Road crusaders ready for battle

17 May 2006
 
Anti-road campaigners hope to reveal that some local authority road schemes have been proposed without any consideration of alternative solutions, in a bid to stop them in their tracks.
Road Block has targeted 90 local authorities with Freedom of Information Act questions demanding to know whether local transport plan 2 guidance requirements to ‘not start from an assertion about a preferred modal option’, and assessing ‘a wide base of possible options’.
The group has asked councils to provide evidence of their having considered alternatives including public transport, traffic or demand-management schemes, and ‘soft’ measures to reduce travel.
Its members also want to find out why alternatives were discarded by authorities – and their reasons for doing so. The authorities have 20 days to respond to the questions relating to major schemes they are considering – as long as they consider the questions to fall under the remit of the Act.
Road Block co-ordinator, Rebecca Lush, said: ‘We want to ensure the Department for Transport’s fine words about road building being a last resort are kept to.
‘For years, local authorities have been getting away with not examining alternatives which will reduce traffic, and for too long the DfT has let them get away with it.’ Lancashire’s Heysham-M6 link, Wiltshire’s Westbury bypass, the southeast Manchester relief road, and Norfolk’s Norwich northern distributor road are among ‘controversial’ schemes where a DfT decision is expected soon which the group hopes to stop going ahead.
The December decision LTP decision letters reiterated the point made in the guidance for the ‘thorough consideration of alternatives’, after ‘unrealistic numbers’ of major schemes were proposed.

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