Warning of road chaos
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• Road traffic congestion, particularly at black spots such as London, the M25, the M1 and other urban centres, will get worse before the effects of remedies can be felt, the House of Commons transport committee has warned.
The all-party select committee's annual report on the Government's expenditure plans for transport welcomes strategic initiatives such as the doubling of the roads programme to £12 billion. But it says that it will be many years before these "expensive, longterm solutions" will be effective. "There is an urgent need to consider short-term, lowcost options which can reduce the peaks in congestion," it suggests.
The committee wants to see extra cash for the national roads programme from next year. and it calls on the Department to "push up the queue those schemes which are ready for implementation". Much of the evidence submitted to the committee's roads inquiry highlighted the lack of urgency being applied to traffic problems arising from the Channel Tunnel. The Dip has said that the building of the Chunnel has led to virtually no extra spending on trunk roads and motorways. However, "the highway authorities in the north of France are planning extra high-capacity roads to the Twine]," the committee warr "and there may be a danger that a large volume of traffic funnelled into the Tunnel fror the French side will cause se vere traffic problems in Kent The committee wants to si trunk road schemes for thos( counties immediately affectec by the Tunnel to be completi as soon as possible, and says that infrastructure developments on the UK side must I kept in step with those on th French side, with close liaise between the DTp and its French equivalent.
The committee also warns a potential crisis in bus services outside London with "( clining load factors and increased vehicle mileage" one insufficient spending on buse and other forms of public tra port. "The government may over-optimistic when it suggests that continuing compel tion will keep the unit costs bus operations below inflatio it predicts.