In message , at 09:37:42 on Sun, 8 Dec 2019,
Graeme Wall remarked:
As for money to burn, it started as a toll road, but then got
swept up into a government-funded "shovels ready" project to
stimulate the economy* due to the construction jobs created.

And there was me thinking that after the M6T disaster all of the
constriction companies told HMG to "go swivel" when they sounded
them out about taking on the risk of the tolling

The difference with the A14, and why being a toll road was always a
rather dodgy public policy decision, is that it would effectively
have a monopoly on that particular flow, something which could never
have been said about the M6T. Think more like the Dartford Crossing.
AIUI it wasn't suggested as a monopoly as the plan was to have
through traffic tolled, local traffic un-tolled.
And the insurmountable problem with that was "how do you construct
it so that it is fair to local traffic without having a
non-negligible volume of through traffic trying to become local
traffic and clogging up the local route, whilst leaving the through
route underused".

Which is the problem with all road-pricing schemes.

Didn't seem to bother the people funding the Dartford Crossing.
--
Roland Perry