M6 Toll Breakfast
Fast, effective pain relief - at least that's what the ads say about the M6 Toll. Steve Boffey, marketing director of toll operator Midland Expressway, gave it to us first hand at our latest property breakfast at Birmingham's Hotel Du Vin read on....
Joy of the open road
Fast, effective pain relief - at least that's what the ads say about the M6 Toll. Steve Boffey, marketing director of toll operator Midland Expressway, gave it to us first hand at our latest property breakfast at Birmingham's Hotel Du Vin
"If we don't get the right numbers of vehicles on the road there is no one to bail us out so we have to price the road to ensure we get the right volume of traffic on it."
It was a stark opening observation from Steve Boffey, marketing director of M6 toll road operator Midland Expressway, that struck at the heart of what the road is about. It is not a public road. The government did not put its hand in its pocket.
Midland Expressway - a consortium 75 per cent owned by the Australian Macquarie Infrastructure Group with the remaining shareholder Autostrada, the operator of Italian toll roads - has shareholders to satisfy. The road cost £3900m and the company has to get its money back.
"It's still a common misconception," said Boffey. "People think the government were involved in the road."
The reasoning for the M6 Toll is well known. Only the M25 is a busier stretch of tarmac in the country than the existing M6 around Birmingham. A road designed to accommodate 70,000 vehicles a day has to take anything upwards of 180,000 instead. A survey in 2001 showed that the average peak journey time between junctions 4 and 12 was 79 minutes. It should take 26 minutes.
Early signs are that the new road is more than working. Boffey revealed to guests that the new road had on average taken 35,000 road users a day since launch in December. Usage peaked at 47,000 a day during the Christmas period.
Just as importantly, speeds on the old M6 are up too. Independent figures from traffic information group ITIS have revealed that average speeds on the M6 have more than doubled from 17 to 35 mph. "The evening rush hour has disappeared," said Boffey. "This is fantastic news for the West Midlands. This is what this road has been built and designed to do."
Boffey was later quizzed about the perception that not as many hauliers were using the road as hoped amid complaints over pricing - lorries are presently charged £310.
Boffey replied that he was presently "quite comfortable" with the mix of traffic on the road. "We need a good yield like airlines and cannot rely on cars alone to meet our revenue targets. We need a good mix. As we speak we are talking to and signing up a lot of the big hauliers. Some of the biggest fleets and some of the biggest high street names are now signing with us."
Boffey admitted that because January was the quietest time of the year on the country's motorway network, hauliers might have thought twice about using the toll road. "However, once the old M6 gets busy and you get delays then operators will start weighing up the economics very differently."
Boffey said there was now massive awareness of the road among the greater public.
"I have never been involved in something that has generated so much media coverage," added Boffey. He had a tick list of stories that he knew the media would be running. "We've ticked one of the first ones this week when we had to put some cones on the road while working on a minor problem. The work only related to 100 yards of tarmac but we put out the cones purely for safety. We knew that by putting the cones up we would get it big time on the chin from the media."
But Boffey said most of the media coverage had been very positive. "We asked our PR agency to write ideal headlines and they have actually achieved some of them."
During questions Boffey was asked whether Midland Expressway could now help developers promote sites along its length. "We are exploring a lot of avenues," added Boffey. "Indeed the Highways Authority is looking at us as a test bed for lots of ideas. For instance, they are not happy with people putting up boardings in farmers' fields next to motorways. They would much rather exploit the revenue themselves."
Boffey also revealed that although Midland Expressway would not bid to operate another toll road in the UK, its parent company would undoubtedly be very interested in operating another road if it was put out to tender by the government.
Turning to the development potential of the M6 Toll, our other speaker, John De Kanter, chief executive of inward investment agency InStaffs, said that land bordering the road was already being snapped up with some major inward investment deals. He expected Power Europe to be on site this month at Kingswood Lakeside Park in Cannock for Unilever, which is building a 450,000 sq ft logistics facility.
De Kanter added: "We have always seen the toll road as more than just a through route. It is a corridor which offers the opportunity to site developments along the corridor. Only when people start to travel along the route will they realise the benefits of the site being within ten or 15 minutes of the road.
"New roads do bring economic development in their path. You only have to look at the M40 or the Black Country Spine Road to see that."
De Kanter added that logistics was coming through as a key sector for developers investing along the road, while its attractiveness as a headquarters location was also evident. "The centre of gravity in terms of logistics is definitely moving northwards from the Northamptonshire and Warwickshire area to the M6 Toll region."
M6 Toll timeline
The need to relieve traffic congestion in the UK's industrial heartland around the M6 was first identified by the Conservative government in 1980.
In 1990 the government invited private firms to bid for the contract to build the route, which was confirmed as a private toll road.
Campaigners raised financial, environmental and practical objections to the Birmingham Northern Relief Road, which was renamed the M6 Toll in 2001.
Two public inquiries and a series of protests against the road helped push back the start of work until 2001, ten years after Midland Expressway was appointed to run the project.
The M6 Toll opened for business in December 2003.
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