The M6 Toll has done nothing to ease traffic flow through the West Midlands according to a new report.

The report by the Campaign for Better Transport, an environmental group, comes at a time when the new Government believes that private investment will be needed to pay for more motorways.

The road, which now costs £5 to use, was opened in 2003 to take traffic off the main M6 and divert it around the north-west of Birmingham.

In the spring of 2006 it attracted just under 60,000 drivers a day. By the start of this year, the figure had fallen to just over 40,000, marginally more than when the toll opened.

The pressure group said the Highways Agency itself has admitted that by 2008 traffic levels on the stretch of the M6 running parallel to the toll road were as they were before it opened.

“The M6 Toll has provided so little congestion relief that the Highways Agency has been forced to allocate hundreds of millions of pounds for additional capacity,” said the report.

Proposals include allowing cars to use the hard shoulder during the rush hour. But this, according to the Campaign, would cost between £300 to £500 million.

“Toll roads are not, and will never be, a solution to congestion on Britain’s roads, no matter how attractive they may appear to cash-strapped politicians desperate to deliver otherwise unaffordable road schemes,” the report concluded.