M6 Toll road charges up ----- Forums

MicknPat

I live just north of the M6 toll road but venture that way to gas up (LPG) it always makes me smile when I see the large illuminated signs displaying,

TOLL ROAD NO CONGESTION Confused

Of course it's always clear no bugger uses it,even less now the prices have gone up £2.50 for a motorbike? Laughing

BarryandSue

What happens if you mistakenly get up to the toll booths (without first travelling the length of the toll bit) and are unwilling/unable to pay? Is there any "escape route" or method of turning you back?

nigelt

DO NOT USE THE M6 TOLL - it is the thin end of wedge that will see us paying for all roads in this country by the mile at ten times the current cost of motoring.

If it were free, it would be a good road and it would have solved the M6 Birmingham congestion problems. But the government knows better!

Nigel

MicknPat

Just seen on the local news that roadworks are due to start soon on M6.

A Google search shows it between J 8 (M5) and J6 (Spaghetti)

BarryandSue

I'm cynical enough to believe that this would be a Government response to a plea by the Toll Road Company that their M6 stretch hasn't been as profitable as they envisaged. Cause massive congestion so that motorists are almost forced to use the damned toll road.

If this M6 toll road is not financially viable, and there's public opposition to it, what hope will there be for private companies to start other toll road schemes? This is not what the Government wants at all.

It's a similar trick to one that Ken Livingstone used in Central London, to make his "Congestion Charge" appear to work better than it would otherwise have done. He re-phased traffic lights, causing enormous tail-backs, then put them right again after his "Congestion Charge" had been introduced. Hey Presto! No congestion after his scheme started.

Highway robbery??? Dick Turpin was an amateur compared to this lot! Evil or Very Mad

Paulway

Whilst I respect and understand where you are coming from Barry and Sue, the fact of the matter is that TFL congestion charge is actually costing the council tax payers of London.
The reduction in traffic is so great that the projections done prior to introducing the charge were so wildly inacurate that the scheme does not pay for itself as predicted. I believe that this is more likely the cause of the lowering of congestion, not that I don't think what you said was valid.
So the tax-payers of London will need to decide wheather they think that subsidising the system for 'improvements' to their environment is worthwhile.
This information comes from a colleuge that works within the TFL and I trust the source totally.
I suppose what I am saying is I wonder how the government will subsidise the M6 toll?

BarryandSue

I don't disagree with anything you say, Paul. It confirms all my views about the supposed "congestion" charge. So many local businesses are cheesed off with what's happened now in London, that many are just moving away. Residents hate living in the zone. And now the bu88er's seizing even more of London's streets (Kensington & Chelsea)!

Irrespective of the arguments surrounding "congestion" (totally bogus in Livingstone's case, as Traffic Police have confirmed) the principle of one local representative seizing local roads and imposing his own tax to pass along the public highway is utterly wrong.

The streets of London are not the Mayor's, to bar others from using (by imposing financial penalties), any more than the Mayor of our area should seize a local junction here and impose a charge on those going through it. If the Congestion Charge is good for Central London, it must be good in principle for every area of the country. But the principle is wholly wrong and I can't believe he's getting away with it.

Be warned - many councils have gazed with envious eyes at what Livingstone is doing in London, and more to the point, what he is getting away with.

"Free passage along the highway"? Only if you pay Livingstone.
(I'd like to see the highways subsidy from general vehicle taxation removed from Livingstone's budget - now that would focus his devious little mind!)

Paulway

Totally agree with you BarryandSue, I suppose that I was trying to flag up the implications for the Council Tax payers for the area's that these people are thinking of bringing in congestion tax, sorry charge. They make a big thing about those living inside the area being exempt, but they are not because they pay for it in their Council Tax.
I understand that Livingstone is trying to extend the area of charging to outer London now and I have also been told that he is trying to get the whole of the inner M25 area into charging, now that will involve a lot of council tax payers and he will get his tax one way or another!!

neverrememberit