By Grant Smith

DUNDEE COUNCILLORS are set to urge the new transport authority for east central Scotland to formally back the campaign for the abolition of tolls on the Tay Road Bridge.

TACTRAN is responsible for drawing up and overseeing the implementation of a regional transport strategy (RTS) covering Angus, Dundee, Perth and Kinross and Stirling.

It has been consulting on its draft RTS and members of the city council’s planning and transport committee will be asked to broadly endorse its contents at their meeting tonight.

However, a report by council officers notes that while TACT-RAN had identified bridge tolling as an important issue, it has not explicitly backed toll-free travel.

Councillors will be asked to call on the organisation to include a statement supporting the abolition of tolls in the finalised RTS, which is being considered by the Scottish Executive.

In the event that ministers decide to keep the tolls, TACTRAN will be asked instead to help investigate possible funding sources for moving the toll plaza to the Fife end of the bridge, reducing peak-time congestion in Dundee city centre.

The draft RTS also outlines significant improvements to road, rail and air links to Dundee, including making access easier to the railway station and building a new Dundee West station to serve the Ninewells Hospital/Technology Park area.

Better train services are also on the agenda, along with the possibility of setting up a park-and-ride facility in the Dundee area.

Bus priority lanes and cycle lanes are also suggested as possible upgradings of the A90/ Kingsway corridor.

Council planning and transport director Mike Galloway is calling on councillors to “strongly support” the RTS, saying it will promote more sustainable ways of travelling than by car.

He adds, “Interventions such as the A90, park-and-ride and other road and rail projects cross local authority boundaries, and Dundee City Council in general welcomes TACTRAN’s ability for strategic consideration of transport needs in the region.”

TACTRAN is also working on a plan to put the RTS into effect.

The city council expects this to be used as a starting point for consultation with the four local authorities in the area on how these projects will be funded.

Eric Guthrie, director of TACT-RAN, has already intervened in the future of train services in the area, calling on the Government to protect services when it appoints a new company to run the east coast main line franchise.

Current operator GNER is losing the contract ahead of schedule after its parent company ran into financial trouble.

Stagecoach has teamed up with Virgin Trains to make a joint bid and National Express Group, which owns bus company Travel Dundee, is also bidding.

In a letter to the Department for Transport, Mr Guthrie says, “The present level of services operating through the TACTRAN area to and from Aberdeen and Inverness should be viewed as the minimum on which prospective franchisees are asked to (bid).”

Mr Guthrie added that fares should be kept to a level sufficiently attractive to encourage travel by rail in preference to less sustainable forms of transport.