Surely the number crunchers were people who were employed by McQuarie Bank who were selling the project?
As Will Rogers said "Never ask your barber if you need a haircut".
Good advice is never trust any labour politician with your money, because then you will certainly get a haircut!

What pisses me off is that when they finish these tunnels they bury the bloody machines that dig the holes.
Why not use them again?

Because chrisgaff1000, it costs more to pull them apart & get them out, in labour, & delay in getting the project finished, than to build a new one. Don’t forget these things are effectively built in place.

Are you sure that is right Hasbeen ?
I was told once that the NSW State Government owned one and was used on
the Macquarie Park line.

Bazz yes true but different things for different projects.
USA tipped new planes and tanks in to the sea it cost more to take them to storage.
The thing is it was the contracting firm who estimated the numbers of cars using this that failed.
Long way to go, will the company sue them, put the road up for sale, sue government?

Yes Belly, I think they all have clauses that if the owners goes broke they revert to government ownership.
If they can be bought cheaply enough then you could make money.

However the number of cars will decrease over the years and increases
in tolls to cope with that will only make the problem worse.
Even now, I have seen people and organisations suggesting that it is
a lot cheaper and only a bit slower to go by normal roads.

I no longer travel at those time so I can only take their word for it.
I don't even know what the tolls are so I can't work out how much it
costs per week to drive from say Seven Hills to Mascot and back every day.
It must be more than $100 a week plus petrol (after tax)!
As the shale oil to crude oil ratio changes in our petrol then there
just HAS to be significant petrol price increases.
That must cause a fall in the number of cars on the toll roads.
There is/was a US plan to put high speed light rail on one side of motorways.
Should have had that possibility written into every motorway specifications.

Here is a rort if ever there was one, the tollways are charging you
extra if the tollgate fails to read your tag device & reads number plate.
Seeing that all the equipment involved is owned by the tollway why
should the car owner pay the misread costs ?