I have just driven the return trip to Sydney on the motorway in my diesel-fuelled Toyota. A few things to report to anyone who needs to make this trip during a fuel crisis.
The new bypass of Raymond Terrace includes a new bridge over the Hunter River and is a brilliant enhancement to the M1 Pacific Motorway. It completely cuts out the New England Highway section and takes you straight into the Sydney motorway that used to end at Beresford. No more turns, roundabouts, traffic lights or speed limit changes. The distance and time savings means it’s a 7.5-hour trip (in 2000 it took me 9 hours.)
The catch is you need to pay $30 worth of tollways into Sydney CBD starting with Northconnex at $10. Using Google Maps I set ‘no tolls’ and paid $2 for the Harbour tunnel adding only 14 minutes to the trip.
My biggest cost saver was setting my speed to 98-100 km/h. This was a ten per cent reduction but saved over 20 per cent in fuel consumption. Using the NSW government’s Fuel Check app I located diesel at $2.75 in the Hunter, so by travelling more slowly and making my fuel take me further I effectively saved around 55 cents per litre – a $70 saving for the return trip. It all added an hour to trip time. I was however surprised by how much I saved. For anyone who can afford to take a bit longer, this experiment in how you can reduce costs will hopefully assist. Once you go over 100 km/h your car becomes a fuel pig. More than you might imagine.
I once travelled to Sydney with my learner driver son behind the wheel and we made it with one tank of fuel – but I don’t recommend crawling down the motorway at 80 km/h. Truly painful albeit another good insight to how much you can save by simply slowing down.
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