Grass roots campaigners have a successful history of defeating road-building schemes that threaten the countryside and the health of local communities. Although the 1990s campaigns against the Newbury bypass and the M3 at Twyford Down were ultimately lost, the associated public outcry was pivotal in forcing the then Conservative Government to scrap over 100 planned road schemes, billed as “the biggest road-building programme since the Romans”.
Upon Labour coming to power in 1997, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said “I will have failed if in five year’s time there are not far fewer journeys by car.” Ten years later, the scale of Mr. Prescott’s failure is staggering. People are driving further and more frequently than before, unsustainable land-use planning continues to lock in car dependency by separating homes and jobs. Under Labour the number of proposed road schemes has increased from just 37 in 1998 to around 200 today, at a cost of £12 billion.
Road-building exacts a heavy toll on the vanishing British countryside, with 20,000 hectares of undeveloped land – an area three times the size of Nottingham – lost to transport use since 1985. The Government is finding it increasingly hard to square its passion for road-building with the need to act on climate change, and has been criticised for failing to factor in environmental costs to road scheme appraisals. The possible implementation of road-user charging also undermines the case for new roads by solving congestion through demand management.
The high financial cost of the roads programme has drawn fire, with MPs concluding that the Highways Agency has “lost budgetary control”, with the cost of ten of Britain’s biggest road schemes rising more than £1 million a day. Congestion costs the UK economy £19 billion a year, but new roads have a tendency to fill up fast as people change their travel habits. A 2006 study of the Newbury bypass showed that the additional road capacity has fuelled traffic growth by nearly 50 percent, and that rush hour congestion is no better than prior to the bypass opening.
The same story is repeated at other traffic flashpoints around the country. Policy makers acknowledge that projected rates of traffic growth – up 31 percent by 2015 – are not good for the environment or the economy. But until the public transport network is in much better shape and demand management measures are widely accepted, politicians will run shy of steps that could be construed as a ‘war against the motorist’. Here, too, the roads campaign groups supported by the Manuka Club have an important role to play in public education, winning support for transport solutions that protect Britain’s countryside while providing the mobility people need.
