The Orbital

Before the supermarket shop.  This is where the M6 Toll crosses the A5 and A34 near Cannock.  There are a series of 4 roundabouts (one is out of shot behind the drone's position) to manoeuvre vehicles through the junction, made more complicated by a new road that was built coming down from Junction 11 of the M6 and running parallel to the motorway. I can just about remember the old junction, which would have pretty much been in the middle of the image.  

The M6 Toll comes of age in December, 21 years since it was fully opened on 14th December 2003.  Initially the toll charge was £2 for a car.  It is now £9.70! Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, if average inflation were applied the charge should have gone up to £3.58.  The average daily flow in 2023 was about 33,000, a far cry from the 74,000 vehicles per day predicted and quoted during the public inquiries.  

The M6 through the West Midlands, from which the toll road was supposed to take a proportion of the traffic (the road was originally called the Birmingham Northern Relief Road or BNRR), continues to be busy during many parts of the day.  In 2023 the average daily flow was 162,000 vehicles per day, compared to an original design capacity of 72,000 vehicles, though this may have changed with the introduction of active traffic management (all lanes running) 10 years ago.

I remember when working on aspects of the scheme, that highways engineers said that when the M6 Toll opened, it was unlikely we would see any significant reduction in traffic on the M6 through the West Midlands because of what they called suppressed demand, i.e. local traffic that didn't currently use the M6 because of the congestion would start to use it again as vehicles diverted onto the M6 Toll.  That seems to be the case.  The most useful aspect of the toll road is it offers an alternative for traffic traveling on the M6 in the event of an accident or other cause of blockage on the main motorway.

I was able to get into the garden later to collect another pile of fallen leaves and the herbaceous plants knocked back by the frosts of a couple of weeks ago.