With Gas Tax Failing, Transurban Pitches Congestion Pricing in Sydney, Australia

Transurban is making a solid case for congestion pricing in Sydney, Australia, warning that the city’s roads will soon be as backed up as Mexico City’s without a system to charge drivers or the roads they use.

"Even factoring in committed projects such as WestConnex and NorthConnex, and all the currently committed rail projects, by 2035 Sydney motorists could face congestion levels on par with Mexico City and spend 110 hours a year in traffic," CEO Scott Charlton told a business luncheon last month. On some of the city’s worst roads, he said drivers could expect to spend two hours in traffic for a trip that should only take 40 minutes during off-peak hours.

Australia’s national government is about to commission a road pricing study, and Charlton pointed to Sydney’s existing toll road network as evidence that motorists will pay for the transportation services they use.

The arguments so far ring a bell for anyone who’s paid attention to the highway infrastructure funding crisis in the United States, where gas tax revenues haven’t kept up with the cost of highway operations, maintenance, expansion, and new construction.

A small but very vocal minority has made legislators skittish about tolling.

But highway users have a choice and they are voting with their feet, their gas pedals, and their pocketbooks: Thirty-one IBTTA member toll facilities reported more than five billion trips and record growth in 2015.

In New South Wales, Transurban may have some persuading to do with Transport Secretary Tim Reardon, who said congestion pricing fails the “barbecue test”: When citizens were asked informally how they feel about road pricing, “a common response to the subject was ‘over my dead body,’" the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Yet early feedback from a road-usage study of 1,200 motorists in Melbourne showed that even providing them basic information helped to get people to think about changing behaviour and the benefits of tolling.

Charlton warned that Australia won’t be able to "build its way out of congestion", noting that the country’s fuel excise tax is on track to lose 45% of its value by 2050. “This is a funding model well past its use-by date,” he said. “It is literally running out of fuel.”

This is of course a familiar tune that Americans are hearing and coming to realize as well.

To learn more about urban areas from across the globe dealing with congestion and managing ever increasing volume, plan to attend IBTTA’s All-Electronic Tolling, Managed Lanes and Interoperability Conference in Boston this July 24-26. Visit our website shortly for all details.