Australia: Privatised road tunnel creates havoc in Sydney due to Boycott

international | miscellaneous | other press

Friday October 21, 2005 11:49

by Terry

Motorists boycott of privatised tunnel. A lesson for us here

In Sydney Australia the politicians have clearly being take a leaf out of the politicians books here as a 30 year deal was done with a private company for a toll on a tunnel in the city.

Likewise our toll bridges, especially the one over the Liffey on the M50 -the West Link. Except that the Austrialian govt. hadn't expected the motorists to boycott it.

This is a lesson for us here and Irish motorists too should likewise boycott our toll bridges and roads if they want to get the parasites off their backs.

Here's some extracts from the report: "

Australia: Privatised road tunnel creates havoc in Sydney"

which can be found at the URL below:

"..In the face of a motorists’ boycott of the privately run tunnel, the state Labor government has been thrown into crisis, as public attention has revealed what amounts to nothing less than the plunder of public funds for the benefit of private road and other infrastructure companies."

Come on! we should be doing the same here.

"Only the boycott of the tunnel by Sydney motorists disrupted this lucrative arrangement. Less than 25,000 cars presently use the tunnel each day, with other drivers taking alternative routes to avoid the exorbitant $3.56 minimum toll for each trip on the private road. The Cross City Tunnel owners declared a three-week period, beginning October 24, of free travel in order to boost traffic."

Direct Action works and gets results immediately.

Now doesn't this strike you as something that our government would also do?

"..In an extraordinary measure befitting that of a police state, the government of Premier Morris Iemma has tried to dragoon motorists into the tunnel by shutting down and restricting a number of public roads in the area. When this predictably provoked public outrage, the government admitted that the 30-year contract negotiated with the tunnel’s owners compelled it to take such measures to ensure an adequate traffic flow on the road. Under the terms of the deal, within a five-kilometre radius of the tunnel, up to 500 roads in a dozen suburbs can be closed or restricted. (The contract euphemistically refers to such measures as “road calming”)........The result has been traffic chaos throughout many parts of eastern Sydney. "

Now doesn't this sound like the sort of deals that they make in this country?....

"Underlying the deal is an understanding between the NSW government and the Cross City Tunnel owners that the former would do everything in its power—including the deliberate and systematic sabotage of the local road network—to ensure that the company received an adequate return on its investment. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, one section of the contract requires the state government to buy out the Cross City Tunnel operators and pay expected profits of up to $100 million a year for the next 30 years if it fails to maintain the specified public road and lane closures."

For the full text of the article click on the URL below

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Australia: Privatised road tunnel creates havoc in Sydney due to Boycott