CAR drivers will have to pay a flat rate of £3 to use Britain’s first toll motorway, it was announced yesterday.

The 27-mile M6 Toll in the West Midlands, which is due to open before the end of January next year, will cost lorries £11, vans £6 and motorcycles £2. The charges are almost double those predicted, raising concerns that the existing route on the M6 will remain severely congested.

Apart from sections of the M25 around London, the M6 skirting Birmingham is the busiest stretch of road in Britain. A third of all road freight travels on the route and much of the congestion is caused by nose-to-tail lorries.

The M6 Toll starts close to Junction 4 of the M6 south of the city. It will follow a path northeast before rejoining the M6 at Junction 11, north of Birmingham. It aims to save drivers 45 minutes at peak times.

Midland Expressway, the private company that is spending £485 million building the motorway, said that the charges would fall by 50p for motorcycles and £1 for other vehicles between 11pm and 6am.

The Government gave the company freedom to charge what it liked for using the road for the next 50 years. Motoring and freight groups had expected the rates to be only £2 for cars and £5 for lorries.

The Freight Transport Association said that it was surprised at the level of charge. James Hookham, the association’s policy director, predicted that many companies would choose to continue to send their lorries along the M6: “At £11, a lot of operators will tell their drivers to carry on up the M6. They will only turn on to the toll road if they see the M6 is congested.”

Environmental groups accused Midland Expressway of trying to minimise the number of lorries so that it would avoid costly repairs. Nearly all damage to road surfaces is caused by heavy goods vehicles.

Friends of the Earth, however, welcomed the principle of paying for roads at the point of use, saying that the M6 Toll could be a forerunner for a countrywide system of toll roads.

Tom Fanning, managing director of Midland Expressway, said that drivers would have the choice of remaining on the M6 if they did not want to pay. “We are competing against free roads. Drivers will be able to avoid the nightmare of getting stuck on the M6 where traffic does only 17 mph between 8am and 6pm.”

The company said that it intended to raise charges if too much traffic was attracted to the M6 Toll. Conversely, it would lower them if the road were less popular than predicted. Mr Fanning said that it was unclear how much less congested the M6 would become after the toll road had opened. “The capacity may well be taken up by local residents using the M6,” he said. The company has promised that its route will be free-flowing.

Mr Fanning refused to reveal how much traffic Midland Expressway expected to handle on the new road, but said that he would be delighted if it handled “100,000 transactions a day”. At that level the company would be collecting about £500,000 a day.

The company expects a slow start and plans to encourage drivers to switch by offering £1 off for the first ten million customers. That is expected to run out within six months. Calls to waive tolls when the M6 is hit by accidents or roadworks have been rejected.

The AA said that the £3 charge for cars was likely to deter many commuters, but occasional users, including tens of thousands of football fans at weekends, were likely to pay. A spokesman said: “Hopefully those who can afford to pay will leave the M6 clearer for those who can’t.”

The RAC Foundation said that the company should waive the tolls, which are paid on exit, if drivers had suffered congestion.

The Highways Agency said that no further toll roads were planned, but this could change if the M6 Toll was a success.

The environmental transport group Transport 2000 said, however, that the introduction of more pay-as-you-go roads would be disastrous for the countryside and lead to a big rise in the amount of traffic.

• The Treasury announced that the per-mile charge being imposed on lorries from 2006 would be accompanied by a reduction in fuel duty to ensure the freight industry did not pay extra. The charge, which would be levied via a satellite-tracking device in each vehicle, would be phased in with the heaviest lorries first.

  Road ways

• Toll rates (6am to 11pm): motorcycles £2, cars £3, vans £6, lorries £11

  (11pm-6am): motorcycles £1.50, cars £2, vans £5, lorries £10

• 2001 Construction starts after two public inquiries and a High Court challenge
  
• More than 16 million cubic metres of earth have been moved to build the road, enough to fill Wembley Stadium eight times over