BRITAIN:Birmingham North pike to Build

Construction work should start in the year 2000 on the Birmingham North Relief Road, Britain’s first toll road in the motor era. Early October the UK High Court ruled against local groups opposing the road, saying that all the permits for the road had been correctly issued.

The UK Govt requested proposals for the Birmingham road in 1989. Three groups tendered in Oct 90. A concession for the road was issued in Feb 1992 to Midland Expressway Limited. Designs and alignments were approved and other permits obtained by 94. But the project has been on a “care and maintenance” basis the past several years dealing with legal challenges. Tom Smith, managing director of Midland, says he is now quite hopeful the last major obstacle has been cleared, and that the project can proceed. He says barring unforseen new developments, work on detailed design, financing, and land acquisition should be proceeding at full steam next year with the chance of the road opening after 3 years of construction in 03 or 04.

The Blair Labour Govt has axed many highway (“trunk road”) projects but it is supporting the Birmingham project. It is badly needed to relieve congestion on the M6 motorway, a 6-lane highway that not only carries Birmingham regional traffic but is the major connection between London and the Liverpool-Manchester area. It is one of the most congested mwys in England.

Midland’s road will be entirely investor financed, owned and operated except that the government will acquire the necessary land and lease it to the company. It is now a joint venture of Kvaerner, the construction company and Autostrade, Italy’s major toll road company.

The road will be 2x3-lanes 43km long (23mi) with 7 interchanges. It skirts the northeastern quadrant of the Birmingham built up area in a ‘green belt’ around the city, which is Britain’s second after London. It takes off from the M6 at Jct-4 east of Birmingham where there is already a complex interchange with the M42 heads northwesterly until it comes to the A5 arterial then turns generally west paralleling it to rejoin the M6 at Jct-11 on the northern outskirts.

Midland is free to set its own tolls under a 53-year concession. UK law does not make it practical to pursue unpaid tolls in the courts so Midland will use toll gates and a combination of roll-through electronic tolling and cash collection at 2 mainline toll plazas and ramp plazas. Autostrade will be in charge of designing the toll system, Smith said.

He expects that despite the conventional nature of the toll collection system, they will be using variably priced tolls to maximize their revenues and adjust traffic flows on their road.

The group has sunk some $45m into the project to date. The construction cost is expected to be around $700m, or $2.7m/lane-km. (Contact Tom Smith Midland Expressway Ltd crooks.marrion@traf.com see also TRnl#2 Apr 96 p5))

Other pricing

Tolls were very widely used in the era of horse power and the term ‘turnpike’ is British. Britain has a bunch of toll bridges and toll tunnels. It also has an array of modern road improvements financed by investors and managed by the private sector in return for ‘shadow tolls’ — payments from the central government based on traffic attracted. The government in a ‘white paper’ came out in favor of road pricing in principle but says electronic tolling meeds more testing. It is leaving the initiative to local governments.