M6 clogged as toll road is snubbed

Oct 3 2005 By Ben Hurst, Evening Mail

TRAFFIC levels on the M6 through Birmingham have reached the same levels as before Britain’s first pay-asyougo highway opened.

Each day about 200,000 vehicles use the M6 between junctions 4a at Coleshill and Junction 11 at Cannock, according to a report from the Highways Agency - the same figure as in 2003.

Campaigners today said the figures showed that road tolls have not succeeded in cutting congestion, and plans to expand them should be scrapped.

A spokesman for the National Alliance Against Tolls said: "The Highways Agency is now saying that the stretch of the old M6 in the West Midlands has gone back to the traffic level that it reached before the M6 Toll opened at the end of 2003 - that's 200,000 vehicles a day.

"The M6 Toll is used by about 50,000 vehicles a day, and traffic in recent months has fallen."

The Highways Agency study has shown that the toll motorway, which was opened in 2003 to by-pass Birmingham and cost £500 million to build and run, has not cut congestion.

New statistics also show that traffic volume predictions have had to be increased. It is now claimed traffic will grow to between 33 and 40 per cent by the end of the decade and by up to 70 per cent by 2025.

Although traffic has nearly doubled since 1980, the road network has only grown by ten per cent.

No-one from Midland Expressway Ltd, which runs the M6 Toll, was available for comment.