Why pay tolls at all?

I SEE that the Lib-Dems in Wales are pushing for toll reductions to cross the Severn Bridge.

I have never understood why certain bridges in the UK require a toll to be paid at all except as an excuse to extract more money. I can understand that the cost of the bridges in the first place is high, as is the maintenance, but it is still just part of the highway network.

I suspect that say 100 miles of ordinary motorway costs considerably more to construct and maintain than a bridge but no tolls are normally incurred. Some motorway junctions are extremely complicated, sometimes involving three levels of roads crisscrossing and are obviously costly to build, but you don't have to pay to use these.

The difference seems somehow to relate to a river being involved. In Wales there are numerous long tunnels through the hills and no charges are made to use them. But where a tunnel goes under the Thames near Dartford and, of course, the Mersey tunnel, you have to pay; the only difference to the ones through hills is that you drive from one side of a river to the other.

There may be some historic legacy which stems from long ago, when a landowner charged people using a bridge on his land which he paid to be built in the first place; perhaps not unreasonable at that time. However this is certainly not applicable now since the building and maintenance costs of the modern roads that cross rivers, either by bridge or tunnel, are already paid for by us from the Road Tax we all contribute and is no different to any other stretch of road. Therefore any form of toll on roads is blatantly wrong and would only be justified if we didn't have to pay Road Tax. – S. T. Anderson, Newnham.