It's almost strange that I would single out this article by Richard Littlejohn on road infrastructure. It is after all by his own standards quite tame. He doesn't resort to playground abuse disguised as cynical irony. He doesn't show a strange and almost obsessive homophobia in the contents, and doesn't dismiss the murder of prostitutes as no big deal. He does however comment on the road network, and as it it happens that is an area I have some (above layman's) knowledge in, and once again the article highlights the strange lack of joined up thinking we get on this topic. It also gives me a post to write, as I'm a bit thin on the ground for material. The crux of the article is about Lord Adonis (Secretary of State for Transport) bemoaning the lack of warning when the Blackwell Tunnel (A102 crosses the Thames here at Woolwich next to the Dome) left traffic stranded for 5 hours (nasty). As I know a little about the history of road building from college, and owing to Litlejohns liberal attitude to factual consistency, this stirred my interest up. Littlejohn goes on:
" Labour came to power promising a 'world-class' transport network and then put Two Jags in charge. His contribution was immediately to cancel vital road-widening and construction projects which had been in the pipeline for years."
Yeah Labour are generally less in love with road building than the Tories perhaps are. But this is not entirely accurate. I assume he means the 1989 [road building] white paper called "Roads for Prosperity." a very ambitious document that would have seen an 8 lane M25 for the whole length, and the M1 from the M25 to the M18 interchanges, just South of Sheffield amongst other things. Not withstanding that the paper was very ambitious (and didn't have the NIMBY factor to contend with.) and that some of it has actually been implemented before Littlejohn typed the article. (the entire 1959 built M1, from Luton to the M25 interchange has been virtually razed to the ground and rebuilt to 4 lanes during the widening of 2008. There are portions of the M25 is due for widening and other things to try to salvage the mess we have during rush hour.) Prosperity was axe as a scheme in 1996!, in part a response, due to the huge uproar at Twyford Down near Winchester some years prior, when the M3 was brutally ploughed through a chalk hill, and a protester chained his neck to a JCB. This is before Prescott even had a chance to paint that bus lane on the M4, due to the fact Labour were voted in the year after!
"You can still see the carnage on the North Circular road, which is lined with boarded-up houses compulsorily purchased 15 years ago in anticipation of a widening scheme which still hasn't happened. Similar projects have been shelved all over Britain."
Since 1996 several major roads have been built. Roads like these:
*M65 extended westwards from Blackburn to M6 and M61 at Preston (1997. Started under Tory govt.)
*M1 realigned and extended at Northern terminus from Leeds to A1(M) at Tadcaster (1999)
*M60 created around Manchester from pre-existing M63 and M66 motorway with new extended line around East of City (2000)
*M6 Toll Road Built (2003)
*A1(M) bypasses of Knottingly and Wetherby (2004 - 2006)
*M6 "Cumberland Gap" built to connect Carlisle to the A74(M) on the Scottish Border (2008)
The North Circular is awful, I'll give him that.
The late nineties and early 2000's saw quite a lot of road building after a gap in the late eighties.
"Perhaps matters might improve if ministers got out more and experienced the real world they have created first hand."
Lord Adonis travelled around the Motorways on a tour last year. I listened to him talk about it on Jeremy Vine on Radio 2. They couldn't use the gents loos at Toddington services apparently, cause they were broken.
"To be fair to Adonis, he has been travelling the length and breadth of Britain by train to investigate the state of our railways."
So by his own admission, he's berating him for not doing something he should have done, and actually did. So errr... Right.
"Typically, though, he has reached the wrong conclusion. He is proposing a £30billion high-speed [rail] link through the Chilterns, when what we actually and urgently need are improvements to existing services, particularly our hellishly overcrowded commuter routes."
Transport has a strange effect on the British psyche. We know that the roads are saturated, and that things like widening the M1 are at best temporary solutions, to at least perhaps get the average mileage notched up a bit. It's a sad irony that the most vocal public opinion, like these guys always seems to favour building our way out of road congestion,with more roads, which frees up yet more cars to come on roads, to cause those roads to build up as well, a vicious cycle. Aside from the obvious and serious environmental issues of more cars on the roads, there is always the inevitable backlash against large roads near residential areas, ironically that is why the North and South Circular is so bad. What should have been upgraded to a Motorway called "Ringway 2", was shelved when they realised how much of residential London would be on the receiving end of a JCB (Who wants a Motorway in the back garden?). Back to the question, I've never agreed with that build loads more roads analysis, and I think organisations like the ABD have an overt political agenda rather than a genuine interest in traffic management. We are in the situation where effective queue busting techniques, like ramp metering, and variable speed limits are unpopular, and seen as "the nanny state", which is unhelpful. It will require a much more joined up and integrated transport system, than the one we have now. We are car junkies, and any attempt to change that habit, and seriously try to reduce road congestion, will be painful and a long transition. If it can be changed, and governments tend to be wary of the motoring lobby. This doublethink about the problems of traffic we have is summed up nicely by this quote
"90 percent of commuters think other drivers should use public transport more often."
Sounds about right.
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