West Berks aghast over c-charge zones

Alex Gore • Published 15 Oct 2009 10:00 0 Comments

WEST Berkshire Council will not support any scheme that charges its residents to drive through or into Reading.

That was the message from member for transport, David Betts, following the exclusive publication of possible congestion charge zones for the county town in our sister paper, The Reading Chronicle, last week.

Cllr Betts said; "I think we made ourselves very clear when we passed a resolution at the last council meeting. We don't support any congestion charge which would mean West Berkshire resident would have to pay to drive through or into Reading."

The three possible charge zones boundaries, which dirvers could face by 2016, are Reading Town Centre, Reading Borough Council and Reading's urban area including Tilehurst, Calcot and Purley.

The zones have been drawn up as part of Reading Borough Council's draft bid to the Government's Transport Innovation Fund (Tif). Reading lists 53 projects it will implement, costing around £313m. But under the Government's criteria, if these fail to reduce traffic then Reading must implement congestion charging.

Cllr Betts said: "We are not part of this. We worked with Reading over a long period of time to come up with a formula whereby we could be part of the Tif bid that did not include congestion charging. The Government made it very clear that this would no be possible so we are not part of it."

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