Urgent! Tell the Chancellor to scrap expensive road building and fund public transport improvements instead.
The Treasury is asking for comments on what to prioritise in its multi-year Spending Review in June. This is important as it will set spending priorities for the next few years. Please tell the Treasury not to fund expensive new roads, and instead prioritise spending on public transport and active travel.
This will be good for nature and the NHS, reducing air, noise and water pollution, reducing inequalities, reducing carbon, improving productivity and boosting the economy.
Please submit your comments via the Treasury’s portal (there are no other options).
Deadline for comments is midnight, Sunday, 9 February.
You will be asked which departments your comments apply so please tick all those relevant to the issues above.
If you have a specific scheme or schemes that you feel should or should not be funded, include them in your response. Feel free to use or adapt the following points as well:
- Large, expensive road schemes are poor value for money:
- Increasing traffic and congestion and limiting growth
- Increasing pollution and harm to humans, increasing costs on NHS
- Undermining Treasury income from rail fares.
- Investing in public transport, active travel and rail freight will deliver more for the economy, whilst also giving more choice for the public and reducing carbon emissions. Active travel and some public transport schemes will be quicker to implement and have a more positive economic impact and sooner.
- Restore the cuts and increase active travel funding which offer the highest and fastest economic returns
- The DfT should invest in a National Road Safety Programme such as proposed by the Roads Safety Foundation. It would cost £2.5bn for a UK wide programme. It would relieve pressure on NHS and emergency services as well as being good for people and families.
- Road HGV transport is unfairly subsidised compared to rail freight as it ignores wider external costs, such as higher deaths and serious injuries on our roads due to HGVs. There should be a distance based charge for HGVs to reduce HGV traffic and to make rail freight more competitive.
- Using private finance to build the £10bn Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) would lead to increased tolls at Dartford and LTC and still require substantial public money for associated road schemes. It would take 7 years to build but only relieve the Dartford Crossing for 5 years. Investing in rail freight and public transport instead would significantly reduce HGV and car traffic at Dartford and on the M25 for a lot less and potentially more quickly.
- The £1.5bn A66 Northern Trans-Pennine has a very weak business case and would take years to build at huge environmental cost. Cheaper road safety solutions could be implemented immediately, at a fraction of the cost of a new, faster dual carriageway.