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Wrong turning on roads
Page 30
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"TIME is running out for London"' was a most apposite headline for your excellent feature on our capital city's deplorable road network (CM June 21). You are quite right to be ringing alarm bells about the present position, when less than one-fifth of the officially designated main roads are even up to a minimum dual-carriageway standard.
.Where we must take issue with you is when you suggest that there may be a green light for road improvements at the end of the tunnel. For instance, the figure you gave for total expenditure by the Greater London Council on road improvements during 1979-80 was £32 million. Not so. According to the report presented to June's GLC Planning meeting (Number PC 594), actual expenditure was £10.35 million.
And although these figures are scheduled to increase, as you have reported before (CM December 22, 1979) current GLC officers' estimates suggest that the Government will permit spending levels of only around one-third the proposed amount, eg £21m a year rather than £72m.
At that rate one simple scheme like the three-mile dual carriageway Hayes by-pass in West London will take all the GLC roads money for two years.
And this would leave key schemes like the Al 3 realign
• ment in Docklands, the Roch.
ester Way Relief Road, the West Relief Road in Kensington and town centre schemes for Kings ton, Catford or Lewisham stranded without funds. What chance does this give a replacement for the South Circular?
Equally, London cannot it seems depend upon Central Government road schemes to "bail us out". Apart from the M25, which despite its high priority will not now be complete until 1986, most of the schemes of real value to London are now following the Roads White Paper — in the nevernever land of post-1984, eg after the next election!
This includes all the main docklands schemes, and every proposed improvement for the North Circular Road bar one (the exception being in the Prime Minister's constituency). There will now be no route of even consistent dual-carriageway standard through South London between the A3 and A20.
Let us not kid ourselves. London's politicians, both at natio nal and local level, have not yet understood the co-relation between efficient transport on good roads and a successful economy. Until they do, London's road network will remain the worst in Europe.
ANDREW WARREN Secretary Movement for London London, W1