31 August 2009Traffic projections for toll roads have far exceeded actual traffic, writes Michael West in The Age

DRIVING through Sydney's Cross City Tunnel is a majestic experience – and one that is certainly unimpeded by the profusion of other motor vehicles. Outside peak hour, a trip through the CCT can verge on the hallucinogenic. It is as if you are the last motorist in the world, racing along a gleaming, neon-lit tunnel like a kid in a video-game parlour - until the unnerving apparition of another motorist jolts the senses.

This is one fine feat of engineering. It cuts the trip time from east to west by 90 per cent. As a business proposition though, it went bust long ago. Motorists in the east and the west tend to drive to the city rather than through it, save perhaps the odd tradie from the west or an eastern suburbsite en route to the fish markets on a Sunday morning, or someone going to visit a long-lost auntie in hospital...

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Photo: Andrew Jeffrey