From the private motorist listening to their e-tag go “beep” on the M4 at Parramatta to the boardrooms overlooking Sydney Harbour, few people have assumed the Sydney tolling system could ever be changed for the fairer.
Tolling contracts are, after all, the very definition of stitched up tight – the proverbial licence to print money.
This week we begin to challenge that assumption. We must start now or lose the chance until 2060.
NSW Roads Minister John Graham at Sydney’s Transport Management Centre.Credit: Nick Moir
This is a difficult area to achieve reform, but as the interim report of Allan Fels’ toll review lays out in more than 230 pages of detail, reform is necessary.
Fels and his co-reviewer David Cousins put it like this: “In the past, it has been suggested that reforms to road tolling are not possible given the nature of the concession agreements. We do not accept this. We do accept the proposition that the state needs to act responsibly in achieving reforms in this area and that the reasonable expectations of toll road operators need to be protected and honoured. Our overriding focus, however, is the public interest and toll reform is necessary in the public interest.”
I agree that reform is possible.
It must start now or risk creating a more divided city in which people are confined to their own corner of Sydney due to the prohibitive cost of just getting around.
It must start now or risk the cost of freight and congestion adding more pain to the cost of living.
I have spoken to teachers and carers who have changed where they work based on the need to avoid long, toll-pocked commutes from the outer suburbs.
To drive fairness, Sydney’s road tolling reform must start now
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13.03.2024
From the private motorist listening to their e-tag go “beep” on the M4 at Parramatta to the boardrooms overlooking Sydney Harbour, few people have assumed the Sydney tolling system could ever be changed for the fairer.
Tolling contracts are, after all, the very definition of stitched up tight – the proverbial licence to print money.
This week we begin to challenge that assumption. We must start now or lose........
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