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Birmingham toll hike fear

10th September 1998
Page 10
Page 10, 10th September 1998 — Birmingham toll hike fear
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by Karen Miles • Operators could be forced to pay higher-than-expected tolls when the long-awaited Birmingham Northern Relief Road opens.

The scheme's concessionaire says the one-way HGV toll could be set at between £7 and a at today's prices when the 27-mile road opens early next century.

Although this figure is a rough estimate and could change, it is significantly higher than the ..£4.50 expected by the Freight Transport Association.

Concessionaire Midland Expressway hopes that commercial traffic will form about half of the 50,000-60,000 vehicles forecast to use the road each day. The project, which was approved in 1992, has been dogged by delays. The latest legal challenges from protesters have left Midland Expressway in an "uncertain position" over its timetable. Completion could come anywhere between 2003 and 2006. FTA Midlands regional director Rodger Bird says the road is "desperately needed" to relieve the increasingly congested M6.

He says: "Up to now our members nationally, not just locally—have made it quite clear they will use the road."

About 25% of the 160,000 vehicles that use the M6 are HGVs, and the FTA estimates five-million tonnes of freight pass through J6 of the M6— spaghetti junction—every week.

The Birmingham Northern Relief Road will connect Junctions 4 and 11 of the M6 on a line north of the West Midlands conurbation which broadly follows the A38 and A5.

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Locations: Birmingham

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