Soaring road traffic and inflation-linked toll price rises helped tollway behemoth Transurban earn nearly $1 billion from Melbourne’s drivers despite traffic on the CityLink toll road not fully recovering to pre-pandemic levels.
The $43 billion toll road powerhouse said annual daily trips on the tollway were up 24 per cent over the financial year, generating $894 million in revenue from drivers. By comparison, Sydney drivers were slugged about $1.7 billion to use 11 different toll roads.
Transurban chief financial officer Michelle Jablko will succeed Scott Charlton as CEO in October.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
Trips on CityLink were still about 5 per cent below 2019 levels, Transurban said, suggesting Melbourne traffic has not fully recovered from blanket lockdowns during the pandemic and changing commuter habits from the shift to flexible work.
“There’s still a little bit of recovery in Victoria that’s coming through,” the company’s chief executive, Scott Charlton, said.
Transurban will soon add another tollway in Melbourne after finishing boring for the new West Gate Tunnel. Disruptive road-widening work on the West Gate Freeway to connect the tunnel, a headache for motorists, is nearly complete, it said.
Most of Australia’s 21 toll roads – except for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel, and Melbourne’s EastLink – are controlled by the tollway giant. The company’s bid to buy Horizon Roads, which operates EastLink, is under scrutiny by the competition watchdog, which has concerns about it acquiring another Victorian motorway and gaining a monopoly.
“We are engaging with the [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] to address the matters raised,” Charlton said.
Fees for CityLink are linked to inflation and rose by 4.25 per cent over the year, providing investors with a guaranteed indexed income at a time when the pandemic’s global supply chain disruption and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have spurred global inflation.
A record 2.4 million daily trips across Transurban’s national road network earned the company $3.3 billion last financial year and helped it boost its 58¢-a-security distribution to shareholders by 40 per cent. It expects to pay another record 62¢ distribution this financial year.
The toll giant has appointed Michelle Jablko as its new boss from October this year to replace Charlton, making her one of the country’s most powerful female executives alongside Macquarie Group’s Shemara Wikramanayake, Telstra’s Vicki Brady and Qantas boss Vanessa Hudson.
Jablko said she was “thrilled” to take the top job. “I’ve got enormous shoes to fill, literally and metaphorically, and I’ll be taking over a business that’s in great shape, with world-class assets in Australia and North America.”
The company’s latest Urban Mobility Trends report shows more people are driving every day than were expected to a year ago, and fewer people are using public transport. But Charlton said he expects public transport use to recover. “It’s just taking a bit longer,” he said.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.