Blog ARCHIVE
Department’s addiction to road-building challenged
After much preparation, and with substantial public backing, our lawyers have started proceedings against the Department for Transport’s £27bn Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS2). Described by the Chancellor at its launch in March as England’s “largest ever” road-building programme, it breaches climate change and air quality laws. The historic case,...
Drive as much as you want to!
Across our cities roads are being closed while new cycle lanes and wider pavements pop up, promising to reset our relationship with cars. By contrast ministers have just started encouraging the public to “drive as much as you want to” to visit the countryside. So it was no big surprise...
A good start but a way to go yet
We’re absolutely thrilled that within 7 days of launching the crowdfunder for our legal challenge we had raised over £25,000 with 750 people donating. A huge thank you to everyone who has spread the word, donated, and shared the link to the Crowd Justice appeal. However, we need to raise a...
And we’ve launched!
Thank you SO much to you all for your donations. Each and every one has brought us closer to our target. In fact thanks to your amazing generosity, by the end of our first day (by happy coincidence the 50th Earth Day) we raised a THIRD of our initial costs....
Campaigners start legal challenge to “largest ever” roads plan
Campaigners start legal challenge to “largest ever” roads plan Lawyers acting for Transport Action Network (TAN) have asked the Department for Transport (DfT) and Highways England to scrap their roads plan or face a court challenge [1]. At its launch alongside the Budget, Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS2) was described...
New roads accelerating climate change
After the delay to the National Infrastructure Strategy (NIS) it was logical to conclude that it wouldn’t make sense to press ahead with a massive road building announcement until after the NIS was published. After all, would you order a carpet before you had designed the house? That’s why, and...
The road to tackling climate change
The Court of Appeal decision on Heathrow exposed that aviation national planning policy is not fit for purpose to tackle rising carbon emissions from transport. However, the same is true of the National Networks National Policy Statement (NNNPS) which is the over-arching planning policy framework for the development of nationally...
Forgive us our trespasses
Protests camps have been a constant feature of transport and climate campaigning since 1992 when the Dongas Tribe set up a protest camp against the M3 motorway at Twyford Down in the South Downs. In 1993, at the M11 protest in London, the courts agreed with protesters that a tree...
Success in Hereford and Ipswich!
Congratulations to local campaigners in Hereford and Ipswich as two road schemes look increasingly unlikely to go ahead. The South Wye Transport Package, which included funding for the Southern Link Road and the Hereford Western Bypass has just had £27 million of funding removed by Marches Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP)...
Un-SMART Motorways
Serious safety concerns have been raised about the roll out of All Lane Running (ALR) and Smart Motorways where the hard shoulder is sacrificed to become a permanent live lane. There were 10 fatalities in 2019 including five fatalities in just 10 months on a 16-mile section of the M1...
Time to cull ‘sacred cow’ road schemes
The new government, with its desire to increase infrastructure spending whilst needing to impress new Conservative voters in the north and midlands, has the opportunity to cull some bloated vanity projects. Boris Johnson has reportedly instructed his Cabinet to cull large 'legacy projects' and told them that everything is on...
£100 billion could be better spent elsewhere
Protesters camped along the route of the proposed HS2 high speed rail link at Harefield claim they were evicted unlawfully yesterday when security guards turned up without a court order ahead of imminent tree felling. It looks like HS2 Ltd are getting jittery, and with good reason. The chorus of...
Why are politicians scared of restricting car use?
Many politicians in the UK are reluctant to restrict car use on often spurious grounds, such as: it would undermine the local economy; increase congestion and pollution, slow down public transport, you can't turn back the clock, and more. They rarely get the positives that less traffic would make an...
Do they understand the urgency?
Many local authorities and the UK Parliament have declared climate emergencies over the past year. Yet what has changed? On the surface, nothing, and the more cynical would suggest that many of the declarations were made to keep protesters quiet, with the councils having little intention of doing much. Indeed a...
A new dawn for transport?
As England’s Economic Heartland (EEH) consultation on its outline regional transport strategy draws to a close, it’s refreshing that before any policies have been written, EEH has asked for input to help shape the draft strategy. This draft will then go out for consultation next year with adoption of the...
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