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Pressure group blasts plans for 'second' M25
Page 13
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• Pressure group Transport 2000 has condemned potential plans for a second M25 motorway, saying it would lead to overdevelopment in the South-East and a third more traffic by 2016.
The environmental pressure group claims in its new report, The Threat of a Second M25: The South-East as the Los Angeles of Europe, that a new orbital motorway would act as a catalyst for wider plans in the region.
It produced the report in response to government plans to tackle congestion, as it believes more road building in the South-East is one of the options under consideration. The report says this would inevitably lead to pressure to revive the full outer orbttal proposals that emerged under the Conservative government during the 1990s.
This in turn could lead to the building of hundreds of thousands of new homes by 2031, including as many as 500,000 in
the London/Stanstead/Cambridge corridor alone, and a 43% increase in tonnage through South-East ports by 2016.
Report author and transport consultant Jonathan Bray says: "An outer M25 would also stimulate huge growth in ports, airports, traffic and housing. Overall, the South-East is stumbling towards a nightmare future of chronic overheating and overdevelopment. The cumulative impact will mean a future of concrete and tyres: a future more like Los Angeles than the garden of England."
But the Department for Transport has dismissed the report: "There are no plans for an outer orbital motorway beyond the M25," it states.
"The wider issue of tackling congestion on the M25 is cur rently being considered. Decisions are expected later this summer," adds a DfT spokeswoman.