The Western Distributor in the central city,the Gore Hill and Warringah freeways on the north shore,the M4 motorway west of Parramatta,and Southern Cross Drive and General Holmes Drive near Sydney Airport were also named as targets for tolls.
The briefings from Treasury and Transport for NSW also show that bureaucrats considered creating a “CBD zone” whereby drivers would be charged an “access fee” when passing certain points on motorways or arterial routes into the central city.
The previous government repeatedly delayed plans to release a Treasury-led review it had commissioned into Sydney’s patchwork of toll roads before losing power in March.
However,it flagged last September long-term plans to introduce road-user charges to reduce Sydney’s congestion and remove inequities in the tolling system.
The new Labor government has tasked former competition watchdog chief Alan Fels with leading areview into the city’s tolling network,while promising to reveal the full extent of multibillion-dollar tolling deals underpinning the regime.
Fels will release on Wednesday a paper on the new government’s review,which will detail how the public can become involved to make the system fairer and simpler.