End of road for toll plan

Road toll plans for the West Midlands are set to be thrown out – and with them any chance of finding the £400 million needed to expand the Midland Metro tram system.

Council leaders of the region's seven local authorities are expected to reject any form of congestion charging tomorrow.

The decision means that they are likely to lose out on huge funding from the Government's Transport Innovation Fund, money that was reliant on the West Midlands agreeing to trial some form of road pricing.

The region is competing with Greater Manchester, which has already agreed to a road charging trial, for £2 billion from the fund.

It was suggested that motorists should be charged around £5 for travelling into city centres, using either roadside camera technology or spy-in-the-sky satellites.

But council leaders, who will meet tomorrow in Birmingham, have come to the conclusion that any scheme in the West Midlands would be too difficult to set up because of the sprawling nature of the region.

Wolverhampton City Council's Roger Lawrence said: "We have always said there would be three pre-conditions to us agreeing to trial road pricing.

"The first is that public transport improvements should be in place before any scheme was initiated.

"The second is that it should be cutting edge technology and the third is that it should not involve the costs to run that the congestion charging scheme in London has incurred," added Mr Lawrence.

The £388m scheme to expand the Metro would create 5,000 jobs but relies on the prospect of TIF cash and the setting up of a congestion charging trial – a pre-condition that has led council leaders to accuse the Government of blackmail.