upgrades, maintenance, road safety and road safety education, will amount to almost $2.9bn in 2005-06. Where's the other $12.1bn gone?
Even just last year the Government launched its "Action for Transport 2010 Plan", a 10-year, $3 billion plus plan to revitalise public transport. Total funding for rail capital works, funded from both the Budget and the Rail Access Corporation is a mere $466m.
Including all of this, where's the other $8bn?
Let's face it, that $8bn is effectively being stolen from the "good and fair people of NSW" those Tollways could have and should been been funded from the public purse and could have been IN CASH.
My response to these licences to print money? Don't use any of the tollways at all. No matter how much the bastards push the government to force motorists onto tollways there is a legal obligation for the government to provide an alternate route which is free of charge. In five years time I may be the only driver without a tag attached to my windscreen but if I am the only mug saving money as a result then I am happy to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment