By Stefan Morkis

A SPLIT has broken out in the upper ranks of the Tay Road Bridge Joint Board, with the chairman and vice-chairman taking opposing views on whether the removal of tolls on the Tay and Forth bridges should be linked.

Fife councillor Mike Rumney, the vice-chairman of the Tay bridge board, suggested this week that he had heard rumours that charges on the Tay Road Bridge could be abolished while those on the Forth Road Bridge would remain in place, a situation he described as shocking.

“It means that the people in south and west Fife would be the only ones still to have to pay a toll to go to work,” said Councillor Rumney.

Dundee Lord Provost John Letford, who is chairman of the board, said yesterday that although he hoped tolls would be removed on both bridges, his first priority was the city of Dundee.

He would not be overly disappointed if the scenario of scrapping tolls on the Tay bridge but not on the Forth turned out to be true, and he would not stand in the way of any such proposal.

“I’m well known to be very, very pro-Dundee and the people of Dundee always come first,” he said.

“As Tay Road Bridge Joint Board, chairman I obviously want to see the tolls removed on the bridge.

“In life it is often one step at a time and we would take what we can get.

“Although we would obviously give our total support to Fife, my priority is the Tay Road Bridge and the people of Dundee,” he added.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive said that no decisions had been made on the future of the bridges.

“There will be plenty of rumours between now and next May,” she said.

“The toll impact study is under way, which ministers agreed would be carried out on behalf of the parliament.

“Consultants have been hired and they will study the responses from the public before presenting their initial report to ministers.

“There has been no decision made yet,” she added.

The campaign to remove tolls from both bridges gathered momentum after the Scottish Executive, which had earlier scrapped tolls on the Skye Bridge, agreed to remove tolls on the Erksine Bridge, but not those levied on the two east coast bridges.

Traffic studies have shown that removing tolls on the two bridges would ease congestion and SNP MSP Bruce Crawford has put forward a Private Member’s Bill calling for the abolition of the tolls.

Transport Minister Tavish Scott has ordered another inquiry into the issue despite an earlier consultation programme only just having concluded.

However, it is the issue of fairness that is currently seen as the strongest argument for removing tolls as critics have claimed the Executive is guilty of a west coast bias.