An Interesting Development – Transurban talks increased tolls the day after tunnel chaos

Citylink Domain tunnel opened to traffic late yesterday after being closed all day.

CityLink operator Transurban says it will explore overhauling pricing — which could involve upping peak hour tolls — a day after it shut down Melbourne’s two busiest road tunnels due to a computer malfunction.

Melbourne’s CityLink tunnel network was forced to close early yesterday morning, causing the average 120,000 vehicles that use the roads everyday to be re-routed into city gridlock.

Speaking at the company’s annual general meeting this morning, Transurban chairman Lindsay Maxsted said he regretted the closure, but defended the company’s overall performance.

“Yesterday’s tunnel outage was completely unacceptable for all concerned. However, your board believes yesterday’s events are a truly exceptional circumstance — the first such event in 13 years of operations.”

He told shareholders that “more efficient” pricing models were a way of addressing the effects of traffic congestion.

“The cost of congestion to the Australian economy alone is expected to be about $20 billion by 2020,” he said

Georgia Wilkins, The Age, October 4, 2012 – 12:21

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/transurban-talks-tolls-the-day-after-tunnel-chaos-20121004-270zl.html#ixzz28IwtBIlN