Toll Road profits

BY ROBBIE SMYTH

Take 100,000 cars day, put up 14 toll gates on the road they travel and what do you have? Well with annual profits of €15.4 million, you have the Westlink Bridge on Dublin's M50, the modern equivalent of the goose and golden egg story.

National Toll Roads (NTR) held their Annual General Meeting last week and the company's chief executive, Jim Barry, told shareholders that a state buyout of the Westlink toll bridge was "not on the agenda".

NTR have the tolling rights to the bridge up until 2020, The state spent over €1 billion building the M50 and the NTR spent €38 million building the Westlink bridge, where their tolling operation is located. NTR expect to have earned gross revenues of €1 billion by the time their franchise runs out in 2020, which would have gone a substantial way towards paying the costs of building the M50.

Toll charges rose by 30% this January. There had been no increase in 2003-04 period because of a government subsidy of €6.4 million was paid to NTR for the period to compensate the company for not increasing tolls in that year.

The Westlink goose will continue daily golden egg laying for the foreseeable future.