Why neither party wants to talk about Sydney’s road toll mess

If you’re driving a car on the M7 motorway in Sydney’s outer west you’ll cop a maximum toll of $9.21 based on the distance you travel.

Yet if you cruise along the M5 South-West it’ll be a fixed-price of $5.32, although you’ll be able to get a refund on the toll from the government if you’re driving a private car.

Then there’s the different rate at which tolls climb each year, or every three months. WestConnex tolls surged by 6 per cent in January because the annual increase is determined by the inflation rate or 4 per cent, whichever is greater.

However, charges on the only two toll roads in government hands, the Harbour Bridge and Harbour Tunnel, haven’t budged since 2009.

Welcome to Sydney’s patchwork tolling regime. It is the result of successive Labor and Coalition governments inking different concession deeds for new motorways, and selling the decades-long tolling arrangements to the likes of Transurban.

With cost-of-living issues at the top of voters’ minds, Labor has repeatedly attacked the Coalition during the campaign over the high cost of tolls. Amid surging inflation, tolls are an easy political target.

Yet, the solution is far from easy. Neither of the state’s main parties is willing to table a proper remedy to the inconsistent and costly motorway charges, which hit western Sydney motorists hardest because they often have little alternative.

The government’s long-touted review into Sydney’s toll regime was originally due to be finalised last September. But it has been repeatedly delayed and now won’t be released until well after the state election.

The reason for the lack of a solution is simple. To put in place a consistent and fair tolling regime across Sydney’s sprawling motorway network will require taxpayers to fork out massive compensation payments to Transurban, which controls 11 of the city’s 15 existing toll roads.

Transurban has repeatedly said it is open to discussions about modernising tolling arrangements but that its shareholders can be left no worse off as a result.

In explaining the cost of concerted reform, former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance summed it up best two years ago when he warned that changes to the concession deeds would “trigger very, very significant claims against the taxpayer”.

In most cases, these agreements have decades to run. Those for the M2, Lane Cove Tunnel, Eastern Distributor and NorthConnex don’t expire until 2048, while WestConnex’s deed is in place until 2060. As part of a deal with Transurban to build extra lanes and an interchange, the government recently agreed to extend the deed for the M7 by three years to 2051.

For the foreseeable future, the two major parties will resort to subsidising motorists who regularly pay tolls, the cost of which is running into the hundreds of millions of dollars each year for taxpayers.

Voters should expect to hear more sparring on motorway tolls on Wednesday when Premier Dominic Perrottet and Opposition Leader Chris Minns square off in a debate hosted by the Herald and Nine.

They just shouldn’t expect to hear a real solution.

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