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TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

2nd February 1989
Page 5
Page 5, 2nd February 1989 — TOO LITTLE TOO LATE
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

• It's difficult not to agree with Conservative MP Terry Dicks' assertion that when it comes to planning roads a small boy with a calculator could do better than the Department of Transport. The DTp's track record on traffic planning, particularly forecasting traffic volumes, is abysmal.

Britain's motorways are bursting at the seams, with traffic flows far in excess of their design predictions. The M6 at Thelwell, for example, has a design capacity of 80,000 vehicles a day: according to the British Road Federation it carries 130,000. The same thing has happened on the M25. No sooner had it opened than the Government, having studiously avoided previous mistakes, announced that it would have to re-build sections of it as a four-laner, simply to cope with the traffic volume.

Worst of all is the dear old Ml, which now carries 130,000 vehicles a day. By the early 1990s it will be carrying a staggering 140,000, and that's with the M40 Oxford-Birmingham link open. Every operator in Britain could come up with more irritating — and expensive — examples of our clogged arterial system.

The DTp has failed to predict traffic volumes correctly, failed to spend enough on road building, and failed to build roads capable of taking even existing traffic levels. Perhaps worst of all it has refused even to admit how poor its performance really is.

It's always easy to criticise, of course. What's needed is a solution.

According to the Transport and General Workers Union, a national advisory body should be set up to give Britain's meandering transport strategy some direction. But will another committee, advisory body, quango, call it what you will, really make any difference? This Government, after all, has a habit of not listening to any advice, either from within or without.

Money always talks louder than words and only a major investment programme in roads and motorways will solve the problem. This finally seems to have been driven home to the Government. This week it announced that it is planning to spend £2.8 billion on roads over the next three years. It would be churlish to be ungrateful, but is even £2.8 billion enough? For that matter, why limit the investment to three years? If Britain's current traffic crisis is ever to be solved then the answer is more money, more time and more commitment. So far we've only got one out of three.


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