...and it's only at 50% capacity at the moment, sending all the traffic onto the M6, which it was built to ease.
Suggestions? £5 to use the M6?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8500556.stm
mr_cellophane said:Most of the time when I head north I go up the M54 so the toll road is no use anyway.
The point is that this road was built to ease M6 congestion. It has way more capacity than is being used at the moment, because profit has got in the way.
domd1979 said:Regardless of toll the M6 would have filled up again anyway. It isn't all longer distance traffic on the M6. Active Traffic Management ain't far off on the M6, which will create more capacity. Which will probably fill up....
domd1979 said:Regardless of toll the M6 would have filled up again anyway. It isn't all longer distance traffic on the M6. Active Traffic Management ain't far off on the M6, which will create more capacity. Which will probably fill up....
I don't need to use it, living where we do.
The point is that this road was built to ease M6 congestion. It has way more capacity than is being used at the moment, because profit has got in the way.
mr_cellophane said:Going back to the M6 (Toll), does anyone know why they didn't join it up to the M54 which looks the sensible option ?
jonesy said:Yup, back in 1994/5(?) I went to the public inquiry with one of the local campaign groups opposing it. The evidence was clear in all the data: the Birmingham Northern Relief Road as it was known then would, at best, reduce traffic levels on the existing M6 by less than 5% (can't remember the exact figure). It wasn't enough to make any significant difference to journey times on the M6, which was largely congested with traffic travelling no more than two junctions, so would never divert to the relief road, which wasn't therefore ever going to provide any relief. We also said the BNRR would generate traffic and encourage longer travel distances in Staffordshire, and pointed out that very little freight was going to use it because of the tolls. Indeed, given the disproportionate level of damage done to road surfaces by heavy vehicles, the toll operator had a clear commercial interest in pricing lorries off the road thereby making enormous savings in maintenance. This was of course all scoffed at by the suitably pompous barrister representing the government, but that's what has happened. The suppressed demand on roads like the M6 so vastly exceeds anything that can be done to increase capacity that demand management is the only workable way to deal with it, but politicians won't admit that.
domd1979 said:I believe the Highways Agency are desirous of doing exactly that.
Rhythm Thief said:Absolutely true.
I still think about the best thing they could have done - and I suppose they could still do this - to relieve congestion on the old M6 is to allow HGVs to use the outside two lanes. In my experience, much of the congestion is caused by traffic trying to get as far up the relatively uncongested outside lanes as possible before cutting into the exit lane in the last few hundred yards. As much of the heavy goods traffic is through traffic, it seems to me to make sense to keep it away from the junctions. But I suppose the main thing to remember when talking about controlling the traffic is that there's just too much of it.