Dear Editor, Every morning, Monday to Friday, I clamber into my car and head off into the congestion on the M6 between junctions 7 and 6, from Walsall to Birmingham, then come the evening the same journey in reverse. This stretch of motorway is one of the busiest in Europe, and don’t those of us that use it daily know it.

Back in 2003, when the M6 Toll finally opened, it was sold to us as the “Northern Relief Road”, it was going to drastically cut the congestion on the M6 and for those travelling North to South, or vice versa, it was going to cut their journey times and make life easier for one and all – or that was the plan.

Sadly, there was one little snag, on top of paying a Road Fund Licence, a high proportion of tax on fuel which also has VAT added, making it a tax on a tax, as this road was a toll road people and businesses were being asked to pay to use a road that they had already paid for – which is not on.

In the early days of the M6 Toll people did put their hands in their pockets and used it, although a number of motorists, this one included, refused to use it on principle. When it opened the toll fees were not too high, but have been steadily rising ever since. The current cost of driving the full length of the M6 Toll from Cannock to Coleshill is £5.30 for cars and £10.60 for vans, HGVs and coaches at peak times. For those that need to use this road twice a day, as I do with the M6, by the end of a week that is a fair bit of cash and a real fiscal burden for already hard pressed hauliers.

News that the numbers using this road, which has never been great, is steadily falling, comes as no surprise at all. As the numbers of vehicles on this high-priced road fall and revenues drop for Midland Expressway, the toll operators, their only option to keep their income stable is to increase prices, which in turn drives away potential users.

The end result is the M6 itself, rather than being relieved by this so-called relief road, takes all the traffic resulting in a section of the M6 having to be widened at a massive cost in order to cope with the traffic the now almost deserted M6 Toll was going to take.

The whole thing has been a pigs ear, proving the warnings of many, that this project was doomed to failure from the offset. One of the main reasons the road was tolled, which was not really mentioned at its inception and launch, was to comply with the EU’s plans for a system of road pricing across the whole of Europe.

Naturally, the Labour Government of the time felt this was not worth mentioning as no one would be interested in the real reason they were to be charged again to use a road they had already paid for.

Now a group of campaigners opposed to road tolls has called for the Government to buy the M6 Toll and make it free to use, which would then mean it would serve its original purpose of by-passing Birmingham thus easing the congestion on the M6 and speed up journey times for those travelling North to South.

This group, the National Association Against Tolls, is urging the Government to buy the M6 Toll for £1 billion, which would still see a nice tidy profit for Midlands Expressway which spent £900 million building this white elephant, otherwise known as the road to a hole in the pocket.

Derek Bennett,
Walsall UKIP Branch Chairman.