Nationalising M6 Toll road would be more beneficial than HS2, claim
Nationalising the M6 Toll would be better for the West Midlands economy than the controversial HS2, it was claimed today.
George Adamson, leader of Cannock Chase District Council, said he saw little benefit from the government's high speed line and described it as a 'white elephant'.
He said the money would be better spent bringing the controversial toll road into public ownership.
"HS2 will do nothing to improve capacity in Staffordshire and the wider area. It is a white elephant.
"And talking of white elephants, we will see exactly the same as we did with the M6 Toll which has done untold environmental damage." he told councillors at Staffordshire County Council.
"We would be better off nationalising the M6 Toll. That would generate the extra capacity and do a world of good."
Mr Adamson said that while Stafford and Lichfield were well served with quick trains to London, that connectivity from Cannock was poor.
"It still takes us 45 minutes to get from Cannock to Birmingham," he said.
"Our local routes need to be sorted."
Independent West Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass has campaigned for the road to be nationalised and branded it 'a failure'.
The M6 Toll, which stretches for 27-miles between Cannock and Coleshill, opened to fee-paying motorists for the first time on December 9, 2003 with then Transport Secretary Alistair Darling the guest of honour.
Charges at the time were £2 for cars – they have now risen to £5.50 for cars and £11 for lorries.
An average of 44,462 a day were using it over the summer. And while that is a 13.3 per cent hike on the year before, it also includes a month of free travel for lorries during July.
And it is still less than half the 100,000 a day the road was designed to take. Much of the increased traffic is thanks to roadworks on the M6.
Seven years ago it was getting around 55,542 vehicles a day and its busiest day was in May 2004 when it got 66,295.
The free period for lorries resulted in 1,000 extra journeys a day.
Midland Expressway, which owns the road, recently said the M6 Toll's offers an alternative to the congested motorway M6 and can slash journey times by up to 70 minutes.
HS2 is set to cut a 45-mile swathe through Staffordshire from Lichfield to Swynnerton.
The £50bn project has been mired in controversy with campaigners saying it will blight thousands of homes, cause severe environmental damage, and not deliver promises benefits.
But the Government says it will boost the economy by £15bn a year and could create hundreds of thousands of jobs while alleviating capacity on the West Coast Main Line.
