Road building plans a recipe for more traffic, say critics

Labour was accused of tearing up its pledges to reduce road traffic yesterday after it announced plans to widen some of Britain's busiest motorways as part of a £5.5bn transport programme.

Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport said long sections of the M1 and M6 will be expanded to eight lanes at a cost of around £2.5bn, while new dual carriageways will link Nottingham with the M1, and ease congestion on the A303 and A30 between Wiltshire and the South-west.

A tunnel will be bored beneath the site of Stonehenge at a cost of £183m to carry the busy A303. Also, the A1 north of Newcastle will be widened.

Mr Darling also announced £1.6bn funding for councils to pay for district integrated transport plans and local road improvement projects. Another £775m will pay for extensions to the successful Manchester Metrolink tram system, and a new tram system on Merseyside, while approval was granted in principle for an extended Nottingham light rail network.

Mr Darling told MPs the investment was "an essential part of building our economic prosperity and improving our quality of life." But the environmental groups attacked the Government for reneging on John Prescott's pledge to cut car use after the 1997 election.

The Conservatives said ministers had wasted five years before approving road schemes that could have been completed while ministers were considering alternatives.

Writing in The Independent, Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour chairman of the Commons Transport Select Committee, accused ministers of a "muddled" approach to road and rail policy, arguing road widening "will not solve the congestion problem". She said: "If this Government is serious, as it claims, about getting people out of their cars and on to public transport, why is it presiding over yearly rises in the cost of public transport? Widening our motorways, whether it makes them safer or not, does not solve this problem."

The pressure group Transport 2000 attacked Mr Darling's decision, accusing him, of confirming Britain as "the most car dependent country in Europe". Stephen Joseph, the organisation's director, said: "This is a binge of road building with virtually nothing safe from the bulldozer."

The transport department outlined an array of schemes to improve bus and cycle routes, including more than £500m to be spend on pilot schemes to encourage people to "make more environmentally friendly travel choices". But Friends of the Earth transport campaigner, Tony Bosworth, said they were "insignificant" in the face of road-building announcements. He said: "The Government has ditched its promise to cut UK traffic levels and has run up the white flag to the roads lobby. Attempting to Tarmac our way out of our congestion problems has failed in the past and will fail again in the future. When the most congested parts of the M25 were widened a few years ago, many sections filled up again within a few years."

Tim Collins, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said: "We have had five-and-a-half shamefully wasted years in which motorists have been lectured and penalised and massively taxed." He asked Mr Darling: "Haven't you just proven that with Labour all you ever get is the promise of jam tomorrow and the reality of jams today?"

Don Foster, the Lib-Dem transport spokesman asked Mr Darling: "Haven't you simply given up and all we can now look forward to is worsening public transport and longer and wider traffic jams?"

Paul Hamblin, head of transport at the Council for the Protection of Rural England, added: "Today's announcement threatens large areas of countryside with Tarmac and by fuelling traffic growth will get us no nearer to reducing congestion in the future."

The Road Haulage Association warmly welcomed the programme. The RHA chief executive Roger King said: "The pity is it has taken so long to approve the obvious. In 1998, the Government set up Multi-Modal Studies to look at alternatives to investment. Now, five years later, with taxpayers £27m poorer, we have the answer that was apparent back then."