[Name]
[Address]
[City / Town]
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[Date]

Dear [prospective investor],

I am writing on behalf of Friends of the Earth West Midlands Transport Campaign regarding the proposed Birmingham Northern Relief Road (BNRR) toll motorway.

I understand that, dependent on the outcome of the current legal case against it, Midland Expressway Limited, the Autostrade and Kværner consortium behind the proposals, is hoping to approach the city in the near future. I know you have been involved in previous infrastructure projects, and that your company might be approached by Midland Expressway Limited.

Friends of the Earth has been involved in the debate over the new motorway since 1991, and gave detailed evidence at the Public Inquiry. We have also been following developments on other toll roads, as well as policy decisions which may effect this motorway. While appreciating you will be coming from a different perspective, some of our conclusions will, I am sure, be of interest to you.

• It is our view that the projections for traffic on the motorway cannot be guaranteed.

• It is our view that the construction costs of the motorway may well exceed the predictions made by Midland Expressway Limited.

The clear financial danger is that the road will follow the Virginia example and flounder early on through lack of traffic. Given the 50 year length of BNRR's concession and the long lead time before the road is profitable, if it ever is, and given the new Government's policies to control traffic growth, we would not be surprised to see the motorway fail.

Perhaps you could confirm whether Midland Expressway Limited have approached you for funding of this project and whether it is one you would consider.

We would be more than happy to discuss in more detail some of the issues we have identified. I enclose an outline of our views along with corroborative details.

Yours Sincerely

BNRR CAMPAIGNER
BIRMINGHAM FOE WMTC

Although superficially promising, these are based on market research and modelling which cannot be relied on. As in the American case, we believe there are serious flaws in the predictions. Indeed we are not the only ones. The Department of Transport employed consultants, Transport Planning Associates to examine the traffic predictions of the various bidders for BNRR in 1991. Despite the fact that TPA said they had "little confidence" in the forecasts MEL made, and that they were based on unrealistic driver behaviour, the Government signed a contract with MEL to build the road.

Partly because of these criticisms further work was done to present forecasts at the Inquiry. The most critical element is the willingness to pay the toll. Motorway service areas were used to ask drivers if they would use the toll road. As you can see from the enclosed results taken from MEL's evidence, the results of these questionnaires showed huge variations in potential traffic. Indeed, it is not even clear that people will do what they said. Human nature appears extremely adept at avoiding toll booths and finding rat runs.

Tom Smith, Managing Director of MEL, admits as much in his legal affidavit to the Concession Agreement Court Case, saying:

In our view, the market research, on which the company is basing its traffic predictions, is flawed, out of date, and gives little confidence that the road will be used, for a number of reasons.

• There are free (and fairly free-flowing) A-road alternatives. The A38 and A5 run parallel. They are toll free. For much of the day they are uncongested, particularly the A38. BNRR is not comparable with a toll bridge, precisely because it has no monopoly. Although the M6 is highly congested, something like 80% of that traffic at peak times is accessing the conurbation. It is not, therefore, the main provider of BNRR traffic. Most people who would use it would otherwise use A-roads.

• For the BNRR traffic figures to function large amounts of new traffic must use the M6 in Staffordshire, where BNRR raises traffic levels by some 30,000 vehicles a day. This would change it from being a reasonably free flowing motorway to an extremely congested one, in many ways similar to the M6 through the West Midlands. The current roads review has put the widening of the M6 in Staffordshire on hold, subject to a corridor study, and regional conferences. Many of us do not believe it is likely to be reinstated given the new Government's transport policy and the possibilities of upgrading the parallel West Coast Mainline. Even if it were reinstated it would almost certainly end up at a public inquiry, and even if the widening took place, the M6 is likely to become more and more congested in Staffordshire anyway because of the 70,000 new homes planned for the county, many of which would be taken up by new West Midlands Commuters.

• Other motorways widening schemes no longer likely to be constructed in the region include the Western Orbital Motorway, the M6 widening in Warwickshire and the M42 widening. Given that the predictions for BNRR rely on the M42 and the southbound M6 also taking more traffic - although the effect is nowhere near as pronounced as Staffordshire - there must be doubts about whether the infrastructure needed to support a financially successful BNRR will be in place.

• The Government's roads review also included the option of closing selected junctions to local traffic on the congested sections of the M6 through Birmingham, which BNRR is intended to bypass. Discussions with the Highways Agency suggest what is envisaged is the closure of junctions 9 and 10 during peak periods. If this were realised it would effectively remove congestion from the M6 in the north of the West Midlands at peak times, the key time for attracting through traffic to BNRR. The enclosed figures show that this could halve the amount of traffic on the motorway, and not surprising as 80% of peak travellers are going into the West Midlands. At the moment this might seem a politically unacceptable policy, however, the Government is making a study of transport routes through the conurbation, and with no realistic possibility of road construction in the built up area, some form of demand management is almost certain to result. As the Government faces increasing pressure on the M6 (not least because construction of BNRR leaves the conurbation's problems unresolved) we would not be surprised if the idea were adopted, perhaps ten years down the line.

• As the market for BNRR is squeezed in a number of ways, the downturn will be increased by the growing availability of in-car telematics, allowing drivers to confidently assess congestion on the motorway network. They will be able to decide whether the M6 is free flowing, whether the A38 and A5 are free flowing and whether the new route via the M1 and A500 is a better option. They will also see the congestion on the M6 in Staffordshire before they reach BNRR and have the options of using neither.

Given that MEL's predictions, based on questionnaires going back to 1992, show such wide varieties of result, and given all the other factors, some of which have changed since 1992, it seems reasonable to conclude that Tom Smith is right to be nervous about his ability to attract traffic. It also seems reasonable to conclude that the Dulles Greenway experience, where only a third of the predicted traffic used the motorway, is relevant. The best calculation of revenue based on MEL's figures we have seen is £3 billion. Repeating the Dulles experience would mean they would only achieve a £1 billion return, which would be little more than double the predicted building costs, (assuming there were no over-runs at all.) It would only be recovered over a 50 year period.

The quoted construction costs of £400 million for BNRR, a new 27 mile motorway, seems surprisingly low, given the size of the scheme and given that the company would have to build tolling booths and other infrastructure into the scheme.

The Highway Agency's quoted cost of widening the M6 in Staffordshire is a similar amount, suggesting on the face of it that BNRR is coming cheep.

With the overspend on roads in Britain averaging 26% according to the Audit Commission a couple of years ago, and sometimes reaching 100%, a doubling of costs, as in the Virginia over-run, does not seem unreasonable for such a large project.

The view of many local people in the South Staffordshire area is that the, problems associated with old mine workings in the area BNRR crosses, many of which are too old to be mapped could be extensive.