M6 Toll 'is a £900m failure'

The £900 million M6 Toll road has been an expensive failure, according to a damning report published today.

Drivers are said to be saving an average of just 10 minutes each by using the pay-as-you-go motorway at a cost of £5 for cars.

The first privately-built toll road in Britain, which runs from Cannock to Warwickshire covers a 27-mile stretch and is meant to cut congestion on the M6.

Those travelling south could save up to 40 minutes in rush hour, about half their journey time, according to the Campaign for Better Transport.

But the group's report says that rather than pay the toll, many drivers prefer to sit on the heavily-congested M6, where traffic is currently down to 50mph between Wolverhampton and Walsall due to the £150m scheme to open the hard shoulder up to traffic.

Use of the toll road has fallen dramatically as prices have gone up from the original £2 charge in December 2003. There were 60,000 drivers a day in 2006 compared with just over 40,000 by the start of this year.

M6 Toll owner Midland Expressway Ltd's lost £26m last year. But its latest figures show a four per cent rise in traffic between April and June compared with the same period last year - up from 39,581 to 41,195.

The report said: "The M6 Toll has provided so little congestion relief that the Highways Agency has been forced to allocate hundreds of millions of pounds for additional capacity.

"Toll roads are not, and will never be, a solution to congestion on Britain's roads."

Richard George, roads and climate campaigner for the group, said: "Our research shows that private toll roads such as the M6 Toll don't help motorists or the surrounding area, and don't make money for investors.

"Instead, the Government needs to spend scarce public funds on maintaining the roads we have and giving people good alternatives to car use."

Midland Expressway was unavailable for comment.