A major hike in the Tyne Tunnel toll will hit struggling workers hardest, North East council bosses have been warned.
Councillors voted on Tuesday to up the price of using the crossing by as much as 50p, though the increase was delayed by three months from next February to May in an effort to avoid putting extra financial pressure on people this winter. The decision means that the class two vehicle toll for car drivers will rise from £1.90 to £2.20 and the class three HGV toll will go up from £3.90 to £4.40.
But the move quickly drew criticism yesterday afternoon. South Tyneside councillor Ernest Gibson warned at a meeting of the North East Joint Transport Committee (JTC), held barely an hour after the toll hike was signed off, that the price increase would come “at the cost of the working man who is finding it difficult to survive”. The Labour councillor added: “We keep putting the burden on people who cannot afford the increase, people who are driving to work every day.
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“How much money have we got in the coffers? Last month we had the highest number of people going through the tunnel ever, 1.6 million. We don’t have the staff we used to, so that must be making some savings.”
The decision had been taken by the JTC’s Tyne and Wear sub-committee shortly before the JTC itself met, with it being argued that the huge levels of inflation necessitated a significant rise in the Tyne Tunnel toll. Councillors were told that there was “little or no option” but to increase the tariff because the five Tyne and Wear councils, which jointly own the tunnel, are contractually obliged to make inflation-tied payments to tunnel operator TT2 that repay the “significant debts” incurred in building the second tunnel, which opened in 2011.
Paul Darby, the North East Combined Authority’s chief finance officer, said that the toll was the councils’ only income source for the tunnel and that the their Tyne Tunnel cash reserves would be drained in less than a year if the charges remained at their current level, with the three-month deferral in the hike costing £1.5 million. Northumberland County Council leader Glen Sanderson shared concerns about the fare rise and asked if there had been a “full discussion around different options” to avoid the increase.
He also questioned why the cost of TT2’s contract to the councils was increasing from £24m to £32m next year, a rise far higher than the current 11.1% rate of inflation. The Tory leader was told that the size of that increase was because there has not been a jump in the toll since May 2021, therefore next year’s rise covers inflation of around 17 to 18% since that time, and because of the record traffic levels at the tunnel, with the ‘shadow toll’ paid to TT2 being set per journey made.
Coun Sanderson, who was also frustrated that no representatives from Northumberland or Durham had a say on the toll increase, said: “I just think it is the wrong thing to do. But if we have no power then we have no power.”
North Tyneside deputy mayor Carl Johnson said that the councils had been left “between a rock and a hard place” and would not have increased the toll if they were not obliged to. He added: “If we had not done this today then the legal action from TT2 would be on our doorstep before we got home. We did explore the options not to increase the toll. But I was very clear, and have been for months, that legal ramifications are the result of doing that.
“TT2 could have chosen not to accept the increase in payments, but can you imagine a private company doing that?”
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