BNRR Toll Motorway: Private Funding

Dear Manager of Glossy-leaflets-ear-to-the-ground Bank,

Re: BNRR Toll Motorway Investment

I am writing to seek you assurance that you will not be contributing financially towards the above project. Whilst the government will remain landowner of the route, private sector business will fund construction and recover costs over the next fifty years.

As the construction costs alone are estimated at £400 million (with running costs on top) the volume of traffic needed to recoup an investment would need to be heavy. You may well have seen press reports about the financial fiasco experienced by Autostrade's Dallas Greenway toll road in Virginia USA. There the construction costs were twice their original estimate and only a third of predicted traffic made use of the road. The BNRR toll motorway involves the same company, Autostrade, in partnership with Kvaerner.

My personal objections to the BNRR are that, if built, it would:

cut through Chasewater Heath, a nationally important wildlfe site;

increase traffic on the M6 north and south of the West Midlands, adding pressure to widen the existing motorway;

Increase pressure to build on the West Midlands Green Belt by the process of 'infilling';

Generate extra traffic, causing more pullution overall and threaten congestion on already overcrowded roads;

Undermine the goverments own planned integrated transport policy and head us away from sustainability;

Displace existing employment from sites within the area's towns and cities.

I hope that you will give some thought to these issues and let me know what your thoughts are.

Yours faithfully, etc. etc.