Toll Roads for Canberra?

Have a sing along with our mate Tony, and you’ll find the answer to the suggestion of tollroads in the ACT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi-q0ALVzPg

CrocodileGandhi said :

I reckon you’ll get about as much support on this as you would campaigning for a nude calendar featuring Steve Dozspot, Joy Burch and Vicki Dunne.

Tosspot and Dunne, no thanks…but Joy Burch…mmmm…

🙂

Kings Highway casualty crash rate for eastern section is 52.3, double the state average.
Accident rate is 150% higher for the section in Eurobodalla Shire than any other road in the shire, and 36% higher than the Princes Highway, itself a dangerous road.
Accidents on the Kings Highway have greater severity by statewide standards.
40% of the Highway has a lane width under the 3.5 m standard designated by RMS, with several section still having widths under 3m.
Almost 50% of the highway has insufficient, or no shoulders at all.
There are sections with ageing pavement, up to 40 years old, and with question marks over structural integrity.
Several bridges are reaching the end of their engineered life span.
Average for NSW roads of curves with <600m radius is 13% of total length, for the Kings it's 30%.

Traffic on the Kings Highway corridor is projected to increase by 50% over next two decades.

Upgrades to the western section of the Highway have cut the causality accident rate however to half the state average.

Those are the facts.

c_c™ said :

Only place it’s justifiable is in funding major capital investment infrastructure, hence I would support a toll on the Kings Highway or Barton Highway in return for their full lengths being upgraded to motorway standard.

the funny thing is that there are hundreds of us who drive the kings hway every day without issues and without complaint. The only people who complain are the people who don’t need to use it all the time.

I have done about 60,000km on the highway in the past year and the only issue i have had is hitting a wombat and that wasn’t on the highway but a dirt back road. Ohh and people with blue and white number plates who insist on sitting right behind me and then overtaking dangerously in order to get to Braidwood less than a minute in front of me.

Maybe you should pay a toll in order to pay for those people to learn how to drive properly, rather then making us suffer for their incompetence.

In addition to this a motorway would destroy the awesome views that make the drive worthwhile, just like realigning and tarring nerriga road destroyed some of the best scenery around the area.

davo101 said :

Action buses are bleeding between $93 and $100 million a year. I’m wondering if the time has come for the ACT Government to consider toll roads across Canberra in an effort to stop the bleeding.

Action buses are subsidised just like every other metro bus service in Australia. The biggest problem that we have is that the farebox recovery is too small, but even if you doubled the fares we still looking at ~$70 million a year to have a bus service.

If so, where does that leave the ACTION bus deficit when that great bit of loss making infrastructure, the Light Rail for Gungahlin, commences. No doubt, a much larger combined deficit than just ACTIONs currently is. So, where will that leave ACT Gov’t charges, Annual Rates, Commercial Rates, vehicle Registration cost, etc. True, those will inevitably increase over time anyway, but the mal administration of the A.C.Ts budget by the Gallagher/Barr/Rattenbury Gov’t, is greatly accelerating that.

enrique said :

magiccar9 said :

Going to do diddly-squat unless they provide another feasible way for us to get to work. Example: 15 minute drive vs 2.5 hour bus journey (on several different buses).

The reason ACTION are hemeraging money is because the service is s***, plain and simple. Improve what you sell to your patrons and you shall see an increase in custom.

This.

+1

When I can catch a bus from my house to work [wherever it may be] for less than it costs to register, park and fuel my car, bring on the trolls.

magiccar9 said :

Going to do diddly-squat unless they provide another feasible way for us to get to work. Example: 15 minute drive vs 2.5 hour bus journey (on several different buses).

The reason ACTION are hemeraging money is because the service is s***, plain and simple. Improve what you sell to your patrons and you shall see an increase in custom.

This.

+1

Everyone’s complaining about the chip seal. This would be one way to fix that problem.

They should randomly select days to make the bus free.
The idea of revenue from buses is stupid. You have an overhead of ticket sales, ditch this you can then just take slightly more in taxes and everyone is better off.

Making buses free also means you need more of them, but this takes wear off the roads, accidents out of hospitals, stupid ideas of light rail out of pollies heads.

Isn’t there already a “road safety contribution” included with one’s rego payments?

Let me guess you’re a greens voter, work for the Government and are always careful to buy free range eggs?

Re: making buses free, does anyone genuinely believe that would make a difference? Surely those for whom the price of a bus fare matters are already using the buses and can’t afford the alternative while those don’t use them can afford, perhaps grudgingly, the cost of car ownership.

HiddenDragon said :

Let’s see what pay parking in the Parliamentary Triangle does for Action bus patronage.

Going to do diddly-squat unless they provide another feasible way for us to get to work. Example: 15 minute drive vs 2.5 hour bus journey (on several different buses).

The reason ACTION are hemeraging money is because the service is s***, plain and simple. Improve what you sell to your patrons and you shall see an increase in custom. Just the same as the roads – the government who pulls their finger out and makes an effort will be the government who people actually want to vote for. It’s really not a difficult concept to grasp, but the decision makers are so far disconnected from the issues at hand they have literally no idea.

There’s actually a really good economic argument for road pricing. Road space, like most other valuable resources is finite, and pricing is the best way to ensure that it goes to the highest value use.

Ideally you’d have a variable pricing system so that the toll reflects congestion throughout the day, with the highest toll charged during peak periods, and it being pretty close to zero when the roads are empty.

If it were up to me there’d be no vehicle registration fees or fuel taxes, but every motor vehicle would be fitted with a GPS device that basically tracks where you go, and then at the end of the month you’d get a bill charging you based on what time of the day you traveled, how far you traveled, how much CO2 you emitted, how much congestion you caused, how much wear and tear you caused to the roads, etc.

Persephone said :

Action busses should be made free, and parking should be doubled in costs. Carrot an stick approach to the environment, as well as costs for road maintenance. Make it worth catching a bus, and make it such that driving a car is not worth it.

Yes. Making the bus free would take (some) traffic off the roads, and reduce the need to build more roads. Good cost-benefit analysis could show what the net benefit of this is – it could be substantially positive.

Though it would be nice to say “free for ACT residents only” that wouldn’t be as effective as “free for everyone” and set up some park and rides on the edges of the ACT.

IP

How about a swift kick in the nuts for even suggesting it? The same punishment should have been dished out the the inventors of the parking meter and speed bumps respectively…

Let’s see what pay parking in the Parliamentary Triangle does for Action bus patronage.

only Belconnen way counts as you don’t have to turn off. 🙂

Dock the drivers pay by around 50% should help a bit.

Is this the same person who suggested we should pay Australia Post $30 every year to get our mail delivered.

Belconnen has 1 main road to the city . I hardly think that is extensive .

Canberra is by no means unique in its dilemma regarding a costly bus service. Most cities around the world have the same issue.

There are only a few that are profitable. Have a read of the following for a rough guide…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

Action busses should be made free, and parking should be doubled in costs. Carrot an stick approach to the environment, as well as costs for road maintenance. Make it worth catching a bus, and make it such that driving a car is not worth it.

Correct me if I’m mistaken but isn’t the main driver for a toll road to pay for the road itself? Not to pay for some other spuriously connected inefficient service?

The market distortion effects of putting a toll on a road to pay for a bus service are just way out of whack IMO.

Action buses are bleeding between $93 and $100 million a year. I’m wondering if the time has come for the ACT Government to consider toll roads across Canberra in an effort to stop the bleeding.

Action buses are subsidised just like every other metro bus service in Australia. The biggest problem that we have is that the farebox recovery is too small, but even if you doubled the fares we still looking at ~$70 million a year to have a bus service.

We already have a system for collecting money to pay for infrastructure and services: taxes.

Adding tolls on top of taxes introduces yet another costly layer of administration which is not needed considering there is the existing system for collecting money to pay for these things.

Toll roads are yet another example of the extensive privatisation scam that big business with little politicians in their pockets have been using to rip us off for the last few decades.

Gina Reinhart can afford to pay for our roads. She “earned” her money by being allowed by our insubstantial leaders to make a massive fortune out of exploiting our communal assets. She should pay. Ditto the rest of them.

Idiot

If we put vehicle toll on ACT roads, will cyclist have to pay too? While we’re at it, those darned pedestrians get their foot paths for nothing, slug them too. They should support Action and catch a bus instead of perambulating.

A lot of commuters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane still drive in on the toll roads and pay for parking rather than use the public transport system, and the public transport system in those capitals have a better coverage, greater frequency in peak timers and are more reliable (except in 40 plus temps in Melb) than out dilapidated network of antiquated charabancs. Toll roads, except where there is major infrastructure like tunnels and bridges involved, are just a cop out by governments who poorly manage their road network.

Well I’d have to look at the stats of revenue raised against how the money is used.

That said, Canberrans don’t know how lucky they are with their extensive road network and lack of tolls. I moved from Canberra to Sydney in July last year and had forgotten how many toll roads there are in Sydney…seriously, it’s almost impossible to get around without a toll. And it adds up too…if I travel south, it’s $25 round trip just in tolls. A trip up north is a little more.

It would be nice if other cities pitched in with tolls and not just constant gouging of Sydney-siders…….

Not going to happen, shouldn’t happen. Between fuel and parking fees, a toll is going to make negligible difference in changing transport behaviour. Only place it’s justifiable is in funding major capital investment infrastructure, hence I would support a toll on the Kings Highway or Barton Highway in return for their full lengths being upgraded to motorway standard.

I reckon you’ll get about as much support on this as you would campaigning for a nude calendar featuring Steve Dozspot, Joy Burch and Vicki Dunne.