Media Release
"All Is Not Well In Toll Land"
19/09/97
Reports that the privately run M2 tollway will not pay a share dividend for this quarter may have ramifications for the controversial Eastern Distributor.
Greens Councillor Murray Matson claims that promises that the Distributor will take congestion of local roads has been discredited by the M2’s performance. He said,
"Drivers seem to responding to the M2 by trying to avoid the toll. The bean counters must be desperately hoping that they haven't made the same mistake over here with the Distributor."
Numbers using the M2 are only half what they should be and have lead Cr Matson to state that the RTA does not "understand the average driver in the street". He elaborated,
"The RTA’s traditional strategy of building non-tolled ‘freeways’ to reduce road congestion doesn’t work because it just encourages more people to abandon public transport and buy cars to use the new road surface. This newer RTA strategy of building more roads as ‘tollways’ is no real improvement either. You still get the new road surface plus this toll avoidance behaviour. "
The M2 experiment seems to be revealing that personal car driving strategies are more resilient than first imagined. Drivers need a sweetener to voluntarily go somewhere and paying a toll is obviously not it."
Contact: Randwick Greens Councillor Murray Matson