The news that Sydney motorists may be offered a form of relief for the ever increasing road tolls that apply in the city sounds like good news. It is quite a simple plan. Car owners who pay twenty-five dollars a week in road tolls over the year will get next years registration fee waived - delivering a saving of somewhere between $ 358 a year and $ 715, depending on the size and weight of their vehicle.
This scheme is delightfully simple to operate. When registration notices are being prepared the registration authority simple cross checks that vehicle with the road toll operation to see what road tolls accrued during the year and whether it met the criteria for free registration. Of course this offer only applies to cars privately owned and used for domestic purposes. No relief is offered to commercial vehicles.
The cost of this measure to the state budget has not been accurately measured but it may cost a hundred million dollars in the first year, and more in the years to follow. That is money that has to be recovered in some other way, and that is what worries the owners of cars that rarely ever enter even the outer precincts of the city of Sydney.
Recovering that money is a task that will fall to the state Treasurer. The most likely target will be a small increase in the penalties for traffic offences. They are seen as penalties for bad behaviour - and therefore " avoidable " - but they apply on a state wide basis.
The funds that served to create the complete overhaul of the Sydney transport system came from the sale of our electricity industry. Without that sale we would not see new versions of trams reappearing on city streets nor the modern driverless metro connecting suburbs with the city centre. We certainly would not be seeing this surge of new expressways like the West Connex and the widening of existing arteries to speed the traffic flow, and yet this all comes with road tolls for using this new system - and at the same time the cost of the electricity we use to light our homes has soared out of sight.
The problem is that all this progress seems to be concentrated within the city of Sydney. There is no evidence that any of this money found its way to Grafton or Lithgow, Newcastle or Cooma - or any of the other cities and towns that are served by private bus services and have traffic problems that slow the daily commute.
It is also selective within Sydney city. Multi lane divided highways speed traffic into and out of the city to the north and the west, but the entrance from the south ends at Heathcote and from there it crawls towards the city centre via traffic light controlled suburban roads with kerbside parking. The answer to this problem is the F-6 expressway, which has been on the drawing boards for at least half a century.
A small section that may ease traffic in inner Sydney may be built in the coming years, but the connection from there to Waterfall is not even in the planning stage. The expense daunts the planners from even putting a date on when it may be expected.
Drivers in the rest of New South Wales are aware and commiserate with what Sydney residents have to contend with on their roads and with public transport, but the funds do need to be spread a little wider. There is a growing expectation that recouping the money spent on that relief for road tolls will eventually fall on their shoulders.
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