Cost of axing Scotland’s road bridge tolls put at 42 million
July 26th, 2007
ABOLITION of bridge tolls in Scotland would cost at least 42 million, The Scotsman has learned.
Tolls have been removed from the Skye and Erskine bridges, and legislation to lift those on the Forth and Tay is due to be passed by the end of the year.
Paying off the remaining construction debt on the Skye and Tay bridges accounts for the lion’s share of the cost.
However, removal of parts of the new 5 million Forth Road Bridge toll plaza, which has been in use for less than a year, may cost another 2 million.
And the 42 million cost does not take into account the loss of 20 million a year in toll revenue, which is used for ongoing maintenance of the crossings.
Tolls on the Skye Bridge, which links the island to the mainland, were abolished by the previous, Labour-Lib Dem-run Scottish Executive in December 2004. It also scrapped tolls on the Erskine, over the Clyde, in March 2006.
The current Scottish National Party-controlled Executive has pledged to abolish charges on the remaining two toll bridges, which was supported by all the parties, except the Greens, in a Holyrood vote in May.
However, The Scotsman revealed last month that an unpublished Executive-commissioned report warns that congestion on the Forth Road Bridge would increase significantly without tolls.
Ministers are due to announce legislation for the move when Parliament resumes in September and this is expected to be passed by the end of the year.
The total cost of tolls abolition includes 27 million paid by the Executive to the Bank of America to buy out the consortium it led, which built and operated the Skye Bridge since it opened in 1995.
The Tay Road Bridge has 13 million of remaining debt, while that for the two other bridges has been paid off.
The Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA), which runs the Forth Road Bridge, has advertised a contract worth an estimated 1.5-2 million for removing its new toll booths and traffic islands, and realigning the road layout.
This includes narrowing the northbound approaches from the A90 and the Echline roundabout when a new link road from the M9 is completed this year. The toll plaza’s illuminated canopy may be retained for traffic signals.
The Executive’s Transport Scotland agency said nearly 129,000 had been spent on removing toll booths from the Erskine Bridge. The Tay Road Bridge Joint Board said discussions were continuing over the cost of removing its booths. No figure for this cost for the Skye Bridge was available yesterday.
A spokeswoman for the Executive said the remaining bridge tolls were being removed in the interests of equity.
She said: “On 31 May, the Scottish Parliament voted, on a cross-party basis, for tolls to be removed, as it is unfair that only Fife and Tayside are subject to road tolls in Scotland.
“This government is acting on the will of parliament. Tolls will be removed from both bridges by the end of this year.”
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Bids for unwritten Keith Richards autobiography reach 3.6m
July 26th, 2007
His agent is calling it “the best rock’n'roll book of all time” and publishers obviously agree, as bids for Keith Richards’ autobiography reached a whopping $7.3m (3.6m) at an auction in New York this week.
Anticipation for the as-yet-unwritten memoirs has been building since May, when the Rolling Stone guitarist announced he was ready to put the story of his life down on paper. Fears that Richards may “do a Jagger” and renege on the deal because he can’t recall enough of his infamously debauched past have been dismissed by his agent, Ed Victor, who has paired the Rolling Stone with long-time friend and author James Fox for the project. “He’s known Keith for 30 years,” Victor said of Fox.
The battle is now down to two publishing houses, Harper Collins and Little Brown, with Richards yet to accept an offer. The New York Post is reporting that neither of the publishing houses is prepared to top the current bid and that the choice will now come down to who pitches the best editor and marketing campaign.
Richards’ only comment on the sale of his memoirs, meanwhile, has been that he wishes to get a higher sum than the $5 million Eric Clapton received for his forthcoming autobiography.
BOOKING FACE TIME
July 26th, 2007
July 15, 2007 — CBS digital guru Quincy Smith only arrived in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Thursday, but he wasted little time in getting down to business.
The former Allen & Co. banker, who’s hyper-connected to not only the established Silicon Valley players but also to the nascent ones, arrived at the Lounge bar around 10 p.m. Thursday night and quickly huddled with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Owen Van Natta around a patio table overlooking the resort’s ice rink.
The pair, who talked over drinks for more than an hour, made for one of the most intriguing sightings at the conference and sparked the most intense deal chatter of the four-day confab.
Desperate to shed its image of being an old media company, CBS hired Smith to aggressively move the company into the digital age, which he has indeed done through deals with YouTube, Last.fm and others. With Facebook now the social networking site that everyone lusts after, many wondered if Smith and Van Natta’s conversation signaled a possible CBS-Facebook tie-up.
Facebook’s youthful audience provides the exact digital demographic that CBS is looking for to counterbalance its aging television network audience. Moreover, there are a number of synergies between Facebook’s college-heavy contingent and the music-loving audience of Last.fm, which CBS acquired in May.
Of course, the meeting could have been nothing more than two old buddies catching up. Smith has been tight with Van Natta since the latter worked at Amazon.com.
The two could have also been simply discussing various licensing and partnership deals instead of an outright acquisition since Facebook’s new platform opens up a lot of opportunities for CBS content such as Sportsline, CBS News and Last.fm, which CBS officials have described as the company’s social networking play.
But when On the Money cornered Van Natta earlier in the day before his sit-down with Smith and asked if, given the deal speculation surrounding Facebook, he had spoken with Yahoo!, Microsoft or Time Warner’s AOL about an acquisition, he declined to reply.
Perhaps that was only because we didn’t mention the right company.
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Google co-founder Sergey Brin was in a particularly jocular mood at Sun Valley last week. >PAGE 1>