TRANSPORT bosses secretly investigated imposing tolls on bridges over the River Ouse in York to cut congestion and improve air quality, the Evening Press can reveal today.

Council officers also looked at the impact of closing Gillygate - one of the worst pollution blackspots - to all but buses, taxis and bicycles.

But their investigations ended after the Liberal Democrats came to power last summer, having pledged not to introduce congestion charging.

According to a source, officers calculated the impact of a £1 toll on Lendal, Ouse and Skeldergate Bridges, and concluded that it could cut through traffic sufficiently to clear congestion.

They also found it would cost about £1 million to introduce, but raise the council £7 million in revenue.

The former executive member for transport, Labour councillor Tracey Simpson-Laing, confirmed that just days before last summer's council elections, she and Labour group leader Dave Merrett had been given a briefing by officers on the technical effectiveness of a number of options which could be pursued if congestion and air quality in the city continued to worsen.

The options had included bridge tolls, closing Gillygate to most through traffic and a road toll in Heslington Lane. Officers said the millions of pounds raised in revenue from bridge tolls could be ploughed back into better public transport.

She understood that after the Lib Dems took power, Coun Galloway had told officers not to carry out any further work on the investigations because of his party's election pledge on congestion charging.

But she claimed that the proposed Heslington Lane toll was a form of congestion charging, and also that the Lib Dems' policy went against the party's national stance on charges.

Asked whether the road toll option would have been pursued had Labour stayed in power, she said the party had pledged to "let the people decide" on such issues - through a referendum or a major public consultation exercise. A "holistic" approach would have been needed to take a comprehensive transport policy forward.

Liberal Democrat council leader Steve Galloway said he was aware that officers had been looking at options for dealing with air quality problems, but not that anything like the bridge tolls had been examined.

He confirmed that he would view such tolls as a congestion charge, which would restrict entry into an area and which his party had ruled out during the election campaign.

He said one of the options being considered for Heslington Lane was "road pricing", which would affect use of a particular road.

He claimed Labour had commissioned the research on congestion charging before the election, but kept this secret during the campaign, while the Lib Dems had been upfront.

He also said Lib Dem national policy allowed local councils to decide on congestion charging.

A council spokeswoman told the Evening Press that the authority had looked at "hundreds" of potential different transport solutions in developing the city's air quality strategy.

"The bridge system was identified as a possible option, but has not been looked at in any depth and was not taken forward."

Updated: 08:40 Friday, May 07, 2004