Tollway trips are on the rise A STEADY rise in the number of motorists using Melbourne's CityLink has driven a rise in revenue at Transurban. The toll road operator has also seen revenue increase at its last remaining US asset but it is still far from breaking even on its troubled overseas investments, analysts say. Transurban announced that revenue had climbed 4.7 per cent to $801.2 million in the year to June. Revenue from CityLink, the company's largest asset, jumped 6.5 per cent over the year, handing the company $499 million. The average number of daily trips on the 22km road rose by 18,639 - 2.4 per cent - to 779,756. Transurban's contract with the Victorian Government is also to increase toll charges by 4.5 per cent a year, subject to a cap of 2.5 per cent above annual inflation. For the three months to June, the average number of daily trips hit 783,604, boosting revenue by 5.6 per cent compared with the same quarter a year ago to $128.3 million. Chief executive Scott Charlton said traffic growth had been solid on the company's Melbourne and Sydney road networks. Mr Charlton said progress on the Sydney Hill's M2 upgrade was expected to be finished in August, increasing traffic on the M2, Lane Cove Tunnel and Westlink M7. Morningstar analyst Adrian Atkins said Transurban would benefit from less upgrade work interrupting traffic flows on its Sydney roads in the financial year just started. "The company has recorded pretty strong growth in Sydney and that is flowing from it finishing work on the M2 there, which all looks positive," Mr Atkins said. Analysts were also somewhat buoyed by better than expected growth on the company's 495 Express Lanes near Washington DC in the US. Transurban had made a disastrous foray into the US. Its first investment, Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, is on the brink of bankruptcy, with Transurban recently offloading the asset to a consortium of European banks owed more than $300 million. The project fell flat after a proposed housing development, expected to feed traffic into the road, was scrapped during the financial crisis. Transurban shares closed flat at $6.80.