Ask Not About Sydney Tollways, They Toll For Thee

If I hear anyone in Singapore complain about ERP again I'll clock them upside their head, as they're living in bloody luxury!

This "system" in Sydney seems like a hodgepodge of separate companies running separate section of the tollways. I don't pretend to understand it.

All I know is the rental car girl said something, I nodded and I drove to town. I ended up near my hotel, found a carpark and went to sleep... Next morning I had to wake up at 4am (Singapore time), same thing for three days running, and I am on dopey-dopey medications and so I forgot that I had to do something about driving on a route that, when I lived in Sydney 10 years ago, was free. Even though technically it didn't exist back then.

It seems, now I look back to Sunday, that I had driven on two separate stretches of tollable motorway coming in; the Eastern Distributor and the Cross City Tunnel. Two separate companies, two ways to be tolled...

From the website:
"If you plan to travel on more than one fully electronic motorway, you may need to arrange a pass for each one."

Note the odd word there? PLAN. I had no PLAN. I just wanted to go to Sydney and sleep, I didn't PLAN it, I just got in the rental and drove...

That was Sunday, today is Friday. I realised yesterday as drove over the Coathanger that I had overlooked this. There were signs about eTags and E-Passes for some of the motorways as I drove along and so the memory of a responsibility overlooked filtered in slowly.

As I had stayed at a friend's place up in Waroongah last night, I couldn't do anything about it yesterday but now, back in my hotel, I just looked up the How To Pay number on the Internet ($69 per week) and called the "toll-free" number. The girl there gave me TWO numbers, one "toll-free" and one presumably tollable. On the first of the numbers, the "toll-free" one, another pleasant lady told me that my toll was not on her system yet. My car's registration was not registered as an infringing vehicle. Her system was for unpaid tolls which had tolled up an infringement 'notice'. As my alleged infringement was only 5 days old it wouldn't have been registered yet, that would take 10 days. I was in a rental car, I told her, and I'll be in Singapore by then (actually come to think of it, I'll be in Geelong).

Oh, she said, you were supposed to buy an eTag/Pass within 48 hours of using the system. (Ah, so that's what the girl at the rental counter had said! I'm just not registering anything I'm told these days.)

So I can't pay now? (I was in that hazy no-person's-land of not being able to pay the bill over the phone (in 48 hrs) and waiting for the notice (after 10 days). What sort of a system is this?)

Do I need to call the other motorway company, the one that runs the Cross City Tunnel? I asked.

No, I don't need to call the non-toll number, they work on the same (insert laugh-track here) "System."

That's OK, she told me, the toll will be tagged to the rental car company and she was sure they'd tell me all about it.

Friendly for tourists, I said.

Yes, she laughed, no, it isn't.


And the sextant tolled the bell.


E@L