We went on to build the Cross City Tunnel, the M7 Westlink and the Lane Cove Tunnel, linking the M2 from Sydney’s northwestern suburbs to its major northern freeway. We called the scheme “cashback.” This reduced the political temperature of the issue, and in the 1999 state election I apologized to the state’s voters and said we’d learnt from our mistake in making too rash an election promise and would not do it again. They were compensated on a quarterly basis for the tolls they had paid. Our political embarrassment over tolls was resolved in 1997 when we introduced a direct subsidy to owners of private motor vehicles who used the M4 and M5. “We’ll pay the toll,” a neighbour had told me, “just get on and build it.” Bypassing 19 sets of traffic lights and fitted with the latest electronic tolling, it now provides a 15 to 20 minute journey from the airport to the CBD outside rush hour. An idea first floated in the 1950s, the Eastern Distributor was an engineering challenge requiring the widest tunnel in the world, three lanes each way. The backlash was worsened by the fact that we then announced a decision to build an additional tollway from the centre of Sydney to the airport, a project needed in any case but particularly needed for the 2000 Olympics. There was speculation about whether we could be re-elected when our four-year term was complete. The issue became a “character issue.” Our honeymoon poll ratings took an instant dive. There was a backlash that went far wider than the communities affected by the toll. It involved a doleful concession by me as the new Premier that we couldn’t honour this commitment, couldn’t keep the promise. This would have doubled the cost of keeping our promise. To our surprise-to everybody’s-we found that the consortia would need to be compensated for an additional amount equal to the tax advantage that accrued to them from their tollway investment. We aimed to remove the toll gates and pay the consortia shadow tolls from the state budget based on vehicular traffic numbers. Within months of taking office, my government was in negotiations with the owners of the toll roads. It was not the decisive issue in the election campaign but it was, as election promises go, a reasonably prominent one. I was elected on a promise, among others, of lifting the tolls on two private roads built by the previous conservative government: the M4 and M5 linking the city to the western suburbs. After seven years leading the Labor Party in Opposition, I was elected Premier of NSW in 1995 by a one seat margin in a state assembly of 99. The ring road system is a working example of how public bodies can leverage PPPs to achieve important mobility and capital investment goals. In other words, by far the bulk of capital was mobilised from private sources. The capital cost to government was only AUD$800 million. Of that grand total, AUD$4.6 billion came from the private sector. A study by Sinclair Knight Mertz in 2006 found that Sydney’s toll roads gave a cumulative travel time saving of 38 million hours per annum, 15 fewer fatal accidents each year, and greenhouse gas emission reductions of 17 percent due to smoother traffic flows.īut here’s the remarkable feature: the six major motorway projects opened in Sydney since 1995-that is, under my government-represented a total capital value of AUD$5.4 billion in new infrastructure. It said this road system offered advantages to the state economy equivalent to that of Sydney’s big container terminal. A motorist can now drive all the way from northern Sydney to Canberra, even the Victorian border, without a single set of traffic lights (comparable to the journey from Washington, DC to Cleveland, Ohio).Ī report by Ernst and Young in 2008 concluded that the eight Sydney toll roads had increased Gross State Product by AUD$22.7 billion. Ten years ago the journey would have been a frustrating stop-start, high-polluting trip taking quadruple the time it now takes. The city would not function.Ī business traveler from Sydney’s northern suburbs can now reach the airport without a single set of traffic lights. But no-one would imagine the city today without this road system. It did so with political argument and contention, and at least one negative newspaper campaign. Between 19, Sydney built for itself a ring road system-you’d call it a beltway-that would be the envy of most American cities.
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