I just had to cross the city (and back) and it's utter chaos across the bridge today.
I decided that taking the tunnel on the way back was warranted and I'm glad I did.
However, I think transurban should consider free fare, or even discounts, during this annual maintenance period to entice people off the bridge. Who knows, maybe they could close the bridge with free fares through the tunnel, and get the work done in 2 days.
Lol Transurban considering anything but greed is hilarious.
Yeah, they’d view this as peak cash grab from all the people annoyed by the bridge works.
All toll roads should have an end date but no they get to steal money from us forever just because they won a contract to build the road! It's a scam!
They do have end dates but for each x amount of road improvements they do they get an y number of extensions
I think the original linkt network was meant to expire in 2050 iirc may be wrong
What are your thoughts? Talking about city link and east link are still tolled even tho they have made there money back 10 time over! City link was completed 25 years ago and the tolls are not going to end
Tolls now apply to heavy vehicles crossing the Westgate bridge - a road opened 50 years ago.
The West gate was intended to be a toll road for it's life time.
Citylink concession deed originally expired in 2035 until Dictator Dan decided to wrap up the WGT project and offer them a 10 year extension to cover the costs. So that's right, people that dont even use the road are covering the costs of the WGT.
Of course. Tragedy of our time here in Melbourne
Personally I think Transurban should fuck right off. If there is going ot be tolls the money should go back to the government to be invested in other infrastructure projects, not to some multinational company.
I hate tolls as much as the next person but they are there due to transurban paying to build the roads instead of us. They recoup the costs and then some through tolls
Correct, they footed 11B, whereas the Govt chipped in only 4B. This ended up being a much bigger cost than initially estimated and the Vic Govt only chipped in 1B extra whereas TU funded the other 6B.
I hate them as much as the next guy, but frankly the taxpayer only paid for 25% of the costs.
I'd rather have higher taxes to cover the cost and this be free, or we don't chip in at all and the road is tolled, but chipping in AND paying tolls is offensive.
Traffic moving onto toll roads means less usage, wear and therefore lower maintenance costs on other, government owned roads. This is particularly important for trucks (as wear increases exponentially with the weight of the vehicle) who are now banned from local streets near the port.
The amount paid probably exceeds these costs savings, but it makes sense for the government to put in some money to realise those savings.
plus, it is road infra that is additional capacity. all upside
Or to say it more briefly, don't hate the player, hate the game.
Technically yes, but its very sketchy. As part of the West gate, which they are collecting tolls from, they were granted a ten year extension to citilink. So now they are gouging even more money out of us.
Instead of citilink being free in 2035, we now need to wait for 2045. The initial investment into citilink was $1.8 billion and as of December 2023 Transurbans revenue was $12.9 billion just from citilink. They have already recouped their money 7 times over, and they now get even more...
That all comes down to corrupt politicians writing bad contracts, the toll period should end at X amount of money recouped
I agree. I don't necessarily have a problem with it being Y amount of years, but I 100% don't agree with it being extended.
Best option is X amount of money recouped.
Yeah I know that's how they got their claws in, still don't think the government should keep up with that system, and shouldn't keep extending the toll period.
Futher the government DEFINITELY shouldn't be the one one chasing up and collecting unpaid tolls for TransUrban, which is currently what the overwhelming majority of fines going through FinesVic and the Sheriff's Office are.
Extending the tolls is generally done for more road builds so sucks but I get it. Using the cops to enforce the shitty tolls is 1000% fucked up, using public resources to enforce private company fines (that are often wrong)
And then more people stop paying the tolls. If you don't want to pay, don't use the toll roads.
I mean look at the amount of fare evasion on PT, in this society people won't pay if they can get away with it.
Nah you're right, fuck the tolls, fuck the fines, transurban should recoup their money through the govt, and the govt should just tax us even more, even the ones on the dole (less dole and benefits)
Or, like any other private enterprise, Transurban pays debt collectors to follow up unpaid tolls rather than government funds being spent to recoup them on their behalf.
Read the brochure I see.
'And Then some' is also doing alot of heavy lifting in this context.
Yes ‘and then some’ should be read as guaranteed obscene profits.
That comes down to corrupt politicians approving fucked up contract terms
Jeff Kennett is one of the all time great monsters of our state. So many problems we face today can be traced back to his sell off crap.
Jeff Kennet cant be blamed for toll roads anymore when the current Andrews/Allen government extended them.
Yes because the state government is broke as fuck and would rather let Transurban fuck us than fix their budget
Well, the government does get to keep the road at the end of the concession in a condition as if it was built the day before, and at no cost to the government. This is all public information in the concession deed. Transurban is compensated by having the right to toll during the concession period.
Yeah that’s what they said when the first toll road was built to the airport. They’re still getting our money though.
That would be because the government wanted the Tulla and CityLink (north of the Bolte) widened to handle the extra traffic from population growth. Instead of the Government funding and building that itself, it got Transurban to do it instead and the compensation was an extended concession.
Keep in mind that even right now the Government owns the road (even CityLink), Transurban merely has the right to operate and toll it. So anything done to the road belongs to the Government from day 1.
You can’t privatise something that isn’t profitable. Bad governments do that for short term gains
Of course roads are profitable. I absolutely agree that toll roads are poor outcomes. But sometimes they are necessary when governments have competing priorities. Governments have massive balance sheets and can fund a lot, but it’s not infinite. Hence when there’s a choice between say level crossing removals, sky rail and SRL the government will try to offload some of that demand to the private sector - bonus points if it the tolls are effectively a “user pays” system when free alternatives are abundant.
It’s not user pay’s though. People in the north paid for that road, then they extended the tolls to pay for commuters in the east and now the tunnel.
There are many ways to get around Melbourne without using CityLink. The Tulla (now with more lanes) is still a freeway. Transurban built and paid for that widening in exchange for a longer concession on CityLink. Not sure what you mean when you say people in the north paid for it. The user pays system is that if you want the convenience (and in some cases, the quality) of CityLink then you pay for it. However, when the concession ends the operating rights and responsibilities of the road go to the government (which doesn’t necessarily mean tolls end, only that tolls are paid to the government instead if they decide to keep them).
2 road projects and a vote project?
the road users didn't really pay for much.
Doesn't matter, the government should own public infrastructure from start to finish, and if the infrastructure generates revenue then the government should get that revenue. Tired of these parasitic corporations inserting themselves into everything and bleeding us dry.
The government does already own all of it. But they haven’t paid for it. Instead of funding it directly they provide a corporation with the right to earn money as compensation. Private enterprise didn’t “insert itself”, the reality is the government has finite funds to do all of this stuff. They simply don’t have enough liquidity to fund all infrastructure at once. So the private sector fills the funding gap. It’s just government debt by another name at the end of the day.
No, that's not the reality. The government has far more funds than a private company. And the private company is making a profit on it. The government could also make a profit on it. Stop giving them credit for siphoning funds from average people to their shareholders.
No, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works. Their funds aren’t unlimited and they have choices to make. Think about everything Victoria has recently funded: - free kindergarten - SRL - Level crossing removals - Metro tunnel - Upgrades to rail infrastructure - New trains and trams - etc
The government has to decide where to allocate its capital budget. It’s not infinite. Where a model allows the private sector to fund the infrastructure and the repayment of that funding is through a user pays model (where free alternatives are widely available) then it works well for efficient allocation of public money.
The road makes a profit or the private industry would not do it.
Of course it makes a profit. Are you expecting private companies to do enormous public infrastructure projects for free?
Not to mention all the operations, maintenance, debt funding etc. All things in addition to “simply” building a road. All things the government doesn’t have to do and pay for until the end of the concession.
Would you do anything for the government (or a company) for free?
It belongs to the taxpayers, not the government!
I believe the new tunnel is toll free on weekends until Feb.
Edit: corrected - only for Jan on weekend for that month as I am informed, I guess the early opening caused my misunderstanding.
In January it is. I couldn’t find any information about it being free in December 2025.
Yup, not free in December.
I've long held an opinion which I believe is fair, but will never see the light of day: Toll road operators should receive no tolls if the average speed of vehicles traveling between two toll points at that time (average it over say a 100 car window) is below 80% of the posted speed limit.
So if traffic is banked up, and only running at 50-60km/h, they would receive no tolls for any of those vehicles.
This massively incentivises them to clear up issues, including roadworks or any kind of issue which may cause an accident - it's like a built-in penalty.
It could do, or it more likely massively incentivises them to never do any work because they don’t want to close anything down, at which point we all go flying off the West Gate because the guard rails are fucked
This is unfortunately a popular opinion, but it has really terrible outcomes. The first and most obvious one if you think about it for more than 5 seconds is that this would make traffic significantly worse. Put simply, the primary reason traffic occurs is because too many drivers try to use the limited capacity a road has, taking away tolls takes away one of the only ways we have of restricting traffic to reasonable levels.
Such an “incentive” would be a perverse disincentive against building the toll road in the first place. The likely outcome would be no west gate tunnel and even more congestion on the bridge. Be careful what you wish for.
You reckon a private company is going to make something free out of kindness?
Good news, I’ve got a West Gate Bridge to sell you!
I just did it today!!! I wanted to be on the other set of dedicated lanes off the ring road and instead I got stuck right in it, and I had no escape...... What made it worse was the left lanes were travelling so well and I could have turned off at Williamstown Road OR taken the tunnel I would have paid to not have to be stuck there this morning
Yes, I reached the back of the queue about 100m beyond the turnoff for the tunnel entrance. The tunnel was near empty.
I was in the same situation, I had intended to turn off but got stuck instead. I did see someone cut across a concrete median strip to escape at Hyde rd, but wasn't bold enough to try that sort of manoeuvre myself.
I ended up coming back over the bridge the other way this afternoon and the delay was only about 10 minutes instead of the 60+ minutes heading eastbound. It looked like the eastbound traffic may have been even worse than it was this morning though.
The guy pulling a sneaky on Hyde was a wasted effort, by then it was only 5 10 minutes over the bridge haha
Yeah Google Map avoided M1 like a plague today.
mine unfortunately updated as we entered traffic. said it was an 8 min delay until we got there and it added almost an extra hour to the trip haha. almost never go west, didn't even know they do maintenance every year around this time
Yeah because transurban bribed them.
FYI transurban are required to charge by government decree for every trip. Not even staff there get any free trips or discounts.
The government is the only one that can ratify a change to how they operate, which is why you still get statements in the mail - the legislation was written in the 90s.
Everything they do in this space is legislated so the only way to change it is through state government - such as what the Minns gov in NSW has just put through with a cap on daily tolls
Well they want to get back to the billions of revenue vs. the millions they are on now...
Obviously that's because of investment in assets and civil infrastructure.
It's like charging a tax on a plough, every time a farmer used it.
Regardless of how the reaping season turns out.
Why would a private, for profit, organisation offer free or subsidised travel when the government undertakes annual maintenance on the bridge? It’s not a charity. Use the tunnel or don’t, but a private organisation is under no obligation, nor is there any expectation, to donate to the general public.
They wouldn't. The government would pay them for it.
When PTV close a railway line for maintenance, they provide a bus replacement as an alternative service. The bus companies aren't working for free; but PTV include that cost as part of the budget.
What the OP is saying is that when VicRoads close on of the most major arterial roads, they should provide a replacement service in the same fashion.
Read the OP’s post again. The absolutely did not say the government should pay Transurban to provide free travel. They said Transurban should consider providing the free travel. That’s not how any of this works.
What realistic series of steps could be taken to make it work that way.
Perhaps you’d need to do away with capitalism?
The problem with that argument is that VicRoads do provide replacements. Free ones even. Footscray Rd and Dynon Rd aren't tolled. Depending on where your journey originates and ends, there are other cross city options even as far as the Ring Rd, although Alexandra Pde and the route past the zoo are probably as far north as most people are likely to want to go.
The reality is most people don't need to use the tunnel if they are prepared to accept a deviation and a small increase in travel time to avoid a $4 toll.
All those options are much harder to get to if you are coming from Geelong and your destination is somewhere south east of the city
The Westgate Bridge is 5 lanes at 80kmh.
Elliott Ave past the Zoo is one single lane at 60kmh. That's not a realistic alternative, and therefore knocks Dynon Rd out as a general alternative.
Footscray Rd to the city might work, but then you're paying the toll road as the OP said, or coming off at either Geelong Rd or Millers Rd and trying to squeeze up Barkly St (or Sunshine Rd, but that is or will soon be a no truck zone), so they're all navigating the middle of Footscray to get to Footscray Rd. That's single lane too, and a heavily pedestrian area.
How about you drivers pay for once???
what do you mean for once? we drivers do pay?
Not nearly enough
No. If you did it would be awesome. And tax payers wouldn’t have to pay out anything.
We do - that's literally what the fuel excise is for.
You don’t. That doesn’t cover anything.
If you move all the traffic onto a different road, the traffic is still there, just now on a different road.
And that's perfectly okay, if the reason you're moving it is to do maintenance on the original road.
Somebody has to pay for the alternative road/bridge/tunnel though.
Apart from Boxing Day outbound as everyone flees Melbourne there’s not that much traffic this time of year. Hence why they do maintenance.
But it’s not unreasonable for those who do have to drive to be given a fairer option than huge delay or toll.
The government could do a deal to compensate Transurban by adding a few extra days to the contract in return for a few West Gate maintenance days a year. Or even just a quid pro quo for the days Transurban closes the toll roads for their own maintenance.
That said, if you can afford a car you can afford a toll once in a while.
Last time I took the Burnley tunnel it was 40ks all the way through, they still charge you $11. I like your optimism though
One a public road one isn’t, explain capitalism to me
That would be the smart thing to do, we all know how smart these greedy money pigs are......... Shame. Shame. Shame.
Update:
Outbound works have finished early, now open.
But inbound still going until Sunday.
thanks mate, so we can go to Geelong now on West Gate ?
How about all the roads are free, what are we paying taxes for
Pick 1 of the following: 1. Toll road 2. More taxes 3. No new road 4. Budget cuts / less services in other areas. 5. More government debt (leads to 2 or 4 anyway).
Taxes, licensing, rego. Should be enough
But it's not enough, so you get to pick one of the above. You've heard of the budget right? It covers everything, not just new roads.
License costs and registration aren't even primary sources to fund road maintenance or construction.
So how does the budget magically cover an 11b road construction project without affecting something else or generating more revenue?
If it's not enough idk, raise prices somewhere else, privatizing the roads just sucks money out of our economy
So, raise the price on something completely unrelated to roads to build more roads? That is your solution?
What are you proposing we "raise the prices on"' to generate 11 billion to build that road?
That's the thing about roads, education, health care and a lot of other ancillary things we use, it's not always going to be fully and directly paid by the person using that specific person and it does make sense that way, you gotta pool the money somehow like with some kinda taxing system or something.
Yeah tax the wealthy, let's get some money for our natural resources like Norway or Alaska or w/e instead of giving it away almost for free
Honestly wtf are you even talking about? Seems you think money just comes from the ether?
You said raise the prices on something else, so what are you suggesting we raise the prices on to generate 11 billion in revenue to cover the cost of this road?
Honestly you sound like an idiot. When presented with a list of practical options you choose "I'm dumb". These projects don't pay for themselves. You either raise taxes, cut other funding or source the funding elsewhere privately.
Can you expand on the natural resources we have in Victoria which we aren't capitalizing on like Norway and Alaska? How can you possibly the three?
No it comes from people adding value? Then we tax some of that? Then roads help so we use some of the tax for that?
Paying private companies that do nothing but gate keep sucks money into the ether for sure, we should stop doing that, especially when they're multinationals
But specifically tell me, what value are you talking about? It has to exist over and above the value we have today.
Where is this price increase being implemented, specifically to generate 11 billion. Stop speaking generally, come on.
How about all roads are paid for by car drivers???
That too
I don't know about you, but I pay taxes with the understanding that even if gov spending doesn't directly benefit me, it does benefit others or the economy. Since roads don't really benefit anyone if they are clogged with traffic, I do not want the government to spend money on increasing traffic.
All roads should be fucking free, we pay taxes out the ass...
Fuck no. All roads should be paid for by car drivers. Why do I have to pay???
The same reason I pay for your health care. it's mutually benificial
So the new Footscray Hospital will cost $1.5B to construct. This tunnel cost $10B to construct. How many new hospitals should our heavily indebted state government have not built to instead pay for construction of this tunnel? I’d much rather a user pays model for roads than hospitals.
Everyone uses healthcare.
Not everyone uses roads.
How does the food you eat get to the supermarket?
Not by assholes sitting their cars getting coffee. By trucks that take way longer due to every car driver.
Most of it goes by rail or cargo ship most of the way, the last 20ks go by road, but the more people on the road the slower it takes and the more expensive that leg of the journey is. Making toll roads free increases the cost of goods and services.
No, I’m saying we already are one of the highest taxed countries in the world, that I pay tax for absolutely everything, even my tax is taxed by tax, and roads should be free, that’s the whole damn point of tax…
(Edit) And public transport, everything that’s required to get to and from work in order to pay tax should be tax free / free.
They can afford it…
We aren't one of the highest taxed countries in the world, we're actually below oecd average... The economic benefits of roads are solely contingent on them staying as free of traffic as possible, tolls are one of the only ways we have to keep traffic to reasonable levels.
I think you're wrong or I can't read.
We are personally taxed I think at 45% or something, which from what I remember is in the top 20 of 195 odd countries. We are definitely one of the highest taxed countries in the world.
There is even 'warnings' on VISA applications to live here stating the cost of living here is extremely high lol.
Those taxes come with our healthcare benefits and everything else, so I'm not complaining.
But I don't think our Australian government is 'scraping by the teeth' to keep this country running and could easily afford to create free road and public transport options and instead of charging people to deter traffic create incentives instead or something creative.
You can't just keep slapping a price on everything and it just keeps going up and up until something bursts.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/highest-taxed-countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
I said oecd for a reason, I don't particularly care what Afghanistan is doing. Look at the tax rates in Europe. Also 45% is our highest tax bracket, it starts higher than in other countries.
Tolls have proven to be the only effective way of keeping traffic down, no other way works.
Yawn. Back to sky news with you.
Victoria is massively indebted. The government couldn’t afford to build this tunnel hence why it’s tolled. It’s also such a bad commercial proposition that Transurban can’t even fund its construction just by tolling users. Dan Andrews extended their right to toll a completely different road (citylink) by another decade to help pay for this stupid tunnel.
Vehicle registration is that damn expensive it should cover roads.
But it doesn't, not even close, rego and gas tax would need to be 4-5 times higher to actually cover the cost of current road maintenance.
Fully agree, all roads should be free, tolls disproportionately affect the poorest people.
No they don't.
The poorest people either avoid toll roads or take public transport.
Why these works always have to commence just as half of Melbourne is migrating across the bridge to Torquay and Lorne.
Because it's the cheapest time
Was it free last year? The year before? Oh yeah…..it didn’t exist! You know what did? WGB works at this time of the year. Every year. Who should have paid last year?
Can only guess drivers are not paying attention...
Even if you don't want to go via the new WG Tunnel, there's several other alternatives and exits including Geelong Rd (Princes Hwy) through Brooklyn, Millers Rd and Williamstown Rd into the CBD via Footscray Rd, Dynon Rd, Racecourse Rd and Mt Alexander/Flemington Rd.
With what must be like 100 electronic signs everywhere and many kilometres out, advising of both the WG Bridge works and current travel times and traffic.
If you could not follow the other hundred static road signs well in advance to find the correct lanes for these exits/alternatives or use GPS/maps, well sorry but you've had a bloody shocker day getting to the car park middle lanes situation! 🤷♂️
Unfun fact. I had google maps on today. It failed to tell me to take the exit around the M80... right afterwards clogged up traffic which extended the journey pass the bridge for over 1 hour. Not a single exit as I was in the "express" lanes averaging 10-20km/h.
can't hear you over the sound of corporate cha-ching
so should freeway travel bas as soon as there is maintenance or incidents that prevent you from travelling at the speed and reduced time you have paid for, and train travel the instant a train doesn't arrive as per schedule or has to be replaced by a bus.
It's like we live under a capitalistic system that's funded by the taxes of labour 🤷
I agree wholeheartedly
Do you know the bridge is state-owned and only the tunnel is operated by Transurban, which, drum-roll, is a private corporation, not a charity? Most comments here read like people are unaware. Also lol at the people who think the state sold Citylink out to Transurban for the tunnel. U think even if it's handed back to the state ur gonna get free travel?
How about car drivers actually pay for what they use?? One time!!
They do? Part of paying car registration each year goes towards maintenance of state owned roads.
the amount of money spent on road maintenance dwarfs the pittance that's captured through rego.
Car drivers are subsidised by everyone else.
Isn't that how taxation works though?
The amount of money that's spent on public transport dwarfs the pittance that's captured through ticket sales.
The government pools taxes from various sources and then spends it however they please, usually very poorly or on themselves.
The difference is that public transit scales much better per person than car infrastructure does.
Every person who takes a train instead of driving saves the government money.
Lol
Rego does not cover anything.
driving isnt the only option!
Driving may very well have been the only sensible option for OP - we know absolutely nothing about the details of their travels.
and the point of that comment is?
Lol. Take a train to Werribee. Get off train. Where's my car with all my gear, tent, camping shit etc?....oh yeah. Back at home. It didn't magically appear for me at the station to continue my trip.
But Reddit told me to take the train because apparently that's what we all should be doing.
how do you think the buildings get built in the city? they wheel in the tools everyday on trains from werribeeeeeee
Haha! I am on a vline to Geelong that is stuck due to a train fault and the wait for all services will end up longer than the bridge wait. There are no good options to the west
for the west? are you the only one that gets road or rail delays? at least you got to keep your numerous regional connections, those on the otherside had theirs closed,
Profiteering at it’s finest.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 transurban are doing a happy dance in their piles of money.
I’m still pissed I have to pay “light commercial rates” for my Ute. I’ve been pissed off for 10 years
Once I stuck on city link for 2 hours Cz sand spilled on road from truck and still paid 11 $
Good
Weird too as I think they've announced the tunnel actually will be free, but only on weekends and in January... Convenient.
Free at the weekends so yesterday we free. I used it going home and was a breeze.
It's only free in January.
https://www.linkt.com.au/using-toll-roads/news/west-gate-tunnel-free-weekend-travel-in-january
Oh you sweet summer child. After years and years of construction they then choose to to do "annual maintenance" on Westgate bridge and you "choose" to pay for the new toll road because it is easier? Such a wonderful, profitable convenience!
I mean transurban has nothing to do with the West Gate Bridge
100%
And there is annual maintenance on the Westgate Bridge every year - along with the same complaints from people who somehow missed all the notifications about it.
And once you’re over the Westgate (or through the tunnel), the traffic on the freeway is still just as horrendous as everyone is heading down to the Bellarine Peninsula, Surf Coast etc.
So many people like to think things should be adjusted to suit them. Guess what? It’s summer, roads are busy.
If they did the maintenance last month everybody would complain that the government should have waited for the tunnel to open before doing maintenance