The NTTA has published a list of the top people who owe tolls and other costs. The list has the leading violator assessed as owing more than $179,000.
Whilst I think that the concept of "name and shame" could be a useful one, I doubt that the impact of publishing this list will be positive, for several reasons:
1. The NTTA approach of tacking on administrative charges is responsible for a large percentage of the outstanding fees that they are claiming. Quick math shows that it would be impossible for somebody to accumulate $179,000 in fees in any reasonable time period simply by traveling the whole length of the toll road network. The top entrants on the list are therefore tending to show up how unrealistic the method is of assessing outstanding fees.
2. By publishing the amounts owed, NTTA is painting itself into a corner over settling with the debtors. If there was no publicity, they could have negotiated settlements with the leading scofflaws to collect money and discharge their debts. Those settlements would have been pennies on the dollar, but they would have been private. Now, NTTA is going to have to work very hard to justify settling for reduced amounts with leading debtors. If they end up settling for pennies on the dollar, this will lead some people to conclude either that they are not serious about collecting the money, and/or that NTTA, by settling for partial payment, is admitting that the amounts being published are unrealistic.
The public pressure to be seen to be taking a hard line on debtors will tend to push NTTA towards litigation, which takes us to...
3. If NTTA ends up taking debtors to court (and, if I were a lawyer consulted by a person who owed $179,000 to NTTA, "see you in court" would be #1 on my list of recommended tactics), things may not go well in the court or outside in the court of public opinion. The defense strategy will probably include ridiculing the amounts as ludicrously inflated, and any sensible defense is also going to point to the clauses in the NTTA license, that gives them the right to increase tolls at regular intervals into the future.
In summary, I am not convinced that publishing this list is going to be a net positive for NTTA. If NTTA confined the amounts claimed to the value of the tolls, plus interest and some administrative charge, then it would be a more powerful weapon. However, the amounts being claimed are so unrealistic that many people are going to regard it as a joke, and it will play into the hostility that many people already have for toll roads and the process of awarding them to operating companies.