Transport chief calls for road tolls in major cities

Most major cities in Britain will have to introduce road charging to cope with a growing crisis on the country's motorways, warns the Government's chief transport adviser.

The prediction from Professor David Begg, the influential chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, came after the latest figures, for April to June this year, showed that traffic volumes on Britain's motorways have jumped by 2 per cent since last year.

These figures have intensified pressure on the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, to make a crunch decision: either introduce charging and tolls or agree to build US-style "superhighways" across Britain.

But Prof Begg said charging was the only way ministers could control further traffic increases. "Any increase in motorway capacity without charging will buy time but will not be sustainable," he said yesterday. "The commission is at one on this."

Prof Begg's commission will warn Mr Darling that congestion charging in cities or tolls on selected motorways is required to stop millions of drivers using urban motorways to enter cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow. Otherwise, the commission claims, motorways in Britain's biggest cities will face gridlock.

Over the next 15 years, congestion on urban motorways such as the M8 in Glasgow or M6 through Birmingham will rise by 80 per cent, destroying the Government's pledge to cut total congestion levels by 6 per cent by 2010.

In an attempt to relieve this pressure, Mr Darling's officials are studying proposals to expand a stretch of the M42 in the Midlands to 12 lanes and to widen 50 miles of the M6 near Birmingham to eight lanes. The Department for Transport will also soon receive proposals to widen the M25 London orbital.

But Mr Darling is understood to be sceptical about the need for further "superhighways", and sympathetic to calls for cities such as Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow and Leeds to introduce charging schemes.