Freight traffic should be granted free access to the M6 Toll Road to relieve congestion on the existing M6, the boss of Midlands transport group Centro has said. Geoff Inskip told Transportation Professional that the M6 Toll is “a vastly under used asset and is not fulfilling its planned use or potential.” A new company should be created, he added, to buy out the M6 Toll concession, funded by introducing a toll for freight traffic on the old M6.

His comments come as Transport Minister Norman Baker was reported as saying that vehicle excise duty should be scrapped in favour of a ‘pay as you drive’ road charge. He is thought to be concerned about predicted falling revenues from greener, more efficient vehicles. A charge of 5p per mile for cars using motorways has previously been suggested by the RAC Foundation.

Department for Transport said Government’s position on road charging remains the same: tolling will only be considered for new highway capacity. This includes the A14 through Cambridgeshire which Government announced this summer is to be joined by a new parallel route which is to be tolled.

Elsewhere, Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics told an audience last Thursday: “I don’t think we should give up on road pricing” and suggested that “questions about what we pay for will change over the next five or 10 years”. He added that “tolled bridges and tunnels” present great opportunities for local authorities to raise revenue.

Professor Travers was speaking at the launch of a report by the New Local Government Network supported by May Gurney which looks at innovative ways of generating revenue from a range of public assets including transport infrastructure. The report says that ‘smarter approaches’ to congestion charging should be developed to overcome public resistance to such schemes. This could include ‘dynamic pricing models’ to charge motorists less to travel during quiet hours and more during peak periods.

Report author Joe Manning responded to a suggestion that failure to introduce congestion charging in cities including Manchester meant that road pricing was dead. “Local authorities may have to become more creative in the way the benefits of charging are presented to people,” he said.

The report also makes the point that the M6 Toll Road operates at a loss because traffic volumes are below initial forecasts, while vehicle use on the M6 is back up to where it was prior to 2003 when the toll route opened.

For more on the M6 and an interview with Centro’s Geoff Inskip see this month’s Transportation Professional magazine.

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