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Vita 1 statistics
Page 26
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M6 toll road company MEL has consistently refused to release figures for HGVs using its motorway. Undeterred Chris Tindall spent some happy hours counting traffic — the figures speak for themselves.
Archie Robertson, chief executive of the Highways Agency, was recently pressed by MPs on theTtansport Select Committee about the number of HGVs using the M6 Toll. He estimated that since Midland Expressway (MEL) had reduced the charge for trucks, the proportion of M6 Toll traffic made up of HGVs had doubled to 8%. But he conceded that this was no more than an educated guess.
MEL— owned byAustralian bank Macquarie Infrastructure Group— refuses to release accurate figures as they are deemed "commercially privileged". When interviewed by CM last week MEL MD Tom Fanning would only say: "We don't break down numbers as there are fairly sensitive reporting lines to the Australian stock exchange. We have never done this and it's unlikely that we ever will."
Frustrated by the lack of accurate figures from MEL we decided to count for ourselves and found an average ofjust 79 HGVs are running up and down the motorway every hour. Vans averaged out at only 96 per hour. To put this into perspective, the latest figures released by MEL show that during January an average of 43,344 vehicles used the M6 toll road every weekdayThat's down from the 49,146 using the road in December 2004, not to mention the 50.311 claimed for November.
But even compared with January's figures our results show only 4% of the traffic was HGV — half Robertson's estimate. Compare this with the sheer weight of freight traffic that still uses the M6. During the time we were counting vehicles there was no congestion or queuing whatsoever, but the number of trucks using the road remained small.
It did rise during the morning and evening rush hours but not as much as expected, particularly during the morning.The most we counted it any one hour (between 4.25pm and 5.25pm) was 124 HGVs; we counted no more than 115 vans on the motorway in any one hour.
Responding to the figures Fanning says a classification breakdown would be commercially sensitive, adding: "We have many regular haulage customers who enjoy the benefits of a reliable motorway, although we recognise that not all hauliers will use our route."
James Irlam & Sons, TNT. Securicor, TDG and Parcelforce had the largest numbers of vehicles on the road. A TNT spokesman says: We are averaging 90 trucks a day using the M6 Toll; these are largely trucks coming from the North-West to our hub in the Midlands. On average we save 19 minutes on each journey time by using the toll road."
Another M6 user says: "We use it as little as possible — only when there is a tangible benefit. We've got a site in Staffordshire and say we need to get a load to Crick, particularly at rush hour, at a guaranteed time otherwise we'd miss a slot, then we'd use it.
"The problem is that at best there's only 10 to 15 minutes difference between the two roads so we won't really bother. Although the price has dropped it's still fairly expensive — that said we didn't use it at all when it was £11 per hour. I think it's fair to say that we only use it as insurance. People in general haulage can't afford to use it on a regular basis."