February 2012 - Sydney's Cross City Tunnel tollway is on the brink of receivership for the second time in six years, despite claims it is attracting record levels of traffic. The owners, Cross City Motorway, including construction firm Leighton Holdings and the Royal Bank of Scotland, denied that it was within weeks of being handed a wind-up notice, or being forced into receivership.
At the heart of what appears to be heading to a legal battle is a debate over $60 million in stamp duty that the company owes to the NSW government's Office of State Revenue. The consortium denies that it is in financial strife, saying it bought the $700 million tunnel in 2007 on the understanding that it did not have to pay stamp duty.
Cross City Motorway said that traffic numbers continue to grow each year and the business is stable and successful. But it has long been known the financial difficulties began when early traffic numbers were found to be well below forecasts.
"CCM Pty Ltd is in confidential discussions with the Office of State Revenue," a spokeswoman said. "The Cross City Tunnel has been a stable and successful business since changing ownership in 2007 with steady increases in traffic numbers. The purchase in September 2007 was undertaken on the basis that no stamp duty was payable. The owners of the Cross City Tunnel still believe that to be the situation and are in discussions with the Office of State Revenue on the matter."
Of course CARR is very much against toll roads and the reason CARR exists is to help motorists avoid toll roads and send them broke, so that they are taken over by state governments and revert to freeways, as they should have been in the first place.
We can only hope that the Cross City Tunnel is not bailed out by the government and it does go completely broke, along with every other toll road. With the money that motorists fork out in registration fees, fuel taxes and excise and tax on motor vehicle purchases, the very least that they should expect is to be able to drive on decent roads without having to fork out additional money in tolls.
Motorists in Sydney need to avoid the Cross City Tunnel at all costs and help kill it off completely, Then it will be interesting to see what happens to it, whether it is made part of the public road system or closed down completely.
February 2012 - Up to 10,000 Sydney motorists have been wrongly billed for using a Melbourne tollway more than 900km away caused by a fault in newly installed software by toll company Transurban. On the same day it announced a $97 million net profit for the first six months of the financial year, Transurban admitted that it had only found the error, more than six weeks after implementing the new customer database.
In that time, drivers from NSW and possibly other states have been wrongly charged each time a Victorian motorist with the same numberplate used the CityLink road in Melbourne. Transurban, which operates the CityLink tollway and many of Sydney motorways including the Eastern Distributor, M2 and M7, said as many as 10,000 drivers had been wrongly billed up to $7.20 for each trip and each would be refunded without being sent an infringement notice.
The company said that the error took place each time a Victorian driver who didn't have an account with Citylink failed to pay for their toll. The new computer then wrongly found an identical numberplate in NSW that had a tollroad account with one of the four providers: the RMS, Eway, Roam or Roam Express. Transurban also stated that toll revenue had increased 6% to $473.8 million for all of the roads it operated in Australia and the USA in the last six months.
Firstly, motorists who follow the CARR mantra of completely boycotting toll roads would not have been caught up in this fiasco. Secondly, one cannot help noticing the extraordinary $7.20 toll charge for using Melbourne's CityLink. A motorist using this tollway for a return trip to work five days per week would spend $14.40 per day, which is $72 per week or for a 48 week work year, a whopping $3456 just on one tollway.
This sum of money could buy a seven night holiday for two people to Disneyland in California. It could buy four deluxe large-screen LCD television sets. It could buy a lot of nice things, but squandering $3456 every year just to drive on a congested tollway when motorists can drive on public roads that they are already paying for in their registration fees and petrol taxes is sheer madness.
As usual, CARR advises all motorists to use GPS receivers to route themselves around toll roads and save a lot of money and at the same time, help to send them broke, so that these toll roads eventually revert to becoming freeways. However, if motorists do use toll roads, they should always check their accounts to see if they have not been ripped off by the sort of problems encountered by Transurban in this case.
February 2012 - Victoria's new speed camera watchdog has vowed to get rid of any cash cow cameras and wants motorists to help identify them. Former County Court judge Gordon Lewis said he would push for the removal of any cameras he finds have been placed to raise revenue rather than save lives. Lewis is Australia's first independent road safety camera commissioner and he appealed for motorists with traffic camera complaints to contact him.
Lewis urged drivers to tell him about any fixed or mobile camera sites that they believed were being used on relatively safe roads primarily to raise revenue and boost State Government coffers. He also promised he would monitor every one of the state's 467 speed and red light cameras to ensure they were reliable and accurate.
Thousands of motorists are contesting EastLink fines, many snapped at 108kph. Lewis said that he would seek an explanation from government and other bodies as to why so many motorists were being caught by EastLink cameras at exactly 108kmph. His office will investigate sites identified by motorists and if he agrees the cameras are providing no significant road safety benefit he will recommend to the Government they be removed.
A similar examination by the NSW Auditor-General in 2011 found 38 of the 141 fixed speed cameras in NSW were not improving road safety and the NSW Government immediately switched them off. Lewis said while he had no power to force the Government to remove cameras, he expects his findings will be acted on. "The assurances I have got is that the Government and the minister will pay heed to what I do recommend," Lewis said. He will also make his recommendations public, putting pressure on the Government not to ignore them.
CARR will believe this only when it happens. The Victorian Baillieu Liberal government has proven to be just as rapacious and greedy for revenue as the previous Labor regime. For a solid decade when in opposition, Ted Baillieu ranted about speed cameras being nothing but revenue-raisers and he pledged to have them all removed if he was elected. Well he was elected and typical of so many lying politicians, he not only refused to have them removed, but is installing even more cameras.
It has been proven all over the world that speed cameras not only do not stop people from driving too fast, but actually cause more accidents, as motorists spend more time with their eyes on speedometers than the road. The British town of Swindon switched off its speed cameras and the road toll fell substantially. Oxfordshire became the first county to shut down its entire camera speed camera network. Its move was closely followed by an announcement from Wiltshire county council that its camera operation, which runs 16 sites, will be disbanded. Buckinghamshire is also dismantling 10 camera sites.
In the USA, speed cameras on Arizona freeways were shut off. Originally put up in 2008, the cameras fell far short of their estimated potential revenue and the contract with their provider was allowed to expire. The key words - "fell far short of their estimated potential revenue" - prove beyond doubt that the cameras were originally installed to raise revenue and were removed because it cost more to have them there. And this is exactly why speed cameras are installed all over Australia, merely to boost government coffers as taxation devices.
All motorists in Australia should campaign to have every speed camera removed. Many of them are faulty and inaccurate and wrongly book motorists, who usually have no way of proving that they were actually driving within the speed limit. CARR advises every motorist to use a car black box recorder to fight wrongful bookings and take civil legal action against the state if those wrongful bookings are dismissed by a court. Motorists should also campaign against any politicians who will not make a legally binding pledge to remove those cameras if they are elected.
February 2012 - NSW and Victorian police are considering buying big brother speed cameras with hi-tech laser technology that can detect speeding and mobile phone use from further than ever before. The cameras are able to spot drivers talking on mobile phones or not wearing a seatbelt from 500 metres away.
The cameras, worth almost $20,000 each, are mounted on a roadside tripod and can record video evidence of up to 4000 offences to DVD. The equipment, known as Concept II, is so powerful, and the resolution so sharp, it is able to capture motorists using mobile phones, not wearing a seatbelt, running a red light or speeding from a distance of between 20 and 500 metres. NSW police confirmed that they were considering buying the British cameras.
This development comes as it was revealed that 30 new highway patrol vehicles are now patrolling Sydney's six busiest freeways to reduce accidents by cracking down on motorists using phones, eating breakfast, or reading the paper while sitting in traffic.
There is no doubt that certain activities performed while driving are dangerous, but many of these so-called offences are not in the slightest bit risky. The NSW Police say that they are cracking down on people eating breakfast while driving, but what is the difference between a motorist eating a cereal bar and a motorist smoking? Both activities merely involve raising a hand to the mouth, yet CARR has never heard of a motorist being booked for smoking while driving.
Any motorist who is booked for eating a food item while driving could go to court and haul the cop into the witness box and demand that he testify as to how many motorists he booked for smoking while driving. This will immediately prove that although both activities are literally the same, the motorist eating a cereal bar is being persecuted unfairly, even though many accidents have been caused by drivers who have dropped their lit cigarettes or hot ash into their laps and hit other cars while trying not to get burned.
There are many ways to embarrass the police using these revenue-raising devices. For instance if a motorist sees one of these cameras, he can drive towards it with one hand cupped to his face as if he is talking on a mobile phone, yet merely just scratching his ear, a perfectly legitimate act. When he is booked on a mobile phone offence, he can go to court and produce his phone records to show that no calls were made or received by him at the time and if there is another person in the car as a witness, that person can testify that the driver was not using a mobile phone. Not only can the motorist beat the wrongful booking, but he would have grounds to demand all court costs for his time and also possibly sue the police for harassment.
There are other perfectly legitimate acts that a motorist can perform while driving that are just as distracting as eating a cereal bar. Has a motorist ever been booked for changing stations on his car radio or operating the air-conditioning controls on the dashboard? All these acts involve removing a hand from the steering wheel and taking one's eyes off the road, far more risky than raising a cereal bar to the mouth while driving. Yet CARR has never heard of a motorist being booked for tuning his car radio or pushing any buttons on his car air-conditioning.
When all these matters are taken into consideration, even a complete idiot can see that these new hi-tech cameras are going to be used primarily to raise revenue for governments. It is apparent that governments have far more interest in ripping money from people than saving their lives. For instance, the Australian road toll is around 1700 deaths per year. Around 20% of those deaths, 340 or so people die in car accidents because they are not wearing seatbelts. All governments have made it mandatory for every car occupant to wear a seatbelt and the penalties for not doing so are very high.
Yet at the same time, smoking, which kills around 20,000 people every year in Australia is still legal. Why? There is only one plausible explanation and that is because governments reap inordinate amounts of revenue from tobacco excise and tax - one of the so-called "sin taxes" and although governments make token attempts at trying to reduce the incidence of smoking, the last thing that they want to see is the massive loss of revenue that would result if tobacco products were banned - and most of those 20,000 lives saved each year.
But using the pretext of trying to save the lives of the few people who drive without wearing seatbelts, governments spend large sums of money on technology such as these high-tech cameras and cops looking to book motorists for this offence. It is ludicrous to see a cop booking a motorist for not wearing a seatbelt and that motorist smoking at the same time, which will probably kill him more certainly than not wearing that seatbelt. All motorists need to fight wrongful and illogical bookings at every opportunity and also consider suing police and governments for this.
January 2012 - Only around a quarter of Victorian drivers favour tolls on new and existing roads, even if they slash congestion. Two-thirds believe it is unfair for motorists to have to pay tolls and they believe that it should be up to governments to pay for new roads.
The views are at odds with bodies such as Infrastructure Australia, which are reluctant to approve federal financing for new road projects without tolling. The toll backlash comes after it was revealed in January 2012 that the cost of a 24-hour pass on CityLink had risen almost 100% since the road opened in 2000. The research also revealed more than 70% of Victorians disagreed with the idea of a congestion tax and charging ordinary motorists to enter the CBD.
Transport Minister Terry Mulder stated that building major new freeways would not be possible without help from the Federal Government. "The Federal Government's Infrastructure Australia funding body says it would not consider funding new roads without tolls or other charging," he said.
It is the role of government to provide adequate infrastructure, funded by taxes and charges that motorists pay in the form of registration and high fuel taxes. Traditionally, all roads were built in this way and no tolls were imposed until governments abrogated their responsibility to provide public roads in favour of entrepreneurs constructing private roads on public lands and charging motorists for driving on them.
Despite this, governments still reap huge amounts of money from those taxes and charges, as well as the revenue from their highway robber divisions, speed cameras and police with speed guns acting as state tax officers collecting many millions of dollars in fines. But instead of using this revenue to build public roads, governments squander this money on pork-barreling, junkets for politicians and other wasteful nonsense.
Although all motorists should support the abolishing of toll roads, they can actually do something about forcing the issue in their favour. This is the reason that CARR was originally established, to encourage motorists to use their power of the boycott to completely avoid using toll roads, thus sending them broke, hopefully to be acquired by governments and made into toll-free public roads. And the best part is that by using technology such as GPS receivers, motorists can do this very easily and save a huge amount of money as well.
However, the biggest obstacles to achieving the abolition of toll roads are the motorists themselves, who in most cases complain bitterly about the high toll costs, but continue to use those toll roads daily. If that 75% of motorists who say that tolls are unfair would completely boycott using those toll roads, these moneymaking ripoffs would become deserts and the toll road operators would indeed go broke. Then hopefully those toll roads would become toll-free public roads.
Motorists are always quick to complain about expensive toll roads, revenue-raising speed cameras and other imposts, but most of them will not take active measures to do something about them. If motorists always avoided toll roads by using GPS receivers to route themselves around those toll roads, used camera warnings on their GPS receivers to prevent them getting booked by cameras, warned oncoming drivers of police speed traps and used car black boxes to fight wrongful bookings, toll road operators would go out of business and revenue-raising ripoffs such as camera and speed trap fines would become non-existent.
It is up to motorists to take active measures to protect themselves against road ripoffs and the CARR website has plenty of advice on how to achieve this. CARR founder Ziggy Zapata uses these methods and has not paid a cent in tolls for many years and still travels all over NSW and reaches his destinations in plenty of time. Ziggy does not get booked for speeding because his GPS receiver always warns him of speed and red-light cameras. Ziggy has also fought a wrongful booking and won. All motorists need to do the same - send toll roads broke, don't get booked by revenue-raising cameras and speed traps and do not allow anybody to rip them off.
January 2012 - According to statistics from the Office of State Revenue, almost 100 safety cameras are the new revenue-raising weapon of the NSW government and will raise nearly $200 million in fines for speeding, red light and mobile phone offences in 2012. Motorists paid $177 million in fines in 2011, up $7 million from the year before, despite the state government turning off 38 cameras that were deemed to be cash cows.
The latest cameras are able to detect both red light and speeding offences and are designed to catch drivers who see an orange light and accelerate to avoid having to stop. Having replaced many red light cameras, these new cameras are raising $4 million every month, compared to $30,000 a month at the start of 2010.
The most lucrative camera is located on Woodville Rd at Granville in Sydney's west, raking in $2.5 million in 2011 with almost 8000 fines issued. The top 10 richest safety cameras each raised an average of $1.2 million from 5000 fines. Other fines paid by drivers in 2011 included $55 million in police-issued speeding fines, $48 million in fixed camera speeding fines and $11.6 million for illegally using handheld mobile phones. Drivers also paid $18 million for speeding in school zones.
Roads Minister Duncan Gay said in July 2011 that the 38 speed cameras were shut down because they were not improving safety. "Under our government, gone are the days of the cameras being used for cash cows, as they were under the previous government," Gay said at the time.
Firstly, no driver ever has to be booked by a speed or red-light camera if he follows the CARR technique of using a GPS receiver with a current camera database and the audible alert warning him that he is approaching one of these highway robbers. Secondly, every driver should make it his duty to warn oncoming motorists of police speed traps and mobile camera vans by any means possible, because if every motorist did this, those revenue-raisers would literally not get to book anybody.
Thirdly, with literally every mobile phone these days having Bluetooth technology, no motorist should ever be booked for illegally using a mobile phone while driving. A Bluetooth car kit can be purchased for as little as $30, one-eighth the cost of the fine. With this facility being so cheap, there is no excuse for not using it to avoid being booked for this offence. In any case, most new cars these days have built-in Bluetooth facilities, so this should always be used.
For all their posturing and declarations that speed cameras were revenue-raisers, NSW Liberal politicians have shown themselves to be just as money-grabbing as their Labor predecessors when it comes to ripping off motorists. The same thing happened in Victoria, where for a solid decade, the Liberal opposition politicians Ted Baillieu and Peter Ryan screamed that speed cameras were nothing but revenue-raisers and that they were going to remove them if they achieved power. Of course when Baillieu was elected in 2011, he completely reneged on this and in fact is increasing the numbers of these cameras.
The moral of this is that no politician can be trusted, no matter what they promise. Australians have already experienced the serial lying of Labor prime minister Julia Gillard and her fellow Labor cronies, but Liberal politicians are just as prone to telling despicable lies to the people. Nevertheless, motorists have technology at their disposal and CARR advises that they use it every time they drive and in this way, never have to pay speeding fines or be booked for using mobile phones illegally.
January 2012 - The media reports that carpark operators are reaping millions of dollars a year in profits by charging up to $200 a day, simply because they can. With the industry estimated to be worth just under $1 billion, motorists are being forced to pay as much as $22 per hour in Sydney's CBD.
A six-hour stay at Secure Parking's World Square premises on George Street costs $77 plus $22 for each additional hour. A 10 to 11-hour stay costs a staggering $187. It is $89 for three hours at No 1 Martin Place and $72 for three hours at Atrium in Pitt Street. Sydney councils are raking in millions more from parking meters and private operators are forcing families to pay over the hourly minimum wage.
Wilson Parking charges $69 for three hours at Darling Park, $65 for three hours at Clarence Street and $59 for four hours at Citipark on the corner of Kent, Market and Sussex Streets. Motorists are also being stung by excessive rates including Secure Parking's Medica Centre Car Park in Hurstville which charges $26 for six hours and Wilson Parking's Miller Street station in North Sydney which charges $58 for three hours.
These parking fees are so outrageous that it is hard to fathom how the carpark operators get away with imposing them, however as the media commentators note, they do it simply because they can. However, these iniquitous parking fees are completely avoidable and CARR advocates that all motorists show their outrage by completely boycotting all parking stations that charge such fees. The CARR Parking web page shows exactly how to do this and still get everything done without paying one cent in parking fees and fines.
If it is completely unavoidable and you must go to Sydney CBD, just drive from your home to a suburb close to the city where there is free street parking all day near a bus route and catch the bus in and out of the city, then drive home from that free parking suburb. There's no risk of being booked, the bus fare is cheap and for seniors, it's $2.50 all day on all public transport. There is absolutely no need to drive all the way into Sydney CBD and pay those outrageous parking fees or even park on the street for $7 per hour and risk being booked if you are a few minutes late.
Of course the best thing to do is to completely boycott Sydney CBD, simply because there is literally nothing you can get there that you can't get in shopping centres in suburbs close to you, where parking is completely free. If all motorists just refused to drive into Sydney CBD and those carparks remained empty and the on-street parking spots remained vacant, then carpark operators and Sydney City Council would soon have to rethink their ripoff tactics and come back down to earth with reasonable or even free parking.
But if you need to pick up something from the Sydney CBD, there is a much better and cheaper way to do it. Use a courier. You can get a parcel or other item picked up in the Sydney CBD for around $15 and delivered right to your door, saving you time, money and effort. To drive into Sydney CBD from Castle Hill using toll roads takes about 45 minutes each way and parking for 2 hours will cost around $50 and motorists don't realise this. That is $50 in real cost, 3½ hours of time and effort and the risk of being booked on a meter. The courier costs just $15 or so to do the same thing for you, while you sit at home and do something productive instead.
If all motorists took CARR's advice, they would never pay these ripoff parking fees, never put themselves in a position to be booked for overstaying their parking times and still get everything done that they need to do. But if motorists do not take active measures to stop themselves being ripped off, then they have to just pay and pay - and grit their teeth, because they can't complain about something that they can totally avoid.
January 2012 - Motorists face yet another toll rise on Melbourne's CityLink. The cost of a 24-hour pass has risen almost 100 per cent since the road opened, double the rate of inflation. Under the latest toll increase, drivers will have to pay $13.80 for a 24 hour pass, a 97% increase on when the road opened in 2000.
Transurban, the company that runs CityLink, made $434.6 million from the tollway in the previous financial year, raking in almost $1.2 million a day from Victorian motorists. The company's contract with the Victorian Government allows it to increase tolls by the rate of inflation or 4.5 per cent, whichever is greater. The inflation rate has only been above 4.5 per cent once since the road opened, with tolls having risen 48 times in that time. CityLink tolls are allowed to rise every three months for 30 years.
As usual, CARR advocates that motorists should use their ultimate power of the boycott to avoid driving on all toll roads, not just CityLink and use GPS to route them on the quickest free roads. A motorist who avoids CityLink 5 days per week would save around $70 per week or around $3500 per year. That's a pretty decent chunk of money to be saving every year, merely by spending a few extra minutes each day in the car on free roads, rather than forking out the ripoff tolls on CityLink.
Unfortunately most motorists have been conditioned to accept these ripoff tolls, however if most of the people who now use toll roads simply refuse to do so, those toll roads would go broke and they would have to revert to the government and be made into freeways. No toll operator such as Transurban wants to hang onto a toll road with no cars using it and no government wants to maintain a road that it inherits that is not being used, so the logical outcome of this happening is that those toll roads would eventually become freeways - as they should have been in the first place.