Last week's spending round was another nail in the coffin of "the greenest government ever". Treasury minister Danny Alexander's speech was a stream of plans and proposals to carve up the countryside, ratchet up road emissions and slash funding for green transport. So much for a green economy. This was a return to the 1950s with spending announcements for the next 5 years centred on switching funds to big new roads.
Setting out a £28 billion road-building plan, the most mind-boggling proposal is a plan to dual most of the Highways Agency’s main roads, which could revive some of the most damaging of the schemes that were dropped after widespread protests in the 1990s and 2000s. If carried through, these plans would end up creating the equivalent of motorways through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, the Blackdown Hills and Bodmin Moor Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the South Downs, Norfolk Broads and Peak District National Parks.
This is an expensive, dangerous and pointless policy. The non-dual carriageway sections of the HA network are that way for a good reason – either they are quiet stretches with low traffic or they pass through some of the most precious and sensitive landscapes and habitats in England. Any congestion in these areas should be dealt with by providing alternatives not by old-school ‘predict and provide’ road-building.
On local routes the government’s plans are almost as bad. Council budgets for sustainable transport, including parts of the Integrated Transport Block and all the capital funding intended for Local Sustainable Transport Fund projects, are now going to be folded into a single pot controlled by the 39 unelected Local Enterprise Partnerships.
This could mean no new capital funding at all for greener transport outside London. The idea of a £1bn Office for Active Travel to invest in walking and cycling was also put firmly in the bin.
We’re tracking road-building plans across the country. So far, more than 230 bypasses, link roads and widening schemes appear on our online map, and the new plans will add dozens more up to 2020 and beyond. We’re warning that reviving these zombie roads will light the touch paper for a new wave of campaigns and protests against them. Chancellor George Osborne got a taste of the opposition his plans will face earlier in the week when the Combe Haven Defenders from Hastings travelled 250 miles to lay a 50m dual-carriageway outside his country house in the Peak District.
And on Saturday 13 July, campaigners from across the UK will gather for a national Rally Against Road-Building at the site of the road proposal the Combe Haven Defenders are fighting against: the most destructive and fiercely opposed new road being built in England - the £100 million Bexhill-Hastings Link Road.
The rally is organised by the Roads to Nowhere campaign at Campaign for Better Transport, along with local groups the Combe Haven Defenders and Hastings Alliance, and supported by Greenpeace, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Friends of the Earth, the Wildlife Trusts and RSPB.
If you support a more rational and less destructive transport policy, join us! We’ll be taking people on a choice of three guided walks through the precious Combe Haven valley (also quite possibly the true site of the Battle of Hastings) and holding a rally in Crowhurst village with music, comedy and speakers from national and local groups.
Sian Berry works at the Campaign for Better Transport
