Ministers still claim publicly that roads are built only as a last resort but privately concede that, in many areas, there is no other option for coping with rapidly rising traffic.

The Highways Agency’s budget for new roads slumped after 1997 when Labour took office with a pledge to scrap the Conservative road-building programme. A month after the 1997 election John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said: “I will have failed if, in five years’ time, there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It’s a tall order, but I urge you to hold me to it.”

By 1999 the road-building budget had fallen to £500 million, half what the Tories spent in their final year in power. In 2001, for the first time in half a century, not a single A-road or motorway improvement scheme was completed.

Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, has publicly adhered to the line that every alternative must be considered before a road is commissioned. In 2004 he published a White Paper that stated: “We cannot build our way out of the problems we face on our roads.”

But the agency, which manages England’s motorway and trunk road network, has quietly been preparing dozens of schemes to relieve pinch points. It said the £1.05 billion being spent on improvements this year would “continue at a similar level next year”.

Most of the 71 schemes in its programme involve adding a fourth lane to motorways or turning a single-carriageway A-road into a dual carriageway; but it is also building new roads through sensitive areas, including three national parks and several Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Last week Stephen Ladyman, the Roads Minister, approved a new bypass through the southern part of the Lake District. Work will commence this summer on the A590 High and Low Newton bypass, despite a 50 per cent increase in the cost of the scheme to £35 million.

Mr Ladyman said that the bypass would relieve the Lakeland villages of High Newton, Low Newton and Ayside, which are blighted by 14,000 vehicles passing through each day, including 2,000 lorries.

The agency is also planning bypasses on the western edge of the Peak District National Park and through the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty near Weymouth. The agency admits that traffic on the A628 through the Peak District will more than double after the bypass is built and the number of cars on scenic routes across the national park will grow by a third.

Yet Mr Ladyman has recently begun denying the theory accepted by previous Labour transport ministers that building new roads simply encourages extra traffic. In a letter last month to Road Block, which campaigns against new roads, Mr Ladyman said: “We reject entirely the suggestion that road improvements have a negative impact on congestion by stimulating traffic growth.”

Rebecca Lush, Road Block’s co-ordinator, said: “The Government keeps saying how critical it is to tackle climate change, but they are quietly planning a major expansion of the road network which will send emissions soaring from cars. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.”

The Government’s climate change review, published last month, calculated that, despite improvements in fuel efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions from road transport would grow by 8 per cent between 2000 and 2010.

()The RAC Foundation welcomed the increase in spending on new roads, however, and pointed out that 92 per cent of passenger travel was by road. Edmund King, the foundation’s director, said: “Labour came to power with the Utopian idea that public transport would solve all of our problems. Now they realise that they must put more money into roads.

“Increasing the budget to £1 billion is a good sign, but it needs to be £2 billion or £3 billion each year to stop congestion from doing serious damage to the economy.”

Mr King said that nationwide road tolls should play a part in reducing congestion, but the charging system, based on tracking vehicles by satellite, would not be ready for another decade. “We are not averse to road pricing, but it is not a substitute for road improvements,” he said.

He said there were dozens of bottlenecks on the road network that were still awaiting a decision. The long-promised plan to bury the A303 near Stonehenge in a tunnel was put on hold last year after the cost almost doubled from £284 million in 2003 to £510 million. The agency’s public consultation on cheaper options, including bypasses to the north or south of the World Heritage Site, concludes on Monday.

A Department for Transport spokesman denied that there had been any change of policy on road building. He said: “New roads are not necessarily a bad thing. We judge them on a case by case basis.”

The department forecasts that traffic on all roads in England will rise by at least 29 per cent by 2015, and possibly by 38 per cent. Traffic on motorways and inter-urban A-roads will grow at a much faster rate, increasing by 40 to 51 per cent. By 2025 total traffic is forecast to rise by 51 to 69 per cent.

CAR WORSHIP

Source: Department for Transport

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