New study reveals true extent of Government’s
roadbuilding programme
A new study(1) has revealed the true extent of the Government’s roadbuilding programme announced in recent documents including Transport 2010: The 10-Year Plan. The study compares Labour’s trunk-road building plans for England for the next 10 years with actual levels of completions under the Conservatives between 1979-1997.
Labour has frequently stressed that it rejects the ‘Predict and Provide’ approach to roadbuilding, pursued for many years by the Conservatives, in favour of a more sustainable transport strategy.(2) As part of this strategy, ministers have announced that new roads should be “a measure of the last resort rather than one of the first,” and have revised the methods used to appraise new road proposals accordingly.(3)
But Dr Jon Shaw and Mr William Walton, of the University of Aberdeen, calculate that the equivalent of at least 170 trunk-road building schemes are currently provided for by the Government. This equates to an average of 17 schemes per year over the next 10 years.(4)
Yet because many of the proposed schemes will not start until at least 2005, Dr Shaw and Mr Walton conclude that by towards the end of the next decade (2005-2010), the average number of completions per year under Labour could be higher than under the Conservatives (around 30 per year as opposed to 29).
The authors recognise that the new road building proposals are made in the context of significantly increased levels of overall transport spending. For this reason, they argue that the new policy can not strictly be regarded as a continuation of ‘Predict and Provide’, but instead represents a new approach which they call ‘multimodel pragmatism’.(5)
Nevertheless, when accurately quantified, the extent of Labour’s U-turn on trunk-road building policy for England is dramatically exposed.
Dr Jon Shaw can be contacted on 01224 273837 or 07941 435449 (j.shaw@abdn.ac.uk).
Mr William Walton can be contacted on 01224 272321 (w.walton@abdn.ac.uk).
Issued by the Public Relations Office, University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Aberdeen
Tel: 01224 273778; Fax: 01224 272086