eFlow - RANT WARNING

I'm just after registering my mothers car with this lot, and it's a bit of a joke.  You pay them €40 for the tag, which works as account credit, and pay them €1 per month rental.  You then pay them €2 each time you use the M50.

Now if, like a lot of people, you use the M50 a total of 4 times per year, that's false economy, as at €3 per go without the tag, it costs €12, where with the tag it will cost you €20.  For it to become economical, you have to use the M50 more than 12 times (this is the break even point, where it costs €36 either way).  What makes it worse is that it won't work on the M4 or the M1, where you still have to stop at the barriers (and it probably won't be the same system when they eventually get rid of their barriers, either, as that would be the sensible way to do it, and we can't have that now, can we?)

So, in the midst of my conversation with eFlow, I ask who owns the company.  I'm told it's 6 companies, including one in France.  "Are any of those companies the state?" I ask.  No idea, but the NRA have their paws in there somewhere.

Now, it's always been my understanding that the M50 was built with public money, so why is it owned by private individuals?  Why couldn't the state run it themselves?

So, on to the Data Protection Agency, who put me on to the Dept of the Environment, vehicle registrations.  Extremely pleasant lady on the phone, upon being asked who I need to write to to ensure that my registration details aren't given to a private organisation, informs me that the department wouldn't give details out, but the the Roads Authority get their files once a week.  She gives me the number for the Roads Authority (01-6602511), so I ring them, and I'm put through to...

...eFlow!!!

So, eFlow guy tells me that they get their details from NVRS who, I believe, are the Dept of the Environment in Shannon who I've just spoken with.

So, can anyone please tell me, do the Roads Authority have a partial ownership of eFlow, does any of the eFlow money go back into the state coffers (and if so, how much?).  And, if the state get back less than 50% off the toll money, how can I stop eFlow from being given my personal details?  (I am aware that they are supposedly given my details only if I drive on their road, but if they're a private company, I don't want them having them, a bit like insurance companies having access to the points database).  This goes back to the road being built with public money bit in the first place.

Tolltag.ie run by a Limerick company gives a better option for occassional users. They have no monthly deductions or rental charges. They simply charge a fee of 10% extra each time you use any of the toll roads or toll bridges around the country. If you used the M50 5 times a month tolltag will debit 11 euro from your account. This would work out exactly the same as using eflow.Using the M50 4 times a month would cost you 8.80. If you dont use any of the tolling systems around the country for 12 months at least there is nothing being debited from your account. If you use a tolled road or tolled river crossing in the republic of Ireland the odd time (for example less than 5 times a month for the M50) choose the cheaper option. www.tolltag.ie

 

It was recently bought with public money though! 

God only knows how many fingers are in the pie for the cost of a toll on the M50, regardless of how it is paid. The government generally share the cost of buying out something like this (there never the sole buyer), so someone is getting a cut somewhere.

The only answer, is to do what they're pushing us to do. Avoid the toll roads and congest the city center. Sat Navs show us how to get around Tolls and i for one plan on never paying a Toll. Christ, we pay enough to drive on these sorry excuses for roads, now we have to pay to park at the side of them and pay to drive on "special" ones. As a kid i dreamt of driving, now it's a nightmare. What does our road tax get us? Potholes and speed ramps? It certainly don't give us the privilege of driving on nice smooth roads..... My rant over!

I have been driving for over 30 years and have been ranting for all of that time about one thing or another when it comes to car ownership in this country. Get used to it. You will be screwed, ripped off, fobbed off and bled dry at every possible opportunity. You will have your hands tied up in red tape, while you are "put on hold" being transferred from one faceless department to another. You will be clamped and towed, having just passed another illegal halting site on the way to your latest insult. You will suffer vandalism, to be warned against going near your insurance company to claim, and the most you can usually expect in the way of police action is a nodding, pseudo sympathetic head, saying, "sure it's going on all over the place etc." You will have to pay rip off road tax, for a minimum of one month at a time, even when, like me, there are times in that month when your total driving might amount to 2 or 3 days. You will pay income tax to fund developments like the port tunnel, then pay again to use it, even though you have already financed its construction. In any other business language, this would be seen as an investment, from which you should be paid dividends!

In years gone by, farmers, truckers, taxi drivers etc. have all taken to the streets, causing chaos on the roads, in order to be heard and have action taken on their grievances. Maybe that's what's needed. There are organisations out there that fight on behalf of the motorist. What's needed is to mobilise this HUGE political voice, this HUGE source of votes, to make the powers that be, sit up and take notice.

Failing that, get used to it!

 

 

 

 

A blockade is not necessary. A reasonable volume of cars, driving at or below the legal speed limit, will soon cause a tailback, as most motorists are usually driving faster. or what about the same drivers using a toll bridge, en masse, and paying their toll in 1 cent coins, one at a time, counting them out, nice and slowly? Or taking a cruise, a "meet" if you like, at rush hour, on some already congested piece of our road "infrastructure"? Park outside Leinster House, sitting in your car of course, until you're moved along, with the next car in line waiting to occupy the space you've just left vacant? Do you realise that if everyone in the country car pooled, just "doubling up" to reduce the number of cars on the road, the loss to the exchequer would be enormous, losing 50% of the tax on petrol and diesel straight away. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, for every €1.00. you spend at the pumps, the government take in 64 cent!! And do you know why? Because we let them!

This is one reason why the Green Party will never get it's way.

So, like I say, change it, or get used to it!