Tuesday 5th January 2009 - which means that for 4 days commuters, travellers, businesses and visitors to Wales have had to fork out yet more money to do business within Wales and beyond. I was talking to someone today who told me that they could recall paying the princely sum of twelve and half pence to cross the old Severn Bridge in the mid 1970's - what price the £5.50 per car we pay today.
Looking beyond the immediate teeth grinding impact of yet another annual increase in the Severn bridge tolls, there is another issue – one that is beginning to become worth considering, what’s going to happen in 2014, when it has been estimated that the PFI contract will have been covered by toll receipts. Who actually is going to own the bridge (or bridges) and will they stop collecting the tolls?
If not then the bridge (or bridges) sit on the border - but the toll on the newer bridge is collected in Wales, the older one being collected in England - so will the bridge and the tolls simply revert back to the Department of transport? Or if perchance it comes down to the National Assembly, by default or as a result of central government indifference, then does the National Assembly act as merely an agent for the Department of Transport or does it end up with a measure of a degree of freedom of action?
With that thought in mind, what choices could be made - something that might be worth considering is that if the current tolls were halved then, what could be accomplished by using a percentage of the remaining toll fees to cover ongoing maintenance of the bridge and what could be accomplished by using the remainder of the toll for ring fenced capital projects – such as new integrated transport systems, reopening railway lines, funding tram systems and investing in rail freight – which would be far more beneficial for all of us in Wales than any of the future toll fees disappearing into the Westminster coffers merely to help to bail out the bankers?
No comments:
Post a Comment