Drivers are paying more than ever on toll roads, but some suburbs are feeling the pain more than others.

One company, Transurban, operates 18 of Australia’s 22 toll roads. With the price of tolls pegged to inflation, it is reaping the rewards of the cost-of-living crisis.

Who is feeling the pinch most? Four Corners analysed commutes in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.

We found rising toll road prices were hitting residents in outer suburbs the hardest.

Sydney

Sydney is threaded with toll roads. More than 150km of them weave through the city.

In Sydney’s south, Wollondilly residents who drive to the city every workday can spend about 17 per cent of their average income on tolls.

Motorists travelling from the Hills District to the city every workday can spend about 11 per cent of their average income on tolls.

See how Four Corners analysed this data

Edwina Heiler, from Castle Hill, feels sick when she thinks about how much money she used to spend driving on toll roads.

Until December last year, she used three toll roads every workday to get from her home in Sydney’s north-west to her job as a school administration officer in North Sydney.

She was spending up to $150 per week.

“That’s half our grocery bill,” she said.

“My husband and I both work hard, we’re trying to provide for our kids. So, it’s hard when they ask for things, and you have to say no because the money’s just not there because you’re paying for tolls.”

The cost eventually became too much to bear, and Ms Heiler had no choice but to quit and find a new job closer to home.

“I really liked that job … and I liked the people I worked with. It just wasn’t feasible anymore.”

Since Ms Heiler changed jobs, the NSW government has introduced a rebate scheme that lets drivers reclaim tolls once they spend more than $60 per week on the roads.

The government has made clear that the $520 million scheme is temporary. When it ends in 2026, drivers may be back to paying full price.

Transurban operates 11 toll roads in Sydney.

The city’s other two toll roads, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel, are owned by the state government.

Transurban declined an interview and did not directly answer questions about its business.

In a statement, it said drivers struggling to pay their toll bill could access its hardship program.

“There are a range of support measures available, including more time to pay, debt waivers, toll credits and free support for broader problems they may be experiencing,” the statement said.

Melbourne

In Melbourne, motorists who live in the outer suburbs can pay a big chunk of their average salary to get into the city.

Drivers heading into the city from the Mornington Peninsula pay about 18 cents per kilometre for the return trip, using both the CityLink and EastLink toll roads.

It is equally taxing on drivers in Greater Dandenong, who may spend about 12 per cent of the area’s average salary on tolls for the same trip.

In Victoria, there are serious consequences for people who do not pay when they use toll roads.

Drivers can be fined hundreds of dollars, or in extreme cases, face prison time.

Figures obtained by the Peninsula Community Legal Service under freedom of information laws show Fines Victoria issued 252,118 toll fines worth a total of $46 million in 2022-23.

A lawyer from Inner Melbourne Community Legal, Shifrah Blustein, who regularly deals with clients with big toll fines, says the system is unfair.

It is very rare for her clients to have intentionally avoided paying tolls, she said.

“We have women escaping, literally using the toll roads to escape incidents of family, family violence. And then they’re fined for it.”

If drivers don’t pay their toll debts, which are owed to private companies, the debts are eventually handed over to the state, where they become fines.

People can then be arrested by officers of the Victorian Sheriff’s Office and bailed to appear in a criminal court.

That is what happened in June to Melbourne roofer Bruce Maybus, who owes $185,000 in fines for unpaid tolls.

“There’s no way I’ll be able to afford that,” he said.

Most of Mr Maybus’s fines are for trips on EastLink, which is owned by a consortium of global investors, including the federal government’s Future Fund.

Some were for trips on Transurban’s CityLink.

He had his first court appearance in September, but his lawyer won an adjournment. Bruce is now organising a report which could see his fines dismissed on medical grounds.

Drivers can apply to have their penalties waived if they’ve faced hardship like mental illness, addiction or family violence.

“It’s still a headache that’s going to be there.Hopefully I can move and … start living a bit more life rather than always worrying about this debt that’s hanging over my head,” Mr Maybus said.

In the 2023-24 financial year, 1,465 people faced the Victorian Magistrates Court over toll fines.

Under Victorian government changes introduced in 2020, drivers can only be issued one toll fine per week.

That has led to a sharp drop in the number of fines, which have more than halved from a peak of 600,000 in 2020.

The state government expects annual revenue from toll fines to increase from $39 million last financial year to $65 million next year.

Lawyer Shifrah Blustein believes the government should take unpaid tolls out of the criminal justice system and treat them like any other private debt.

“I think people are entitled to feel a level of outrage that … the taxpayer is absorbing the costs of a system that is designed to protect a private company’s profits,” she said.

“This is just a revenue protection issue.”

In a statement, the Victorian government said drivers could pay off fines through community service or drug and alcohol counselling.

“We urge people who can’t pay their fines to contact Fines Victoria to work out a way of addressing it,” it said.

ConnectEast, which owns the EastLink toll road, also said if drivers were struggling to pay tolls, they could access its hardship program.

“ConnectEast is able to request the withdrawal of infringements relating to unpaid EastLink travel, on the basis of hardship and an appropriate hardship application received from the individual,” the spokesman said.

“Unpaid travel on EastLink should have serious consequences, to ensure fairness for all motorists, including the vast majority of people who do pay for their EastLink travel.”

Brisbane

Six toll roads crisscross Brisbane. Over the past decade, Transurban has bought up every one of them.

Like in Melbourne, the operator can hand unpaid debts to the state government to be enforced as fines.

Simon Barclay spent years putting off starting a family because of a hefty toll road debt that was converted into a fine when he failed to pay it off.

Mr Barclay said he missed 25 tolls driving to work 10 years ago on Brisbane’s Airport Link, due to a faulty e-tag.

By the time Queensland authorities got involved he owed nearly $8,000 in fines, which he paid off in monthly instalments.

“Coming to the end of paying off that $8,000, I could feel nothing but begrudgement really that I would have been the victim effectively of something that was predatory,” he said.

Ipswich and Logan residents account for the bulk of Queensland’s staggering $125 million in unpaid toll fines.

Drivers living in these council areas can spend a large portion of their income to travel on toll roads.

For Ipswich residents, travelling to and from the airport on toll roads Monday to Friday costs about 12 per cent of the area’s average yearly income.

A trip from the north side of Logan to the airport and back costs $17.90 via toll roads.

Over a year, that can amount to 8.7 per cent of the area’s average annual income.

Former postman Peter has a unique perspective on the consequences for people who don’t keep up with their toll bills.

He says he delivered thousands of toll debt letters while working in the Logan suburbs of Beenleigh and Eagleby for three years until he retired in 2021.

“It started to play on my mind,” he said.

“I realised that these letters that I was delivering were to people who were for some reason found themselves in unfortunate circumstances,” he said.

“After I started noticing them, I was delivering to certain people in certain places, sometimes three a week over two weeks, sometimes five.”

Drivers who miss toll payments incur administration fees, which can add up to vastly more than the original toll.

In Queensland, Transurban currently charges drivers a $10.53 administration if they travel on a toll road without a valid account or day pass. It charges another $29.50 if the toll remains unpaid.

Law firm Piper Alderman is running a class action against Transurban, the Queensland government and Brisbane City Council, claiming the fees are unlawful.

Lawyer Greg Whyte from Piper Alderman believes the administration fees should be closer to $1.

“One of the real terrors of the system is how it can run out of control very, very easily with just slight inattention or if you’re travelling and if you haven’t paid, you may end up with notices upon notices, fees upon fees,” he said.

“It seems disproportionate, and it seems really unfair.”

Transurban did not respond to questions about the class action.

Plotting tolls escalation rates

Prices on Transurban’s roads in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are guaranteed to rise during periods of high inflation because they are pegged to the consumer price index.

Even when inflation is low, Transurban enjoys locked-in annual price increases of 4 per cent for most of its roads, secured by decades-long contracts with state governments.

To see how this could affect drivers in the future, Four Corners took three routes to retired transport actuary Ian Bell.

Using the current cost of tolls from destinations 20 kilometres away from three capital city airports, Mr Bell plotted the rise using escalation rates.

The projection found:

• An $11.78 toll from Parramatta to Mascot will double to $25.82 by 2045.
• To drive from Oxley, in Brisbane’s south-west, motorists face two tolls to the airport, which cost $13.05. They will have a combined total of $21.64 by 2040.
• The Richmond to Tullamarine route, which costs $11.63, will increase by as much as $10.66 in the next two decades.

‘We need to put motorists first’

One of the architects of Australia’s toll road industry has made a remarkable intervention to call for change.

Tony Shepherd, who helped negotiate the original contracts for the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and Melbourne’s CityLink and EastLink tollways, says governments should refuse to accept guaranteed toll increases above inflation under future contracts for new toll roads.

“We put it in there originally because the risks were just so enormous, and that was what we had to do to get people to invest,” he said.

“Now, I think we’ve matured in the business, and I think it would be better to tie it to actual inflation and be more acceptable to the users.”

In its statement, Transurban said it did not have control over toll prices set in its contracts with governments.

“Toll prices in Australia, and how much they rise, have always been determined by state or local governments, as have the charges associated with toll notices and late payments,” it said.

Transurban’s most recent financial statements show it earned $3.2 billion from toll roads in 2023-24 — an increase in revenue of almost a billion dollars from two years earlier.

Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels thinks governments should take back pricing control over existing roads.

“We need to put motorists first in making policy, not the operators and owners,” he said.

In July, Professor Fels and economist David Cousins produced an independent review for the NSW government, which called for toll road prices to be set by a government agency.

It found drivers in Sydney woudl pay $125 billion in tolls by the time all the existing toll roads were handed back to the public in 2060.

“Transurban would like the system to continue forever, but they need a social licence and that social licence is diminishing quite heavily because the public does not like the very high prices and governments will have to step in and do something,” he said.

The NSW government is yet to respond to the review, but Roads Minister John Graham says the government is now negotiating with Transurban and its investment partners about the proposals.

“There’s a real need here for a better deal for drivers. If we don’t reform tolls, Sydney will become a more congested place to live. It’ll be less productive than it should be,” he said.

In its statement, Transurban said it had “long advocated for reform” of Sydney’s toll road network.

“We’re working with the NSW government and our partners to find a solution that benefits everyone, particularly motorists … We are also giving our customers better information about travel time savings and price so that they can more easily make a choice about using our roads.”