Last Cash Booths On Bridge To Close
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday September 18, 2008
IT IS the next step to a cashless road network and, potentially, city-wide road pricing.
Yesterday the Premier, Nathan Rees, announced the three remaining cash booths on the Harbour Bridge would be removed by the end of January, eliminating all cash payments from both harbour crossings. The Eastern Distributor and the M2 are next in line, but no date has been decided. Once every tollway is cashless, it is possible to institute a per-kilometre road price that could be varied to limit peak period congestion.Yesterday Mr Rees said the change on the bridge was not the first step in a new road-pricing scheme and that it was too early for "the detail of how we might manage traffic flows during the course of the day or the evening".He also said: "There are options around that [but] it is a fundamental policy shift that we need to consider very carefully." In July the Herald revealed the Ministry of Transport had secretly modelled the effect of a $50-a-day CBD parking fee, a 100 per cent increase in petrol prices and a $1-a-kilometre toll. With these measures car use would be contained to 2 per cent growth by 2016, the modelling showed.A report this year by the University of Sydney said the equivalent of 14 Lane Cove tunnels would need to be built every year for the next five years just to stop traffic getting any worse, with car trips in the morning peak predicted to climb 83,000, to 250,000, by 2013.Ken Dobinson, a former Roads and Traffic Authority official, has called for congestion pricing, to reduce traffic by about 5 per cent. "It is long overdue that the Government started to give direction to tolling," he said. "We have odd bits and pieces everywhere and it is not equitable." Yesterday the RTA's chief executive, Les Wielinga, said a fully cashless orbital route was on the horizon: "We have completed all the technical agreements ... The commercial negotiations are the final step and that's under way." The next cashless road is likely to be the Eastern Distributor.Mr Rees said the removal of the bridge's cash booths would increase capacity from 400 vehicles an hour to 2000 vehicles an hour.If you do not have an E-tag the trip will cost $7.05 - $3.30 to buy an E-toll pass, a video-processing fee of 75 cents and the $3 toll, the RTA website says.E-TAG ONLYM7, Cross City Tunnel,Lane Cove Tunnel,Sydney Harbour Tunnel, Sydney Harbour Bridge (from January 31) CASH BOOTHS AVAILABLE Eastern Distributor,M2, M4, M5
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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