This morning, the Prime Minister announced a £15bn spending package in road building.  He boasted of “over 100 improvements to our major roads, hundreds of extra lane miles on our motorways and trunk roads and the green light given to major projects that have stalled for years”.

The Coalition’s claim to be the ‘greenest government ever’ is already in tatters.  Recycling discredited road building policies from the Thatcher Government of the 1980s will only make matters worse.

The Prime Minister’s obsession with major new road schemes is economically questionable as well as environmentally reckless.  Road building simply does not reduce congestion. For decades, even the Government’s own studies have been showing this.  Road building encourages more traffic, worsens air pollution, and causes severe loss and harm to our precious countryside.  

As new roads simply clog up, the economic arguments evaporate – especially when compared to the alternatives. Earlier this month, Department for Transport figures showed that Local Sustainable Transport schemes deliver £5 benefit for £1 spent. The Government’s own webpage states “This demonstrates that investment in local sustainable transport projects represents very high value for money.”

It’s clear that there are better ways of spending public money than on new major road schemes. The notorious Bexhill Hastings Link Road, through the beautiful Coombe Valley in Sussex, illustrates the point. Last year the Government was forced to admit that the already-weak economic case relied on ignoring £31million of the total cost.  Even then, according to the Government, it’s only ‘low to medium’ value for money.

Instead of squandering taxpayers’ money on major road schemes, this £15 billion should be redirected into repairing and improving local roads, boosting public transport, reopening railway lines, and schemes to encourage walking and cycling.  

That would deliver much greater benefits to the local economy and people’s quality of life, without the harmful impacts on air pollution, public health and the destruction of countryside, woodlands and wildlife habitats inflicted by major road schemes.

With Labour’s recent criticism of the Coalition for failing to take climate change seriously, it’s disappointing that the so-called opposition is nodding along with Conservative line that road building is good for the country, but silent when it comes to the environmental destruction and increased carbon emissions from new road building. Worse still, they’re criticising Ministers for not unleashing the bulldozers sooner, not just for roads but for airport expansion too. 

Brighton has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in Britain and fewer people are choosing to own their own vehicle. There’s a lot of excellent work going on in Brighton and Hove to promote affordable, sustainable transport and to tackle air pollution, but it’s hampered by inadequate Government funding and policies that point in the wrong direction.  Then there’s Sussex Wildlife Trusts and other local groups, fighting to protect the South Downs National Park from the proposed A27 scheme. Further afield, Stonehenge is even under threat.

The Greens are clear: if the UK is serious about the growing climate crisis, we need to be pressing investment in affordable, reliable public transport, walking and cycling and I shall continue speaking out in Westminster about the need for sustainable transport policies that are good for Brighton and good for the country overall.