Britain's first private motorway road tolls have been revealed.

Following the successful introduction of congestion charging in central London earlier this year, the toll will extend the idea to motorway travel in a bid to ease jams.

Motorists in the West Midlands will pay European-style tolls to access a new stretch of road from January next year.

Car drivers will pay £3 per journey on the eight lane road, with vans facing a levy of £6 per trip and heavy goods vehicles paying £11.

But to soften the blow a number of discounts have been built into plans to fund the £485 million carriageway.

Charges will be reduced by £1 for the first 10 million trips along the road.

And VAT registered businesses will be able to reclaim the tax on tolls for their vehicles, while at night the fees will also be lower.

Private operators Midland Expressway said the charges would offer motorists "good value" by speeding up their journey times.

They were "a solution to one of the worst problems of congestion faced by drivers in the UK" the company said.

The radical experiment in traffic management is seeking to pilot the idea in one of Britain's worst traffic hotspots.

The 27 mile highway will shortcut a seven junction stretch of the M6 near Birmingham that was originally designed to carry 72,000 vehicles per day.

Instead the stretch of road has to cope with as many as 180,000 vehicles at an average speed of 17 miles per hour.

The problem is symptomatic of motorway congestion across the country and the scheme's impact will be closely monitored by transport experts and government officials.

Motoring lobbies said the toll was the result of government failures to build roads fast enough to cope with demand.

The Freight Transport Association said that it was "unfortunate" that the Department for Transport had to call in the private sector.

"The government's roads programme has simply not been adequate enough to recognise the problem and then act to provide the extra road capacity needed to meet the needs of what is the world's fourth largest economy," said chief executive Richard Turner.