Hauliers to stage 'no pay' toll protest on new M4

Motorists on the newly opened M4 toll road through the midlands face disruption and delays on Monday January 16th as the Irish Road Haulage Association stages a "no pay" protest.

The hauliers, who insist toll charges are too high, are planning to drive up to the toll booths at 7am and refuse to pay the charges.

Under the contract between toll operator Eurolink and the National Roads Authority, the barriers must be raised if vehicles are met with delays or queues of about six cars or more.

The hauliers say this clause should oblige Eurolink to raise their toll barriers to allow traffic free passage.

A Eurolink spokeswoman last night said the company "very much hoped the hauliers would not carry out their threat" and added that any breach of the law would be a matter for the Garda.

Jimmy Quinn of the Irish Road Haulage Association says there is palpable anger among hauliers at the charges which amount to €6.20 for a lorry.

Mr Quinn said lorries hauling from local quarries to Dublin would pay a round trip fee of €12.40 and could make four trips a day. A lorry could easily run up toll bills of €12,000 a year, while a modest firm of four lorries could incur fees in the region of €50,000. "And for some that would be their profit at the end of the year."

He added: "There are essentially three types of haulier, the long-distance European lorry which doesn't mind the charge as they can make it up over the longer distances involved; the foreign truckers who don't know the alternative routes and the people like Tesco and the oil companies. We will all pay their charges when we buy groceries or petrol."

Mr Quinn said the initiative for the protest had come from individual lorry drivers - "this was not a top-down thing" - who were "buying wholesale and paying retail prices".

The protest is bad news for the National Roads Authority which had used the development of the M4 motorway as a model of how public-private partnerships could be effective in delivering roads ahead of schedule.

It is also bad news for the Government which is planning a second toll on the proposed Dublin-Galway route in addition to that on the M4. Further tolls are planned on the Waterford city bypass in the constituency of the Minister for Transport Martin Cullen and on the Dublin-Cork route south of Portlaoise, among others.

The number of new tolls is also angering the hauliers. According to the association, tolls at the M1, M50 and now the M4 are too close together and impose an intolerable burden on lorries which travel these routes regularly.