Is an end to Sydney’s ‘tollmania’ in sight? Negotiations for a fairer and simpler system slow to a crawl

There are 156km of toll roads in Sydney, almost half the city’s motorway network, more than any other capital city in Australia. Photograph: Vu Viet Dzung/Getty Images

When the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in March 1932, drivers in both directions came to a halt for what is now a fixture on many of the city’s arteries: tolls, collected back then by smartly uniformed attendants.

Although northbound tolling ended in 1970, and the last booths were ripped out in 2020, electronic tolling remains for southbound drivers. Tolling’s original purpose, to pay off the bridge’s construction, was completed in 1988.