The Rozelle Interchange has taken exactly two days to cause horridness and nastiness to roads in Sydney. The Rozelle interchange which is as far as I can tell the biggest and most complicated underground road junction in the southern hemisphere, contains more than 16 kilometres of tunnels, and its opening day on Sunday went went relatively smoothly. However, a proper regular traffic day like yesterday, caused motorists to behave perfectly rationally and Transport for New South Wales could only blame motorists for being "confused at the new signage".
What was the signage that motorists were supposedly "confused" at? The single sign, just the one, facing east-bound motorists on Victoria Road after they cross the Iron Cove Bridge, looks like this:
Now I put it to any sane person of reasonable faculties and intelligence, that this sign indicates that there are two options here. The one to the left, is for Balmain via Victoria Rd and does not have a toll. The option on the right, is for the City and Port Botany and does have a toll. I would like to think that I am a pretty good analogue for Billy Brown from Sydney Town, or the Man On the Bondi Tram, or the Man on the Parramatta Omnibus - that is, some reasonable person of average intelligence, who can be expected to act in reasonable, average, and expected ways. I would hope that my reading of this sign, is adequate.
But no.
According to the management at Transport for New South Wales, I am "confused". I do not think that I am "confused". I think that as a some reasonable person of average intelligence, who can read a street sign, that if I do not want to pay the toll (which I don't) then I should move into the left lane.
Apparently, many motorists who have encountered this for the first time, have been making last-minute lane changes and one poor soul who probably got scared of ending up in West Woop-Woop, East Banana, or Umpakumbunka North, reversed their car while in peak hour traffic. I would not have done that but I would have been quietly cursing black and blue, gnashing my teeth, and biting my thumb at Transport for New South Wales.
Transport for New South Wales told the radio yesterday that the reason for "confusion" and tailbacks was that many motorists didn’t realise that the tunnel between the Iron Cove Bridge and the Anzac Bridge is toll-free; which means that the queue of cars wanting to stay on Victoria Road could have actually bypassed the traffic by using the Iron Cove Link underground.
Excuse me?
Firstly, as a sane person of reasonable faculties and intelligence, I do not know how you could draw that conclusion just from looking at that sign.
Secondly, we the decent and fair people of New South Wales, who already live in a city with tolls on the Harbour Bridge, Harbour Tunnel, on-ramps for the Warringah Expressway, the Eastern Distributor, M4, M5, M7, M2, M2 link, and now M8, that is more tollways than exist in the entire of Europe except for Italy, have been punched from pillar to post by knavish tory toll companies for so long, that when we see the word "Toll" on a sign, we believe you.
The thing about a toll on a private road, or private school fees, or private health insurance, is that the existence of a toll is a barrier to entry. Putting a toll on what should be a public service, is almost by definition going to act as a barrier to people using that service. Making people pay money for the use of a thing, has not only the effect of increasing the list price of the thing itself but also will put a psychological stop on people wanting to use the thing. A toll on a thing not only adjusts the price at which the thing is being offered but also adjusts the non-monetary impetus that people might have for using the thing. A toll is very much a market device as it very much adjusts the amount of the service or good that is being used at that particular end user price.
Economics generally is about the questions of what to produce and at what price a thing should be produced at. Markets are concerned about the price of a thing and the volume of that thing which changes hands at any given price. One layer which sits on top of that is the amount of happiness and utility which is derived from the quiet enjoyment of the thing in question. Happiness is related to but not congruous to the amount of utility derived. However economics is not politics and trying to force the two together as though they were, is dishonest. This is why I find it so horrid, that when Transport for New South Wales tries to blame the public for being "confused" when they are the ones who made lots of policies and took actions to force upon the general public to make a decision based upon the opportunity cost of spending or not spending their money and time, they do so without seeming to acknowledge that market mechanisms are playing out in the aggregate, as cooly and coldly as should be expected.
The other thing of note about a toll on a private road, is that being a barrier to entry, it can and will have flow effects through the system. Even looking at the most basic of flow equations (traffic, water, and electricity all broadly follow the same rules), produces what you should expect to be slower speeds.
V = I.R
or
I = V/R
If R is suddenly massive because you have created a pinch point where traffic wants to go from three lanes back into one because you have placed a toll in the way that traffic wants to avoid, then you have increased Resistance (R). If Voltage (V - that is the amount of traffic that wants to get through the system) remains broadly unchanged from one day to another, then Current (I) should decrease because that's how basic arithmetic works. Increase the denominator and the number should get smaller. Guess what? Less cars per hour moved through; which proves that the maths was right. For the same voltage of cars, an increase in resistance by mushing all of that traffic back into a single lane, must lead to and has led to a decrease in the amount of current, which is traffic flow.
What I find even more stupid about this 16.6 kilometre underground spaghetti junction is that a policy decision was taken to build this and not some other thing. The $16.8bn price tag, means that this cost $1.0121bn/km. Yet again we run into our old friend in economics of Opportunity Cost. At $10m/km, we could have had 168 kilometers of underground railway line. Now admittedly that would not have addressed the problem of traffic flow immediately but placed properly, commuters would have not put their cars on the road and left them at home and taken the train instead. One train service clears about 10,000 people per hour/ which is better than 3000 cars per hour. That has a different effect on current flow. Fewer cars does lower the Voltage which does lower the traffic flow but it also lowers the need to accommodate that traffic flow in the first place. There is a kind of happiness and utility to be derived in not having to sit in traffic; which comes from being on a train.
However that choice was never on the table for the motorists who use Victoria Road. They came across one lonely solitary sign and made their decisions completely rationally based upon the information that they had. The tailback which stretched back along for many kilometres was not because motorists were "confused" but rather, that the road is badly signposted, that motorists are consistently treated like mugs, and that an opportunity cost decision was made so that they were forced to make that last second decision. The tailbacks and traffic are not the fault of "confused" motorists who are acting rationally but Transport for New South Wales who made the decision to spend $16.8bn to build this silly thing in the first place.
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