Severn toll to go?
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FREIGHT could be moved more efficiently if an alternative form of toll collection was devised for the Severn Bridge, Freight Transport Association director general Hugh Featherstone said last week.
Speaking to FTA members in Porthcawl, he said it seemed "rather silly" that 32.5 tonne lorries which travelled safely at 60mph should need to stop to pay the 40p bridge toll.
"For commercial traffic, this process is repeated two and a half million times per year. Surely the time has come for these practices to be questioned."
He described the bridge as the "vital umbilical cord" linking England, v'eles and Europe, and said that the Government and the Welsh Office should acknowledge this by ensuring that a sufficiently high investment is made, and that current problems surrounding the bridge's reconstruction are quickly overcome.
Mr Featherstone said that a recent Welsh Office study had shown that 79 per cent of the manufacturing firms which had participated in it were based in South Wales because of the bridge.