• Abolish tolls now FTA tells Govt
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ME FREIGHT Transport Association is urging the Government to abolish tolls on bridges and tunnels in the UK, DAVID WILCOX ,eports.
Until now the FTA has steered 3 middle course on the subject )f tolls, neither favouring their :otal commercialisation nor aboition. But in a booklet entitled 'Tolls: a case for abolition" pubished this week, the FTA claims that toll bridges and tunnels are running up mounting debts and riot paying their way.
Britain's 11 major toll bridges and tunnels produce £28m a year income. From this must be subtracted £6m (an average of 20 per cent of the toll revenue) for the cost of collecting the tolls and a further Bm for their maintenance and operating costs. _ This leaves £14m a year operating surplus: not nearly enough to cover the £51m of capital debt charges incurred last year, with the result that Britain's major toll bridges and tunnels ran up a deficit of £37m last year.
This total annual debt is accumulating each year and now stands at £438m. The FTA has calculated that if this is ever to be paid off, even spreading the payment over the next 20 years, toll charges would have to be tripled.
On the grounds that heavy goods vehicles provide up to 40 per cent of toll revenue and company cars increase this percentage even further, the ETA's planning and traffic services controller Richard Turner concluded this week: "The only rational course of action is for the Government to abolish all road and bridge tolls and let the structures become the responsibility of the highway authorities."
Supporting what he called the "irrefutable logic" of the case, Adams Foods distribution director and FTA's traffic committee chairman Maurice Wood highlighted the Severn Bridge where the average toll paid is 23p and after operational costs are paid just 1 p goes towards paying off the bridge's £43m debt.
Looking at all 11 major toll bridges and tunnels the average toll is 39p, while operating and toll collection costs account for 19p of this. Reasoned Mr Wood: "What can be more ludicrous than stopping 86m vehicles a year to collect an average of 39p to have just 20p left?"
This evidence has been put to the Department of Transport with the request that the £438m capital debt be written off and the £22m a year shortfall (£28m annual revenue minus the cost of collection that would no longer be incurred) be absorbed by the excess taxation paid by road users.