Can't stop, I'm on a toll

REARVIEW:I HAVE NO problem with road tolls. With Transport Minister Leo Varadkar flagging up the prospect of placing more toll booths on our roads to help cover the National Road Authority's budget shortfall, I have the feeling that such a view places me in opposition to the majority.

I reckon (and I admit I’m making sweeping assumptions here) that more than a few of you grumble and grouse when you have to pay a road toll. There are even some of you who, insanely, will drive up to a motorway toll booth, clock the prices, and promptly exercise your rights as a consumer to make a U-turn back down the carriageway. The wrong way. Now that’s what you call a strong anti-toll feeling.

Not me though. My regular cross-country hack takes me from Galway to Dublin and back. When I first moved west three years ago, that was a three-hour journey at best. On more than a few occasions, it took four. And on wet, dark winter nights, once you got west of Athlone, the road markings disappeared into the gloom. Remember what our roads used to be like before you go slagging off tolls.

I do have a couple of caveats though. I want a tolled road surface to be like the 18th green at Royal St George’s in Sandwich, Mr Varadkar, or else we shall have to have words. And don’t think you can get away with tolls of more than €2 either. That M4 price of €2.70 for a car is going to have to come down to more reasonable levels.

And the toll money had better be ring-fenced this time. I’m paying enough to Anglo Irish Bank as it is without my tolls going down that particular black hole. So watch it, Leo. Tolls I can take, without complaint. But if this signals yet another Government mugging of the under-pressure motorist, then prepare for toll-mageddon.