Fees force trike tours to close

Well-known local personality and small business owner Steve Melchior has been forced to shut down his guided bike tour company, Just Cruisin’, due to high government fees, he says.

For almost 35 years Steve has been hosting motorcycle tours and he and his Boom trike or one of his Harley-Davidsons – all with paying passengers aboard – have been a familiar sight up and down the Illawarra coastline as well as inland to Kangaroo Valley, Bathurst, Parkes and more.

But Steve’s dispute with NSW’s Point to Point Transport Commissioner over fees has occupied almost four years of his time and it has now forced him to close his business.

Under the Point to Point transport law, authorised service providers who carry passengers in vehicles of 12 seats or fewer must pay an annual $596 authorisation fee. The fee is aimed at high-volume ‘point to point’ businesses, such as taxis and Uber drivers which take customers from one point to another; Steve’s tours take customers from a pick-up point and then return them to that point when the tour is finished.

Steve, whose fees jumped from $70 every three years to $596 a year, says a “fair and equitable” scheme should replace the current fee system.

“I don’t get any of the benefits a cab driver gets: I can’t work 24/7, I can’t tout for jobs, I can’t sit on ranks, but I’m paying the same fee.”