Be another white elephant like the M6 Toll which hardly anyone uses.

I thought Osborne was trying to save money not spend it?

The only people who will use this will be the wealthy who can afford it

Fixed for you.

Which is why it's worth paying the fee... Love that road when I'm driving through that part of the world.

Ahh but if its a toll road then its built with private money not public money

I use the M6 toll every time I have to go, well, anywhere near or past Birmingham (so anywhere in the midlands or the south east basically). Rubby brilliant road it is and the cost is the same as what, a couple of litres of petrol? You'd burn more than that extra going round Brum the 'old' way.

Jon

Yes but if it ever became popular and crowded would you still love it?

If it became too popular they'd put the price up. With toll roads you can use price to regulate demand. You can't do that on 'free' roads, which is why the actual M6 near Birmingham is frequently pretty near gridlocked.

I can see the benefit if I were going past Birmingham occasionally but not regularly. Though I would drive outside normal hours anyway so even the free motorway would be a lot easier.

M4 relief road: No tolls planned, Welsh government says
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22007184
um ................

Does that affect you?

Yep, I've used the M6 Toll loads of times - very nice (although I could claim it back anyway). I wouldn't use a toll road if it had to come out of my pocket.

I know this only too well. Even when it flows it's 50mph, nose to tail. Bloody stressful, to say the least - you can't even back off to give yourself some breathing room because some tw@t will force his way into the gap.

I pay enough in road tax, fuel duty, VAT on fuel duty to pay for the roads. I fundamentally object to toll roads.

While I do think that motorists do not pay the true full economic and environmental impacts of their activity I agree with you. I am not in favour of pricing the poor or average person off the road. We need better public transport and that means it has to be subsidised more. A full bus carries more than the equivalent of a dozen cars worth of passenger. If people could commute far more cheaply than driving to work it would make a difference.

The problem with what we have, which is subsidised privatised public transport, is that the extra subsidy ends up as executive bonuses and share dividends, not spent on development of the network. If you want extra subsidies to have an effect, you pretty much have to nationalise it first.