source : the age
Kids these days will never understand the joy of pulling up to the Gateway Bridge toll booth, rummaging in the cupholder for a few coins, and then pegging them into a metal basket (or at a real person) before speeding away.
The effortless Linkt beep is symbolic of how far we’ve come, but it’s not to say we’ve solved the many logistical nightmares plaguing other points of infrastructure. Just ask Brisbane City Council.
This week, we learned the Story Bridge is in worse shape than expected.
Toll booths have come a long way, but how we fund road infrastructure faces many challenges.Credit: Robert Rough
Actually, we kind of already knew. Last year, council announced it was seeking more than $4 million from the federal government to complete a detailed business case for the Story Bridge’s restoration.
The federal government pledged $2.25 million to develop a case by 2027, and things were quiet until ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred approached in early March.
As the city braced for impact, council shut the bridge’s footpaths, and then kept them closed. Council (much) later confirmed this was because engineers needed to carry out assessments and testing on the bridge.
This led to the discovery of extensive corrosion and damage, and we now know the Story Bridge needs major intervention and a full restoration, and council need help to pay for it.
State and federal government are top of that list, but should council’s funding pleas go unanswered, Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said they will be forced to consider an annual rates levy, a toll, or private sponsorship.
Despite spending the first seven years of its life as a toll bridge, the suggestion to charge drivers for use of the Story Bridge has been met with resistance, particularly given the costly toll roads already operating around Brisbane.
The Go Between Bridge connecting West End with the inner-city costs $3.95 for a normal car. The Clem7, which runs under the Story Bridge and will absorb traffic when it shuts for repairs, costs $6.33.
These tolls add up for regular users, and they rise with CPI each year.
They also deter drivers and seem to push congestion elsewhere, the opposite of their intended effect. According to average daily traffic figures, about 94,535 cars used the Story Bridge each day in 2024. It’s around 46,633 for the William Jolly Bridge.
Compare that to the tolled Go Between Bridge which averaged only 10,000 vehicles each day, half of what it was projected when it initially opened.
Asked in March if it would consider lifting the toll on the Go Between during restoration works on the Story Bridge, council said there were no plans to remove it.
There’s also the challenge of unwinding tolls. In the case of the Gateway Bridge, tolls were supposed to be lifted in 2018 when it was paid off, but were instead extended to 2051. We’ve seen similar scenarios when private companies front up money to build or repair, under the expectation of returning revenue.
At some point in the next decade, Brisbane’s Story Bridge will close for a period for restoration works. What’s less clear is who will pay for it. Credit: Courtney Kruk
The Story Bridge has to close at some point in the next decade for restoration works, but we’re not sure who will pay for it, and there’s not a particularly attractive alternative for road users.
Griffith University’s Professor Matthew Burke is sympathetic of council’s predicament, and says the current Story Bridge debacle exposes broader flaws in our infrastructure system.
“The Australian Federation has built into the system a problem where the federal government has all the money, the state government has most of the powers … and the city councils who own most of the streets and most of the roadways have all the problems and none of the power and none of the money,” he says.
Burke says it’s not unusual that an asset like the Story Bridge was left with council to maintain, but it’s unreasonable to expect their budget to cover end of life costs, particularly as these have risen.
“The cost of maintaining the assets we have is becoming problematic … it’s costing us a lot more to deliver infrastructure than we expected five years ago, and it’s costing us a lot more to maintain.”
Council already charges a transport levy, so it seems unrealistic they would introduce another. And rather than re-tolling the Story Bridge, Burke says governments need to think bigger about charges that could feed into all road infrastructure.
“We haven’t yet brought in a replacement for fuel tax for electric vehicles … so we have a large class of road users who are not paying fuel taxes that pay for the national road network,” Burke says.
“But what I do see coming in the not to distant future is a shift from fuel taxes [and] the way we pay for our transport to what’s called ‘electronic road pricing’.
“So we’ll be moving to a version of tolling based on how far we go on our road networks.”
I doubt council were thinking about end-of-life options for the Story Bridge 20 years ago, when I was chucking coins at the Gateway Bridge. They probably wish they weren’t having to think about it right now. And whatever the outcome for the bridge’s future is, it certainly needs to include a sharper future view.
