A Nice Little Money Earner !

It was a great day when the toll booths on the Sydney Harbour bridge were finally dismantled and traffic began to flow without the need to stop and start to pay the toll - with most motorists fumbling for change.  The introduction of the E-Tag system certainly speeded up the bridge crossing for most people.

Now we learn that choosing the lane in which we drive is a form of lottery that determines how much we pay for each transit - and that this form of " lottery " probably costs the driver who uses the bridge for a daily commute to the city about an extra hundred dollars a year.

The problem is malfunctioning E-Tag readers which fail to accurately decipher the code that relates to each account holder.  This incurs the services of a human who views the video footage of the car stream to identify the number plate and manually debit the toll fee to that cars account.  In the distant past, the car owner received a notice of this action, but now it just happens automatically.

The sticking point is that there is a 55 cent " Video Processing fee " now tacked on to each of these human interventions and it seems that the E-Tag readers on our bridge have a notorious unreliability factor.   That 55 cent charge now amounts to $ 1.4 million of extra revenue above the annual usage toll.

Statistical analysis reveals that the choice of lane used on the bridge determines how likely you are to have that processing fee tacked onto your account because the unreliability of the E-Tag readers varies widely by a range of between two and eight percent.   Few bother to check their toll accounts and these extra charges go unnoticed.

This anomaly is pointing the finger to determine responsibility. There is the expectation that the operator will have the E-Tag readers maintained to a high standard and constantly upgraded, but motorists also have a need to ensure that their tag is in good condition and properly positioned. The computer is programmed to issue an email alert when any individual vehicle attracts three video processing charges in any one month,  Many drivers deny receiving this advice.

Considering that since the processing fee was introduced seventy-nine million cars have passed over the Sydney Harbour bridge and about three percent have had their E-Tag misread and attracted the charge, the margin of error is small - but it still represents $ 1.4 million that must be regarded as an overcharge.

There is little incentive for either the toll operator or the government to improve reliability of the E-Tag readers if this goes unchallenged and they continue to get away with it.  Technology is ever improving and even a three percent error is too wide a margin in this electronic age.   The obvious answer is for more people to pay attention to their toll account, check to see that their reader is properly positioned and undamaged - and lodge a complaint if they think they are being unfairly charged.

The fact that the misreading varies widely between the bridge lanes tends to point the finger at faulty flow cameras as the prime cause of the overcharge !