THE narrow winding street that leads to Durham Cathedral and castle is about to become Britain's first toll road.

Transport Secretary Alistair Darling has given Durham County Council permission to levy a £2 charge to drive on to the peninsula from the city's Market Place.

The scheme is due to begin at the end of next month or early October.

The council has been concerned for years about city centre congestion and the conflict between the 3,000 vehicles and the 13,000 to 17,000 pedestrians using Saddler Street.

Older residents will remember the police control box in Market Place that, until the 1960s and opening of the Leazes Road bypass, was used to direct traffic when Silver Street and Elvet Bridge were through routes.

Saddler Street leads to South Bailey, which is a dead end for traffic. But the council believes that the toll will halve the number of vehicles using the route.

Highways manager Roger Elphick said: "We want to deter what we call mobile parkers - people who drop someone off in the Market Place and then head up to Palace Green and turn round.

"If this had been anywhere else it would have been pedestrianised long ago, but because it is the only way into the peninsula for traffic, we can't do that.''

The toll will apply from 10am to 4pm, Mondays to Saturdays, but there will be exemptions for residents and visitors, motorcyclists and cyclists, disabled people with arranged parking places and people going to places that have off-street parking.

Motorists will pay at a rising bollard as they leave the area - monitored by security TV - and, in the early days at least, they will be spared the £30 fine if they fail to pay the toll.

The cathedral, Durham Chorister School and Durham University, which has colleges on the peninsula, raised no objection to the scheme.

Only a handful of people, living outside the peninsula, voiced opposition to the scheme.

To counter the protests, the council is introducing a bus service to run between the city's car parks and railway stations and the peninsula.

The City of Durham Trust accepts the need for action, but has reservations about the scheme.

Chairman Roger Cornwell said: "We wish it could have been introduced on a temporary basis first, so that any lessons could be learned from the experiment before it became permanent."

But the council said legislation did not allow a temporary experiment.

Leader Ken Manton believes it will improve the environment and make walking in Saddler Street safer.

But Neil Thorpe, a lecturer in transport studies at Newcastle University, believes the success or otherwise of Durham may not offer lessons for other cities where tolls could be used to ease large-scale congestion on major through routes.

"It is a small scale scheme on just one road, in effect. It is completely different," he said.

Denise Raven, of the AA, welcomed the scheme, providing it was well policed and motorists were given adequate warning of the tolls.

However, not everyone was impressed with the scheme.

Mark Solan, 29, manager of the Van Mildert clothes shop on Elvet Bridge, said: "I think this scheme will hit local businesses because the council are trying to stop people coming into the city centre.

"Customers will not bother coming here, they will go somewhere else with easier access."