A-road toll plans whip up a storm

By Categories: NewsPublished On: Tuesday 15 October 2013

goldstarPlans to demolish a bridge on the busy A14 trunk road with the aim of forcing traffic onto a new toll road have been met with concern from voices within the road transport industry, warning that the scheme may put East Anglian hauliers out of business.

The plan is to divert traffic away from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and create a new junction with the A1 south of Brampton, which is where the current A14 crosses the A1. Traffic will pass along the new road and rejoin the existing track of the A14 at Swavesey, to the west of Bar Hill. To ensure that the old road is no longer used by trucks, the bridge over the railway line at Huntingdon will be demolished.

Although the bulk of the cost of the new road will be met by central government and local authorities, including the Local Enterprise Partnership in Greater Cambridgeshire, the government has proposed that users of the new road should also make a contribution by paying tolls. It has been estimated that the government will look to recover some 20 per cent of the cost – estimated at £300 million – by imposing tolls.

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg told the BBC: “We all need to ask ourselves questions about how we make sure we get the new roads, the new bypasses, the new capacity on the congested parts of our road network, but make sure that the taxpayer isn’t on the hook for everything.

“There are other parts of the network – bridges and other bottlenecks – where people do pay tolls and are used to doing so,” Clegg continued. “It is all part, frankly, of a new world we’re in now where we can’t just expect the taxpaying public to pay for everything.”

When the issue of the potential financial impact on hauliers was raised, Clegg added: “I’m sure a haulier will also give you a calculation about how much they’re losing because of delays on the A14. This is the thing you have to balance.”

Simon Underwood is a director of Goldstar Transport, which is headquartered in Felixstowe at the eastern end of the A14 but has a presence in container ports and terminals throughout the UK. He vigorously challenges assertions that the industry has already got used to paying tolls.

“The western end of the A14 is a mess,” he said. “But for us the decision to use any new toll road would be entirely driven by the cost of the toll.

“My fear is that it will end up like the M6 Toll, which is a road that no-one can afford to use because the time you may save in no way makes up for the money you will have to spend to use it.

“It’s like the Severn Bridge, we can only use it if the customer is prepared to pay a surcharge. The margins on each trip are slim, and there’s no room for extra expenditure.”

The Road Haulage Association said its concerns extended beyond the regional impact, as it might set a very worrying precedent for the development of a patchwork of local tolls on the Highways Agency network.

RHA director of policy Jack Semple said: “The proposal is, in effect, to create something with much the same effect as the Dartford, Severn or Humber crossings. To ensure drivers have no practical alternative to the tolled road, the DfT is even planning to demolish a bridge on the current A14 so that through traffic has no practical alternative to paying the toll – other than not to travel.

“When David Cameron told the House of Commons that he wanted to see the DfT building roads, he surely did not mean destroying perfectly sound road infrastructure in the process.

“The tolling proposal stands on its head the logic of the Chancellor’s recent reduction in tolls at the Humber Bridge in order to boost business. Here we have no major bridge to build, just the imposition of a toll that will damage the economy locally and in the region as a whole.

“The DfT’s basic commitment to making much-needed and over-due improvements to the A14 route is welcome. But hauliers view the charging plan as both unwelcome and unnecessary. It sets a worrying precedent for the future, which could see the evolution of a patchwork of tolls.”

Semple’s concerns are backed by a recent report from Parliament’s Audit Commission that showed how local councils were boosting their revenue by making excessive profits on services such as parking. It found activities such as selling parking spaces and school meals actually outstripped revenue from council tax in one in three council districts.

Meanwhile, the Freight Transport Association welcomed the decision to upgrade the A14, but called for the industry to be “closely involved” in discussions surrounding the funding of the scheme.

Malcolm Bingham, FTA’s head of road network management policy, said: “FTA welcomes at long last a commitment to fund the upgrading of this essential strategic piece of infrastructure.  But tolling is always bad news for the logistics industry as it is always taken as a threat of extra cost…

“FTA members realise that without tolling, it will be difficult to raise the necessary funding for new infrastructure, but our members want to ensure that any tolling that is put in place is reasonable and fit with a set of parameters which the Association has called the tolling charter.”

Among the measures called for by the FTA’s tolling charter are transparency surrounding charging calculations, a ban on discriminatory pricing against commercial vehicles, and a compensatory reduction in fuel duty – as well as minimum service standards, non-tolled alternatives, and lower rates for vehicles that are less polluting and road-wearing.