Roads to recovery: Chalker
Page 5
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE GOVERNMENT is committed to building new roads to boost industrial recovery, Transport Under Secretary Lynda Chalker told the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses in London.
The Government's trunk road programme has three aims, Mrs Chalker explained. It aims to build roads which strengthen the economy, which improve the environment, and which preserve the investments already made by a substantial programme of maintenance.
"During 1980 and 1981, we opened 172 miles of trunk road, including 75 miles of motorway," she said. "In the same period, we started construction on a further 153 miles including 62 miles of motorway."
Forty-three of the 49 schemes in its main programme are now under construction, and the Government expects to open 50 miles of trunk road this year, and to start work on a further 97 miles including 34 miles of motorway.
By 1985, 90 more trunk road schemes will have been started, and by the end of the decade "the remaining gaps on the strategic road network" will have been filled, she added.
The backlog of "essential repairs" inherited by the present Government is being reduced, she pointed out. In the last financial year £63m was spent on roads. "But this is still not really enough."
About £172m was spent last year on maintaining motorways and other trunk roads. Local highway authorities spent £622m on theirs. "This year we hope to spend at least the same as last year on our roads, while the allocation to local authorities has gone up to £787m — 16 per cent more than last year.
Mrs Chalker went on to say that the number of by-passes is less important than the number of communities effectively bypassed. Forty have been relieved since 1980/81, and local authority by-passes relieved a further 40.
"All in all, road schemes now under construction or due to start in the next two or three years will relieve more than 200 communities from heavy through traffic," she claimed.