Self congratulation post #1 - Toll Roads

Driving the Apollo motor-home to Canberra through the M5 tollgates, I felt quite smug listening to my new Flow Toll electronic tag beep....


Most Canberrans would be familiar with Sydney toll roads, and in particular the M5 motorway.
I have maintained an eTag account with the M5 motorway operator Interlink Roads since 1998 and despite terms allowing them to bill me a monthly admin fee for my infrequently used toll account, they never have. Until now.

That's right, earlier this year I was hit with a fee of $6.50 for not using my eTag for a whopping three months. Despite my outrage, I realised that there was little that I could do about this apart from voting with my wallet. So I promptly closed my toll account.


Brisbane's CLEM7 tunnel is operated by Rivercity Motorway Group, and like all good tollway operators, they also offer their own tag: Flow Tolling. I was bloody amazed. Not only is their tag fully interoperable across all Australian toll roads (like all electronic toll tags), but they are actually cheaper!
While the tolls themselves are not discounted, there is no charge or deposit to attach the Flow toll tags to my vehicle, no minimum use or account keeping fee, and the minimum top up pre-payment amount is $20! This is just brilliant when compared to my previous provider who held a $40 per tag deposit, charged me for not using the tag, and sucked $80 from my credit card every time my account balance approached zero.


So, I now use a Queensland-issued toll tag to travel on Sydney toll roads.
Better still, Interlink issued me with a cheque for almost $120 being made up of my remaining toll credit and tag deposit. Nice.