RAC Foundation report calls for more new roads to ease congestion
Fri 30 November 2007
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A report published by the RAC Foundation says that Britain needs investment in roads at a rate of about 600 lane kilometres a year and that the optimal balance of economic benefit would be achieved if this rate of building were combined with efficient road pricing. The research, by a team of transport academics, claims that new roads have little effect on climate change: freer-flowing conditions allied with improved vehicle technology should reduce total CO2 emissions, it says.
The 'Roads and Reality' report says that car ownership will be 44% higher by 2041 and that traffic will increase by 37%. It says that the Government has some tough choices to make if it wants to avoid severe congestion becoming even more commonplace and concludes that new road capacity will be essential whether or not national road pricing is introduced.
One of the authors, Professor Stephen Glaister of Imperial College, said: "The modeling suggests that the Government cannot use the possible future introduction of road pricing as a reason to ignore the need to improve the strategic road network. If national road pricing has been put on the back-burner, more urgency is required for intelligent investment decisions now to keep the county moving in the future."
The SMMT welcomed the report and supported the call for more road building.
The Campaign for Better Transport, however, says: "The RAC Foundation seems to be living on a different planet from the rest of us. With road transport emissions rising each year, the Government needs to heed the call of the public and reduce emissions by investing in public transport."
The CBT says that roadbuilding does not necessarily boost the economy and cites the 'largest study of its kind' into the impact of transport on the economy which reached this conclusion. The campaign group also points to the recent Eddington Report which said that in mature economies there is “considerably less scope” for large-scale transport improvements to deliver economic growth than there was in the past
The CBT response says that the Government’s current major roads programme would increase carbon dioxide emissions by 752,100 tonnes a year and comments that road transport currently contributes 25.7% of all UK emissions and that its contribution is rising
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