City gambles on new $4.61 tollway

BRISBANE has rolled the dice on how much drivers will pay to bypass traffic gridlock, with the toll on its next road tunnel up to $4.61.

BRISBANE has rolled the dice on how much drivers will pay to bypass traffic gridlock, with the toll on its next road tunnel up to $4.61.

The 5km Northern Link, between Toowong in Brisbane's west and Bowen Hills in its inner north, will be built by a joint venture involving Italian construction giant Acciona, Australian construction firm BMD Holdings and Italian tunnelling specialist Ghella.

Ghella's credits include train tunnels for the trans-Siberian railway in Russia.

Work on the $1.5bn project is due to start by the end of the year, stepping up road construction across Brisbane.

But locals are yet to warm to the tollways championed by Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman to ease traffic congestion. The Clem7 tunnel has attracted just half of the predicted traffic flow since coming on line six months ago, forcing private operator RiverCity Motorway to slash the planned $4.28 toll to $2, and then to absorb a $1.56 billion writedown.

The planned $2.70 toll on the recently opened Go Between bridge, feeding off the fee-free Inner City Bypass to West End, has been cut to $1.50 for the remainder of the year by the council, with plans to step it up to $2.35 from next July.

Meanwhile, work is advanced on the 6.7km mainly underground Airport Link, which will spin out of the tunnel hub at Bowen Hills to Brisbane airport, next to a massive new two-lane byway running past the nearby Royal Brisbane Hospital.

Mr Newman said yesterday the toll on the Northern Link tunnel would be set at $3 for cars for the first 12 months after opening in 2014, with the full toll to be capped at a maximum of $4.61.

The project would be financed by a $703 million loan to the council from the Queensland government, after the municipal authority was forced to scrap plans to replicate the public-private partnership used for the Clem7 link. The federal government has promised to kick in an additional $500m.

Mr Newman insisted the Northern Link would meet the traffic forecasts.

"Council's projections for Northern Link are conservative, and evidence from operational toll roads around Australia shows governments are on the money with their traffic forecasts in the long term," the Lord Mayor said.

But the council's Labor Opposition Leader, Shayne Sutton, said Mr Newman was exposing the city to massive risk by taking on the Northern Link.

Additional reporting: AAP