TRANSPORT campaigners have warned that a second Tyne Tunnel will damage the environment – and people's pockets.
Reacting to suggested changes in funding plans for the £180m new Tyne crossing, officials of the Tyne Crossings Alliance claim there will no benefits from the new river link between Jarrow and East Howdon.
This follows the suggestion by scheme spo
nsors Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority (PTA) that it may raise half the capital needed for the massive civil engineering scheme.
But Hebburn-based Paul Winch, co-ordinator of the Tyne Crossings Alliance, which opposed the tunnel plans at a public inquiry in 2003, said: "We believe that everyone other than motorists, and probably motorists in the end, will suffer from the tunnel if it is built.
"We challenged the charges sought by the PTA to the tunnel arrangements after the inquiry as increasing the public's exposure to risk."
Former South Tyneside councillor Stan Smith, of Cleaside Avenue, South Shields, has long been a critic of the funding plans for the second Tyne Tunnel, which would see a private concessionaire running the tunnels.
Mr Smith has welcomed plans by the PTA to take on some of the financial burden for the scheme.
And he would like to see the PTA pressing the Government for financial help towards the cost of the new river link.
But Mr Winch has questioned this reasoning, adding: "Mr Smith suggests that a concessionaire will charge higher tolls in order to make a profit.
"Is the concessionaire supposed to make a loss? If the public funds the tunnel, will the concessionaire have the requisite incentive to manage the project efficiently?"
Mr Winch said major question marks hang over the whole issue of who will fund the second Tyne Tunnel.
He added: "So who should meet the cost: pedestrians? grannies in wheelchairs? cyclists? mothers pushing buggies while being poisoned by traffic fumes and deafened by traffic noise?
"These PTA post-inquiry second thoughts increase our conviction that the proposed second Tyne Tunnel was ill-conceived in the first place and should be dropped.
"The very last thing we need for 'the good life' in Tyneside is yet more traffic."
terry.kelly@northeast-press.co.uk
