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eMBe - love to see your calcs. which suggest saving a gallon of fuel? Please post details.
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I understand everyone who said that £2 for saving time and fuel is a bargain worth holding onto, but I have a feeling you miss bigger picture:
If the flyover/extension/shortcut was so neccessary why wasn't it provided by the body we pay to build and upgrade our roads?
Will the M6 toll remain a one off project or should we expect all flyovers/extensions/shortcuts in the future to be provided for an extra charge and not from the very taxes and charges that were supposed to be spent on expanding and upgrading our roads network?
The whole situation is a little bit like you stopped in a Big Chef Roadhouse and ordered fish and chips for lunch paying up front with your credit card. After 20 minutes waiting you call for service just to have waiter inform you that unless you tip him extra your dish will arrive in further 30 minutes and will be totally cold. What I'm trying to say is that I'm glad that you guys are happy to pay for the little extra things that you find convenient but for your own good, you really shouldn't close your eyes on extra charges to things you already paid for.
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I feel very bitter about the Dartford Crossing toll being retained in contradiction to the promise (for what it was worth, as it turns out) that was made when it was first constructed that it would be free once the construction costs had been covered.
The excuse now is that taking the toll off would encourage more traffic which would overwhelm the M25.
Do our master think that we joy-ride around for the sake of it. If I use the Crossing it's because I need to get to the other side of the river as part of a longer distance journey to Kent or Sussex.
The fact of the matter is that the toll probably makes south east London traffic problems worse because people from London going to Kent etc. use the Blackwall or Rotherhithe tunnels or Tower Bridge rather than the A13 and Dartford Crossing.
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Now excuse me for being a cynic or paranoid but the interchange M6 & M6 Toll Road seems a bit odd to me.
Travelling south on M6 at jn ?? you get signposting as M6 left, M6 Toll straight on.
ie Lane 1 M6 lane 2 M6 & M6 Toll, Lane 3 M6 Toll.
So is this a cheaper way to build the junction? Any other opinions.
By the way its now open!!!!
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I can drive, sorry crawl, along the old M6 or for £2 I can use the new road. Given that it will probably take at least 20 minutes off the journey then provided my time is worth more than £6 an hour I actually make more money by taking the fast road.
It is such a wonderfully good idea I cannot see why there is so much carping about it.
A client who runs a 50 lorry haulage business reckons that it will save him tens of thousands of pounds a year in less delays and more efficient use of his lorrys.
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hxj
You miss the point. The road should have been built: BUT by the D.O.T., from past, current and future motoring taxes and not by a private company for yet more cost to drivers.
..........................................................
\"Rude, crude and socially unacceptable\"
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Sorry this in danger of getting highly political.
But to put it simply please show me where the 'Money Trees' are that the UK Government uses to obtain all these additional 'motoring taxes' without getting them from drivers?
My view is that
1. The government would never have had the courage to build it
2. If they had it would have cost far more and opened it far later
3. It is no different from private health care/education. You pay your taxes for the standard provision which you can use for free, if you want to use another service you can do but you pay extra.
The great thing about the M6 Toll is that the apparent benefits of it far outweigh the cost to the pocket.
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Malteser,
From another thread.
"There is a recurring theme in the Backroom of contributors seeming to argue that the Government have a duty to spend all of the tax revenues raised from motoring activities on Roads etc - the M6 Toll thread being the latest example.
All Governments raise tax revenue from a variety of sources to meet expenditure. For the last 50 years or so there has never been any pretence by any Government that there is correlation between motoring related tax income and expenditure. You might as well argue that the tax on alcohol should be spent building new pubs.
I would not dispute that the overall Tax burden on motorists is high. Those who feel it is too high should lobby their political masters. But it is self defeating to argue with them, or in the Backroom, on the basis that there is a moral case for these taxes to be spent for the benefit of motorists."
C
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Don't have much of an opinion on this except to point out that the M6 toll *is* a way of building our way out of congestion, as another bypass road has actually been built alongside the existing M6.
This is why congestion will decrease, as the traffic is now split over two roads.
However, if the existing M1 was suddenly made into a toll road, would it have any effect on congestion? No. It wouldn't as roughly the same number of people would make the same numbers of journeys on the road. I'm sure that people don't joyride up and down the M1 at present for no reason! :-)
This plan can only work as long as there is space to build lovely new toll roads alongside the existing road network. So yes, we do have to build our way out of congestion, the toll road scheme just seems to be a way to get the public to pay for it, which I don't really have an opinion on either way.
Blue
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>I'm sure that people don't joyride up and down the M1 at present for no reason!
Don't know about the M1 but plenty of people use the M6 in the Cheshire/Manchester area as a local road, just hopping one junction and often driving a greater distance than they actually need to because they perceive that the journey is shorter in time. Here's the theory:
If those people were discouraged from doing so then the traffic would be distributed more evenly over existing A- and B-roads in the area and long-distance traffic won't be held up by Mr and Mrs Scroggit going to buy a tin of beans for supper. As it stands a lot of local traffic is "focussed" on motorway junctions, causing congestion: a toll system would help with that. Over a period of time it might also mean that people become generally more reluctant to travel long distances for relatively trivial reasons and local services would have to improve to compensate--the market would see to that of course.
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Midlands ITV news tested the M6 Toll against the M6 today. At rush hour 2 cars left a service area by Stafford and met up a service area South of junction where they rejoin.
The result was a saving of 13 minutes over the journey. Traffic on 'normal' M6 was much lighter than normal for a Monday morning. Virtually no HGV traffic on M6 Toll and much fewer cars than expected.
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Blue - I hope I shall be pushing up daisies long before we run out of 'space' on which to build all our new roads, because I use roads to get to places where there is still some space worth getting to. But in several parts of the country this is no longer true, and many contributors here don't mention this, which may or may not mean they ignore it.
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Could I encourage other motorists to not use the toll road on the M6, the only way this blood sucking government will get off the motorists back is if the toll road is a financial disaster, I say enough is enough!
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You can try but I'd rather cough up a couple of quid any day than sit in a jam looking at the hard shoulder for an hour. It's a choice you're free to make and if it's worth it, people will pay and the sooner motorists work that road space is a finite resource with a value rather than being in limitless supply the sooner we'll have a transport system that begins to bear some resemblance to the real world. I am in no way connected to any political organisation.
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not without at least trying to come up with a logical, reasoned argument you can't.
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Around 75% of the PAYE work you do, ends up in the hands of the richest 5% of the population, who have implemented a complex taxation and monetary system as a funnel into their bank accounts.
Taxation on motoring is already ten times higher than the amounted spent on the road netwerk. I for one, will certainly not help to increase this to the twenty-five times, that this government probably wants.
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J90 - I can assure you that I will never use this road. But only because it doesn't go where i need to go!
However please do not discourage anyone else from using it as I want my journey into central Birmingham to be easier.
ST - sorry don't understand your logic. Most of the money raised by the government is actually spent on the poorest 20% of the population
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ST - how much tax from beer is spent on breweries?
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Sooty - it is an obsolete notion that motoring-tax revenue is reserved for spending on roads. Law-abiding citizens (such as yourself, I presume) have to fund the government by all kinds of routes, direct and indirect. Naturally the govt. taxes the things people are least likely to avoid spending on, such as driving, drinking, smoking - in the case of the latter two it can claim the tax encourages people to look after their health. At least you have the choice of not spending on these things.
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Sorry Joe tried it three times now. Two quid to avoid Fort Dunlop to Bescot with its endless roadworks, dodgy lane markings Specs cameras and Brummies only going two junctions?
It's a No Brainer!!
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J90 - I agree with your sentiments.
The government must think the public is stupid, taking 96% of motoring-related revenue away to spend on other things, underfunding the road network and then asking us to cough up even more if we want to drive on an alternative private road! I won't use a toll road on principle, if you do, you are falling into the government's hands.
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Evening All, possibly first time here.
Some statistics published in the local paper here in Sutton Coldfield:
Apparently an average of 34,612 vehicles per day have travelled on the road since opening.
No breakdown of vehicle types has been made.
Approximately 19% of M6 users have chosen to use the toll road.
Visitors have just arrived, wife nagging, so must go now. Cheers!
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The government have no direct financial interest in the M6 Toll at all and if it gets into financial difficulties they won't care. However, if it is a success and jams are reduced on the real M6 they can say that this is a direct result of Government policy, in that they allowed the Toll to be built but they didn't put their hands in their pockets to fund it and they won't bail it out if it isn't a success, financially
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From another thread.
"Today's Telegraph reported that for the first full week of the M6 Toll road it was used by an average of 34,612 drivers per day - 20% of the traffic.
According to other news reports nearly all were private cars @ £2(with discount) per trip. Accepting it is early days yet, if that turns out to be the normal usage this will be a gross revenue of approx £25M a year.
I am no economist but on an investment of £900M an income of £25M does not make it a viable commercial proposition. I have no idea what it costs to run and maintain the road out of that revenue but it must be considerable.
I believe however that after the first 10M vehicles have used the road the £1 discount goes and cars will be charged £3. - that should be in about 9 months time. However with increased charges the law of diminishing returns comes into play.
So if it turns out to be commercially unviable it will hardly encourage other privately funded roads.
What is the betting on a Government subsidy? It will still be cheaper than publically funded roads - won't it??
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i have used the M6 Toll twice, i was coming from london on the Messed up M42 50mph speed limit, it was the first saturday it opened, but coming along i did not notice any signs stating a change of limit back to national speed limit. i also was the only person on the M6T for the first 5 mins then some boy racer doing 90-100 over took, then i was confronted by a police car in front now he was doing 75mph ish, and i'll be frank i was doing 80, i over took the police car and realize at the last moment it was a police car as it was 10pm, and dark, i waiting for blues and twos and saw none, also with the M6 i come off at Brownhills now i think thats juction T6, and how you get back on it to go back to M42 i do not know no roadsigns i have seen,
Sam
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They're digging it up already!
Apparently an engineering fault has led to large areas of standing water, which have led to several accidents.
Marvellous.
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Radio 2 said this morning that they were resurfacing it because it was "a bit bumpy":)
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Does anyone know why it is that in this country even new roads can't be built without unevenness in the surface? Do our road builders, dare I say it, need some lessons from the French, their Autoroutes, new or resurfaced, always seem to give a much better ride?
Maybe it's deliberate, mini speed bumps all along the motorway!
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At least the Newbury bypass (opened at the end of '98) lasted 10 months before needing repairs and resurfacing...
The way thigs are going a new road will need fixing before its opened.
(Shhhh... not Sp**d bumps, traffic calming!)
John R
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Errr, by the time they finished the M25 they bits they built first were already being repaired....
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Thigs...
a/ Is a new word, made up specifically to mean badly built roads or low quality McAdam (Macadam ?) surfaces.
b/ A brand of Belgian buiscuits.
c/ Very small bushbabys from Madagasca.
(Oh for an N key that always worked...)
John R
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Thigs ai't what they used to be! ( Apologies to Lio el Bart)
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>Does anyone know why it is that in this country even new roads >can't be built without unevenness in the surface? Do our road >builders, dare I say it, need some lessons from the French, >their Autoroutes, new or resurfaced, always seem to give a much >better ride?
Because we don't complain enough.
On the plus side the new 'quiet' tarmac is a big improvement, that section through a village on the Oxford bypass makes my 106 sound like a jag..
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Stokie - its all about money.Thats why you used to get concrete carriageways cos concrete is or was cheaper than tarmac and it was allowed by the D o T as it was.
Used to be the case when a new section of motorway was going to be tendered the aggregate ,concrete and asphalt suppliers would get together in their groups to 'fix' the prices in what was known as the 'middle for diddle ' scam. They operated their own cartels.
If you are a contractor tendering to build a road you are going to buy and supply the lowest quality materials and workmanship that you can get away with but they are also dependent on their suppliers who provide and lay the tarmac..
If you can save time and get away with it by not properly compacting the sub base sooner rather than later the road starts to sink causing uneveness - I believe the most famous case recently was on the M25 Reigate - Leatherhead where IIRC there was a big dispute and virtually the whole section had to be remade.
I know this because I was directly involved in buying materials and subcontracts for major civil engineers for ten years back in the sixties and seventies.
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Ah, my old friend the Newbury bypass, this road is dangerous, what imbecile allowed it to be built with uselessly short slip roads and 2nd gear corners immediatly before the slip road itself? More cost cutting, looks more like a copy of one of Hitler's original Autobahns. More cheapskate penny pinching? In fact, why wasn?t the whole A34 rebuilt as proper motorway? It?s the main route from the Midlands to the port of Southampton!
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I didn't realise, when I started this thread, that this new road actually had entries and exits other than the South and North ends! There is a website with maps and diagrams (to which I was denied access!) but the helpful people on their information line will post you an info pack. I could see that there is a problem getting off the toll road onto the M54 to Telford, in that the exit from the toll is North of the M6/M54 junction. Apparently the info pack will reveal all!
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Anyione know when this road is "off peak" ie half price?
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They have 'Day' and 'Night charges (06:00 to 23:00 and 23:00 to 06:00), not peak and off-peak, despite what the signs say. So 06:01 on a Sunday morning is a 'peak' time.
www.m6toll.co.uk/pricing/
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I think it's a bit off that they don't put the charging times on the signs. My sister asked me to go down it on the way from Coventry to Shrewsbury just for novelty value, assuming that 9:45 on a Sunday evening would be off-peak so would only cost a quid. You may well say check the website, but I'm afraid I don't have a web terminal in the car and how many one-off users are actually going to think to check before using it? Surely a simple sign to indicate which charges are in force isn't too much to ask?
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Apologies if this has already been mentioned, I couldn't see it anywhere.
It seems the M6 toll road has suffered it's first serious traffic jam, which wasn't helped by the company that owns the road, who failed to tell AA Roadwatch of the problem.
What could be causing a jam on a *brand new* motorway?
Yep, you guessed it... Roadworks!
Apparently the road has a problem involving large puddles of water forming during rain, this has directly caused 5 accidents!!
I think that's shocking on a brand new road personally.
www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_857425.html?menu=new...s
Blue
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Yes - ironic that the motorway it was intended to relieve was actually a far better pace to be. Isn't this what often happens when profit is the prime motive? Anyway I wonder how long it's going to be before this 'relief motorway' needs a bypass :-)
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Did anyone have the audacity to ask for a refund?
More to the point did they get one?
Question.
Do you pay at point of entry or exit?
FiF
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