Plans for a much-criticised new toll expressway, to run parallel to the M6 between Manchester and Birmingham, have been abandoned in a reversal of a previous major ministerial policy shift.
Roads minister Dr Stephen Ladyman announced that, while ministers still accepted the need for increased capacity on the road, a new road would not be quicker or cheaper to build than on-line widening, as hoped.
Highways Agency work had shown that the idea, floated in 2004, to build a new expressway was a non-starter. Far from avoiding the building work or disruption to the existing M6 as hoped, it would require the rebuilding of a fifth of the existing motorway.
Additional infrastructure works would be necessary to safely accommodate a likely increase in heavy freight traffic, and to provide appropriate access between the two motorways.
Instead, the HA would progress the alternative option of on-line widening of the existing M6, which would also have the benefit of costing 15% less.
Staffordshire County Council welcomed the announcement. ‘Staffordshire has been determined any solution to the M6 congestion problem should minimise land take, while focusing on the economic and social benefits for Staffordshire.
‘The proposal for a separate toll road seemed especially inappropriate as the Government is developing a national system of road pricing.’
Transport 2000 welcomed the scrapping of the ‘lunatic’ scheme, which its director Stephen Joseph saw as ‘the last gasp of Lord Birt’s lunatic vision of a network of new toll motorways ploughing across the English countryside’.
But the Freight Transport Association bemoaned the wasting of four years on the new toll road idea and called on the Government to ‘get on with it’ and widen the M6 to Manchester.