A TIDY LITTLE EARNER

The news (Western Mail 1st June 2010) that the private company that operates the Severn Toll Bridges has raised almost £226m over the past three years – yet has spent barely £15m on essential maintenance on the original crossings damaged cables - should not come as much of a surprise to many people. The Severn Crossings Tolls have been a valuable cash cow for many years, aside from being a tax on jobs, a tax on commuters, a tax on growth and tax on business in the south of Wales.

Plaid Cymru's South Wales Central AM Chris Franks obtained the figures under the Freedom of Information Act, which show a significant difference between the large amounts of money raised by Severn River Crossing plc from the toll, and the relatively small amount spent on treating the damage to the cables on the old crossing (M48). 

Since 2006, some £15m has been spent on main cable work on the first Severn Crossing. The Highways Agency suggests that another £5.8m will take place over the next five years. Some £225,733,000 has been collected in bridge toll revenue since 2006. people may well wonder if they are going to get saddled with major work to maintain the bridges after the toll profits have been siphoned off by the concessionary company when the bridges are finally returned to public ownership in 2016.

BRIDGES OR BANKERS?

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?