Humber Toll Action - the arguments

The Humber Bridge has the highest toll charges in Britain (currently £2.70 for a single car crossing). This creates hardship for individuals, particularly those who have no choice but to use the bridge for commuting and hospital visits. It also holds back the economy of the whole Humber region.

Most of the current toll income is used to pay interest on artificially high government loans provided over 30 years ago to build the bridge. The government has the power to write off this debt. This would enable the Bridge Board to keep tolls at a fair level, based on maintenance and running costs.

Seven reasons why the government should write off the Humber Bridge debt and enable the tolls to be lowered to a reasonable level:

1. The tolls cause hardship to those who have no choice but to use the bridge. This particularly hits commuters, hospital patients and their visitors who have to travel from the south bank. Those individuals effectively have reduced income. This in turn harms the local economy.

2. The tolls hit public transport operators. Even though there have been recent reductions, the high tolls for buses make it it difficult for operators to make services viable. This in turn affects the passengers who can least afford to travel over the bridge.

3. Businesses on both sides are less able to transport goods and attract potential employees and customers from across the river. This has damaging knock-on effects on the local economy.

4. By accident of history and government incompetence, the building of the bridge was financed through loans at very high interest rates. This has meant that it's never been possible to pay off the debt from toll income. The government has partly written off and re-scheduled the loan before. It can do so again, so that toll payers no longer carry the legacy of excessive interest on loans set up over 30 years ago.

5. Many other large-scale transport and infrastructure projects are paid for in full by the taxpayer. For instance, in the 1990s there was a 1.2-mile London road scheme called the Limehouse Link. It cost £450million. The people of Humberside never wanted the Limehouse Link. Most will never use it, but like millions of other tax payers, they still paid for it. The same argument can be made for national taxpayers now at least paying for the remaining bridge debt.

6. There is a precedent for government intervention where unfair tolls exist. In 2004, The Scottish Executive abolished tolls on the Skye Bridge after it bought back the bridge from its private owners for £27m. The economic benefits to the Humber region of reducing tolls would be far greater than those derived from scrapping the Skye tolls.

7. The Humber tolls are particularly unfair. This is because most traffic across the bridge is for short local, everyday trips to work, to hospital, or for shopping or education. So the tolls take up a disproportionate amount of people's travel costs. The Severn crossings, for example, are almost as expensive. But they carry mainly long-distance motorway traffic. So those tolls are a smaller part of users' travel costs.

Most of these points were confirmed by independent research in an October 2008 report. Download the report here.

The opposing views

A consultants' study three years ago said that the economic case for reducing tolls was weak. The authors of the study based their conclusions mainly on the number of jobs that a cut in tolls would create. However, they noted that "There is evidence of financial hardship amongst those who have no choice but to travel across to the opposite bank."

We say: The consultants conceded that they had made several assumptions in coming to their conclusions. For example, how could they possibly do more than guess at the number of jobs created? It's surely impossible to factor in all the knock-on effects of greater bridge usage. They took the simplistic view that more bridge traffic would benefit only garages.

They took no account of the effects of the increased wealth of those who aren't wasting a chunk of their income (over £1,000 a year for a daily car driver) on tolls. Reducing the car tolls alone to 60p per crossing would put £11.5m a year into local commuters’ pockets.

The consultants' main concern was the dent that lower tolls would make in the Chancellor's wallet, rather than the unquantifiable well-being of those who would benefit. They gave little weight to their finding that people thought tolls harmed students, shoppers, tourists, low-paid workers and those who need to cross the Humber for medical treatment. The latter need will grow as the NHS centralises more services. For instance, radiotherapy patients from Lincoln will soon have to travel to Hull via the bridge for treatment.

Others, including the Bridge Board, maintain that the high tolls are justified as the bridge saves time and expense compared to the alternative of driving the 50 or so miles round via the M62, M18 and M180.

We say: This might have been the case when the bridge was first built. But a quarter of a century on, it’s hardly a credible argument. Travel across the Humber is now integral to the local economy, and the bridge is an established part of the national transport infrastructure. The tolls also mean that much goods traffic is sent round the ‘long way’ via Goole, with resultant damage to the environment and business efficiency.

Many road links in Britain save a lot of time and distance compared to the alternatives, yet no-one argues for tolls on them.

What others say

The Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce says: “Reducing tolls would help businesses on both sides of the river.’

‘The Bridge is as iconic now as it was 25 years ago, but a generation has now passed and the Bridge is still a barrier for individuals and companies. Now, would be an excellent time to look again into the options for reducing or abolishing the bridge tolls’ said Chief Executive Ian Kelly.

One suggestion is that the overall debt burden of the bridge is frozen with only interest being paid.

"Freezing the debt is one possible way in which tolls could be substantially reduced. It doesn’t seem fair to businesses that they should continue to pay for the results of high interest rates a generation ago." commented Mr Kelly.

Businesses say they continue to face competitive barriers as a result of the bridge.

‘For certain professional and tradesmen positions, those applying from the North Bank quite often ask for the bridge tolls to be incorporated into a salary or payment package as it can cost circa £ 1,800 per annum merely to get to work. We believe this not only disadvantages those people but adds another cost burden to the local business.’ said Highseal Windows Managing Director Neil Donaldson.

GW Trading General Manager Nigel Smith echoed these comments: ‘When GW Trading is recruiting, we rarely manage to attract skills from the Hull and North Humber Area as potential employees see the high bridge costs as a barrier. This means that instead we have to look for our employees from as far off as Doncaster and Sheffield which is not ideal for them or us. The reduction or, better, elimination of the toll would open up free movements of skilled candidates, helping both sides of the river.’

The Chamber... will also like local Bridge Board leaders to look once more with the Government into the possibilities of reducing the burdens on businesses by dealing with the Bridge toll issue.”

Local candidates of all parties in the 2005 General Election spoke in favour of writing off the debt. You can read the BBC news coverage of the story here.