In an interview with the Herald, the leader of the Nationals and the opposition spokesman on roads, Andrew Stoner, said he supported uniform congestion tolling to create a fairer deal for motorists. ''My view is it should be a per-kilometre basis and there should be some time-of-day aspect to it,'' he said.

''If you want to drive congestion in a particular direction, you ought to do that. All of the entrances and egresses from the city ought to be part of the equation as well.'' He stressed that there would first need to be significant improvement in public transport to ensure commuters had a choice.

''Our ability to start to pull together policy on tolling, time-of-day tolling, variable tolling, per-kilometre tolling is limited by the fact that the public transport alternatives are not yet there for much of Sydney,'' he said.

''And [we are] also limited by the fact that we don't have the toll roads regarded as any sort of a network.''

If the Coalition won the election in March, it ''ought to'' work towards the plan. ''We could make a start of talking to the various toll road companies,'' he said.

Mr Stoner, who is likely to be the deputy premier and minister for roads in a Coalition government, said he was interested in a model outlined by the consulting firm Evans & Peck in a paper published last year.

It proposed the creation of a Sydney motorway network company as a public-private partnership between toll road companies and the government.

The company would manage the Sydney network for up to 50 years and be responsible for planning, building and operating additions to the motorway network, using toll revenue.

Mr Stoner said the Coalition did not plan to introduce a toll on roads that were now free. But he believed tolls had ''a place''.

''In the range of choices available to commuters, there has to be a value decision - which way do I want to travel and what's it going to cost me?'' he said.