Deficit prompts DO1 M-way plan
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• The Department of Transport is believed to be considering a plan to privatise and charge tolls on the inter-urban motorway network in a move thought to be attractive to hauliers.
The plan is being given more urgency as the Treasury tries to curb the soaring financial deficit — estimated at £,28bn this year. DOT economists believe t8£10bn could be raised by selling the motorways. Urban motorways would remain in state ownership, so road pricing could be used to control the worst congestion.
All road users would pay tolls to use the motorways, a move transport operators have resisted in the past.
While the DOT accepts that it will still be hard to sell the idea to motorists, civil servants think hauliers could be attracted by restructuring the vehicle taxation system, with vehicle excise duty being reduced to a nominal level to compensate for the toll charges.
Tolls are already charged in France, Italy and Spain and are planned for Germany. Typically, VED rates are lower in states where tolls are charged, so DOT officials have advised Transport Secretary John MacGregor that there is a danger of UK operators paying high VED rates and Continental road tolls, while competing with Continental operators paying lower VED rates running on toll-free UK roads. The EC Commission says member states could reimburse their hauliers for tolls paid on other states' roads but the high cost of administrating such a system has encouraged the DOT to press for UK tolls instead. It is however, not clear whether tolls would be collected at booths and barriers or if electronically read "smart cards" would be used to register road usage.
Geoffrey Cave-Wood, of High Wycombe-based Cavewood Transport, questions whether the DOT would be able to obtain planning permission to build toll booths. "There are 20 booths on the A6 into Paris. When they can't even get planning permission to build a lay-by on the M40, when will they get permis sion to build toll booths?" he says.
Instead of introducing tolls, Cave-Wood favours a low VED rate, higher tax on fuel and a system by which the Government pays privatised motorway owners according to the use made of the roads. The Treasury is believed to have ruled out such a system of so-called "shadow tolls".