No, Not A Felgate, A Toll…

As one born-and-bred in Gloucester, I have limited experience of the tolls on the Severn Bridges (the A48 being a wondrous thing, after all). But today, returning to Cardiff from a trip to Somerset, I found the whole experience unavoidable. Or did I? While recovering from my rage at the fact that the cash machines at the last services before the bridge (Gordano, for the record) were going to charge me, it struck me that with the toll now at £5.10, the bridges might be pushing towards the point of non-economy. So let’s work it out; assuming everyone from the north uses M50/A449 or A48 to avoid them, the tolls are only payable on journeys from the East and South.

From the South, the diversion route is M5/A38/A48 (Avonmouth-Gloucester-Chepstow) for a total of 69 miles, as against a direct route of 12 miles. My car (a MkIV Golf 1.4, for the record) gets 40mpg with a following wind, so the extra fuel use is (69-12) / 40 = 1.4 gallons, or 6.48 litres. With the current average fuel price at around 96 pence per litre, that’s an additional fuel burn of £6.22; added to the additional journey time (at least an hour), that decision is a no-brainer.

From the East, however, the diversion route is A419/A417/A48 (Swindon-Gloucester-Chepstow) for a total of 75 miles, as against a direct route of 51 miles. Here the additional burn is only (75-51) / 40 = 0.6 gallons, or 2.73 litres, at a cost of £2.61; so the question is begged, is my half an hour (or the carbon cost) worth £2.49? Moreover, consider that, as anyone who has ever used the M49 will attest, almost none of the bridge traffic actually comes from the south…

The irony is that none of this should be an issue. The one-way toll is the result not of politics, but poor design; the space between the ends of the original bridge and the junctions meant that bi-directional toll collection would lead to queues on the bridge itself at peak periods. That isn’t an issue for the second crossing toll plaza and the reduction in traffic due to the second crossing should have eliminated the peak flow issue on the first bridge. Then you can halve the toll to £2.55 and beat the economics.

More fundamentally, if the government has its way all of this should become irrelevant as the toll can be collected bi-directionally and automatically using the road user pricing system. But have they realised that? More’s the point, have Midlands Expressway Limited (the PFI operators of the M6 Toll road, an astoundingly underpublicised disaster in traffic planning terms) realised it? Nothing like total loss of control of revenue collection to really scare the shareholders…