Brum toll road will cost truckers i3
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• Hauliers will have to pay the equivalent of £3 at today's prices to use the Birmingham Northern Relief Road, Britain's first private toll motorway which will open by 1997.
The 48km toll route will take traffic away from Spaghetti Junction by looping between junctions four and 11 of the M6. It should remove about 50,000 vehicles from existing roads in its first year of operation.
This week Transport Secretary Malcolm Rifkind announced that the contract to plan, build and operate the road had been won by a venture group headed by Trafalgar House, the construction giant which built the Dartford toil bridge, which opens in October.
Trafalgar House says it estimated truck tolls at £3 on 1990 prices and it hopes to "keep it to something similar", even with inflation and unexpected construction costs. The flat fee will cover any distance travelled on the motorway, but it has not yet been decided whether to offer discounts to regular users. Although Trafalgar House is entitled to increase the tolls at random, the Department of Transport assures hauliers it is unlikely to do so as there are four main alternative routes to the toll motorway.
Hauliers will be able to claim the tolls against tax, according to the Inland Revenue; owneroperators will be allowed to claim them as a business expense and larger firms, against corporation tax.
Work on the road will begin in 1994 if there is a public inquiry, which means it will be completed by 1997. But if no inquiry comes from the public consultation, which starts this week, it could open up to 18 months earlier.
The motorway is the first of a number of roads earmarked for private finance. The next one is likely to be a toll motorway to the west of Birmingham, which would link with the Northern Relief Road in the north and the M5 and M42 to the south — creating an orbital route around
Donald Mack, transport manager of Paisley-based McKelvie Transport says: "I don't agree to toll roads in principle. When you're paying nearly £3,000 on road tax for a 38-tonner it's not right that you have to pay even more to drive on the road. If they spent the money they collected on road tax on the roads there would be no need for tolls."
Birmingham. Trafalgar House is also bidding for the route.
Other possibilities are a link between the Al and M1 at Scratchwood, London; a new road to coviect the M25 and Chelmsford, Essex; a link between the M25 and Rayleigh Essex; and a new route connecting Birmingham and Manchester to compete with the M6. The Road Haulage Association and Freight Transport Association both oppose toll roads in principle: "Operators will make their own choice, but they should not have to be in that position," says Don McIntyre, road chief at the FTA. "Road users already pay millions, if not billions, more than is put back in road expenditure."