Transurban’s CityLink toll road reaping $2.3m a day
Thought it was expensive using the toll roads? Transurban has made a cool profit on your daily use of CityLink, pocketing $2.3 million each day.
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Transurban collected a record $421 million from CityLink — more than $2.3 million a day — in the final six months of last year.
The Melbourne-based toll roads giant this morning said toll revenue from CityLink rose 5.6 per cent for the six months to December, compared to the same time a year earlier.
Traffic using the 22 kilometre tollway rose by 4.6 per cent.
Transurban collected $409 million in tolls and $12 million in “other revenue” from the road during the half year.
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The latest haul means Transurban has collected more than $8.3 billion from CityLink since it opened in 1999.
Annual revenue has surged by one-third over the past five years.
And the pay days are set to get fatter with the rate at which Transurban can lift annual toll charges to increase from inflation plus 2.5 per cent, to inflation plus 4.25 per cent from July.
The state government has promised to grant the toll road giant the right to charge motorists to use CityLink for another 10 years to 2045, in return for it helping to pay for the West Gate Tunnel project.
Transurban will stump up $4 billion to help build the $6.7 billion toll road.
The update on CityLink came as Transurban reported its first-half profit has fallen 61.8 per cent to $129 million after its costly acquisition of Sydney’s WestConnex motorway.
Overall toll revenue rose 14.7 per cent to $1.29 billion following a 2.7 per cent increase in average daily traffic across the company’s roads.
But various expenses and a $163 million increase in depreciation and amortisation pushed profit down from $338 million a year ago.
Transurban operates toll roads in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, and also in Virginia and Quebec in North America.
Last year it was part of a consortium which paid $9.3 billion for a 51 per cent stake in WestConnex.
— with AAP