Most people may not no what eventually happened in the previous upgrade to the Logan motorway, on the east side of Beaudesert road.
The original proposal was for traffic lights controlling a right-hand turn lane for traffic traveling South and wanting to go West. Transurban said it would be too expensive to have a underpass or overpass. But then all of a sudden it was built.
Why?
The whole upgrade was orchestrated by what was called a Market-Led Proposal, Do a Google search on it, if you want to know more.
Basically means that the contract is given to one organisation and there's no competitive bidding involved, because it's entirely funded by that organisation.
But the state government did a deal with transurban whereby the toll on trucks only, was increased.
This was a sneaky tactic by the government to say that there would be no increase in taxes or tolls to ordinary citizens.
However it's the exact opposite.
Private businesses operating trucks have to make a profit. If ther cost increase, as a consequence of higher tolls, they pass on those costs to however their customers are. Those customers pass on the costs in the form of price increases on all goods and services that we all consume. So indirectly we all paid for it.
I assume the same proposition is being put again. One company has the ability to profit without competitive tendering.
Is this financially and morally fair?
Practically all upgrades to vervicular traffic roads throughout the world in the long-term have not resulted in any long term reduction in traffic congestion. It's called induced demand. Do a Google search on it.
However from an overall economic point of view, traffic congestion with its incremental upgrades is good for the economy. You can make more money by creating problems than solving them.
There are multiple ways of reducing traffic congestion rather than adding more capacity. One is to reduce demand. There are multiple ways of doing that.
Another is to spread the demand times. Why does everybody have to start and finish work and school at approximatly the same time?
Yet another is to have all the lanes going the same way at certain times. Utilising the non peak times when ther is fair less traffic going the other way.
Then ther are all the other methods which requires creative thinking, outside the box.
I will be interesting to see what form the “public consultation” is going to take. Perhaps more of, this is what is going to happen.