M6 Toll

The M6 Toll (previously called the Birmingham North Relief Road, or BNRR) is the United Kingdom's first toll-paying motorway. Designed to alleviate the increasing congestion on the M6 through Birmingham and the Black Country, it connects M6 Junction 4 at the NEC to M6 Junction 11A at Wolverhampton with 27 miles of three-lane motorway. This busiest section of the M6 was previously carrying up to 180,000 vehicles per day when it was designed to carry only 72,000. The new M6 Toll road is touted by its operator as saving up to 45 minutes journey time over the old road before the opening of the toll road.

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In 1992, a private sector company, Midland Expressway Ltd (MEL), won a 53-year concession to build and operate the road as an early form of public-private partnership scheme, with the company recouping its costs by setting and collecting tolls. The concession period began when construction began, the idea being that it would cover three years of construction and 50 years of operation, before the road was returned to the Government. As of June 2005, MEL is 100% owned by Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Australia who operate many tolled roads in Australia and across the world including Highway_407 in Canada.

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MEL contracted out the construction of the road to a consortium of major contractors Carillion, Alfred McAlpine, Balfour Beatty and AMEC (together known as CAMBBA). Construction work began in Mid-2002. The road was partially opened on December 9 2003 for traffic entering from local junctions, then fully opened on December 14 2003.

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Environmental campaigners have been opposed from its inception to its opening. Whilst the road was being built some advocates of direct action dug tunnels in the path of the road in order to frustrate and delay the work. Most notable of the campaigners was Swampy who went on to be a minor celebrity in the United Kingdom. On the first day of opening of the road less radical opponents voiced their opposition. Friends of the Earth claimed that the road will not relieve much traffic from the West Midlands conurbation as most users using the M6 in that area began or ended their journeys within the conurbation and so the M6 Toll would offer no advantage to them. Their campaign co-ordinator for the West Midlands, Chris Crean, said that although the £900m cost of the road had been borne by private companies, the money should have been spent on public transport http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3303629.stm.

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The road also affected canal restoration trusts, as restoration of the Lichfield Canal was threatened by the construction of the motorway, which cut across the canal's route. Funds were raised to build an aqueduct to carry the canal over the motorway. (The aqueduct has been finished but the canal has yet to reach it, giving it an odd appearance.) This has had a beneficial side-effect – the Government has promised that never again will a new road be built in the path of a waterway restoration scheme, unless an aqueduct or tunnel is provided.

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Conversely, business leaders in Staffordshire, now effectively closer to London, welcomed the opening of the road, saying that it would make it easier to do business there http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3303629.stm.

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The M6 Toll is part of the (unsigned in the UK) E-road .

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With the success of the M6 Toll, there are plans to extend the road up as far as Knutsford, where much of the traffic leaves the M6 for Manchester.

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Motorway: A motorway (in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and some Commonwealth nations) is both a type of road and a classification. Motorways may also be regarded as highways designed to carry a large volume of traffic where a normal road would not suffice or would be unsafe, usually between cities....

M6: M6 refers to:...

Birmingham: :This article is about the city in England. For other uses, please see Birmingham, Alabama or other places named Birmingham....

M6 Toll related Images and Photos (experimental)

Actors Jason Robards and Maria Schell Rehearsing a Scene from "For Whom the Bells Toll"