Better Transport

2 July: We've been fighting the Westbury Bypass for years, and the Government has just rejected its application for planning permission. This shows that is no longer acceptable to force through destructive roads in the face of concerted local opposition.

The case for bypasses is always spurious but Westbury Bypass took the biscuit: it would have put a road just below the famous White Horse of Salisbury Plain, diverting cars and HGVs through open countryside while doing nothing about traffic problems in the area.

At the public inquiry Wiltshire Council had to constantly revise their plans to try and justify the scheme, finally resorting to forcing lorries on a massive detour (because otherwise they wouldn't have bothered using the bypass at all).

But the inspector saw through them and conclusively rejected the bypass, arguing that the landscape impact was too high, and, crucially, that the traffic levels weren't enough to justify it. He also agreed with local campaigners that it would have caused problems for other communities along the A350.

We've never denied that Westbury had some traffic problems, but building a £30 million bypass and destroying the countryside was never an option. This decision should send a shiver down the spines of road builders, because spells the end of roads getting waved through regardless of whether they are needed or how much damage they would do.

25 June: A recent Government report has found that bypasses tend to have way more traffic on them than expected - and cost a lot more too.

After a road is built, the Highways Agency carries out a 'post-opening project evaluation' to check whether its predictions about a road were correct. The agency has just looked at a bunch of these evaluations and found - you guessed it - its predictions were way off:

• In 60% of cases, there was more traffic on the bypass and the old route than had been predicted
• In 40% of cases, there were over 25% more vehicles on the old (bypassed) route than expected

This shouldn't come as a surprise - we've known for years that road building generates traffic - but what's really damning is just how poor the Highways Agency is at working out what the impacts of road building will be.

So why are bypasses still being considered around Shrewsbury, Manchester, Westbury and elsewhere

16 June: I know there's a recession on - and that budgets at all levels of Government are tight - but why is everyone so keen to cut projects to improve urban spaces?

The South West Regional Development Agency - a panel of unelected business interests - has just cut a number of high-profile projects to improve the public realm. Meanwhile they are pushing ahead with a number of terrible road schemes, including the Weymouth Relief Road, Westbury Bypass and Kingskerswell Bypass.

Public realm projects are all about reducing the impact of traffic, planting trees, redesigning high streets to be more pedestrian-friendly and generally making towns and cities nicer places to be.

So why are these projects - which can turn around our struggling high streets, already under threat from out-of-town shopping centres - being cut, while the South West is spending millions on roads that will increase traffic and further the decline of public spaces?

8 June: Councils in Manchester want to scrap their walking, cycling and road safety schemes to fund an assortment of costly and unnecessary road schemes, as we told the Guardian today.

Earlier this year we reported how the Mottram-Tintwistle bypass was rejected from the North West’s transport wish list. When, days later, the Highways Agency announced that it was pulling out of the public inquiry, we thought that the scheme – which would have put a dual carriageway through the Peak District National Park – was finally going to be laid to rest.

But Tameside Council was determined to get its bypass, and together with other councils across Greater Manchester, dreamed up a monstrous funding proposal. The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities decided to raise council tax and pilfer 40% of their combined local transport budgets to fund six major infrastructure projects, four of them road schemes.

Money that was supposed to be spent on travel plans, road safety schemes, public transport and measures to get people walking and cycling would instead be wasted on the Mottram Bypass, the Stockport Bypass, the Wigan Inner Relief Road and the Ashton Northern Bypass.

This is bad enough, but we're worried that if the Manchester package goes ahead, other councils will want in on the action. It's a very real threat: transport budgets will tighten while we're in a recession, and councils that can't fund their road schemes will be looking for 'creative' ways to get funding. So it’s really important that we stop this idea in its tracks, which is why we wrote to the local transport minister, Paul Clark, asking him not to approve this funding package.

If you agree, why not take a minute to send a quick note, asking for the scheme to be rejected. And if you live in Greater Manchester, why not drop your councillor a line, telling him or her you don’t want money already allocated for road safety and congestion-busting squandered on road schemes?

20 May: Despite our best efforts, the Government has just signed the contract to widen the M25 - even though the costs have already skyrocketed.

A year ago this was supposed to cost £5 billion and would have widened four sections. Then, with your help, we persuaded Ruth Kelly to implement hard-shoulder running on two of the four sections, which would have saved a fair amount of money.

But since then the costs of the M25 scheme have skyrocketed, and it's now expected to cost £6.2 billion to widen just two sections. It's an extraordinary increase at a time when Government departments are supposed to be cutting back on public spending because of the credit crunch.

The whole deal really winds me up - not least because we know that people want better, cheaper public transport, not road schemes. Bringing regulated rail fares in line with the European average would, for comparison, cost just £500 million. Surely that would have been better value for money than this bloated tarmac turkey?

8 May: I've been spending lots of time recently getting my head around the Westbury bypass. This week I met with some of the campaigners against the bypass to help them deliver a postcard to Hazel Blears, who's considering granting the road planning permission.

Stephen Joseph, our director, joined the hundreds of residents who've written messages to the Secretary of State, asking her not to approve the road. There were so many that there wasn't enough space on this giant postcard for them all to fit. Here's hoping that Blears listens to reason and doesn't approve this monsterous scheme.

30 April: I've just come back from facilitating a meeting between campaigners from Camp Bling and the heads of Southend Council. The group is celebrating - because they've stopped a £25 million road scheme.

Southend Council wanted to build a dual carriageway through Priory Park, the burial site of an East Saxon king, felling 11 trees in the process. This was expected to save just 15 seconds - a crazy waste of money and pointless destruction of green space.

The group decided on a two-pronged approach, with Parklife fighting the scheme through the planning and funding process and setting up Camp Bling on the land under threat. They stuck it out for three-and-a-half years, the longest road protest site in England, despite arson attempts, cold winters and bleak, rainy summers.

But yesterday's news is welcome relief, and after some much-needed celebrations comes the painstaking process of taking down the site. At the meeting the group and councillors agreed that they'd be off the site in a couple of months, leaving it as they found it. The council plans to turn the land into a memorial garden planted with native species from Saxon times.

22 April: The 2009 Budget may have been hyped as the greenest ever, but it was nothing like the kickstart we had hoped for.

Just last week we wrote to the Government and laid out our thoughts on how local transport could contribute to some pretty major greenhouse gas cuts, and we had hoped that the Chancellor might have mentioned some of our measures. Some, like a major boost for highway maintenance, would have kept thousands of people in steady jobs and others, like lower rail fares, would have kept people from being priced off the railways.

The Government is focused on expensive 'capital intensive' projects, like road building, which cost lots but employ relatively few people. We know that loads of great projects which would reduce CO2 lose out, so we're proposing a carbon reduction fund (PDF, 64k) which would allocate money to local councils and businesses to spend on low-carbon pilots or any manner of schemes to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

We think that the Government should use the downturn to boost the green economy. If you agree, why not drop your MP an email and asking for bigger investment in sustainable transport?

16 April: The Government is betting that electric vehicles are the solution to transport's rising carbon footprint. I'm not so sure: where's all the electricty coming from, and will the National Grid be able to cope?

Electric cars aren't 'carbon neutral': you still have to make the electricity that powers them. The Government may like to talk up its plans for renewables, but it's trying to build new coal-fired power stations up and down the UK. CO2 emissions from electric cars running on coal are unlikely to be much better than petrol or diesel cars - especially if you factor in the energy it takes to make them in the first place.

Last year we commissioned research into low-carbon transport. This found that electrifying the 26 million cars in the UK could increase the amount of energy we'd need by a factor of four! Somehow I can't see that all coming from renewables.

It's such a pity, because for the £250 million this programme will cost we could have invested in all sorts of great, low-cost packages, like car clubs, walking and cycling and public transport. It looks like the Government's great strategy is just a bail out for the car manufacturers dressed up in greenwash.

7 April: After months of campaigning, we’ve finally persuaded the Government to change how it decides whether transport schemes are good value for money or not.

There are loads of possible solutions to transport problems, so the Government designed a framework to help local authorities weigh up which scheme might offer the best value for money. In theory they would look at all the different factors: comparing whether the scheme would reduce congestion, make an area more accessible or reduce greenhouse gas emissions to how much it would cost to build. In practice, roads always came out best, justifying damaging road schemes.

Put simply, the old framework relied too much on journey time savings, but did not distinguish between a handful of people saving a decent amount of time and a lot of people saving far less time. It also put time savings above reliability. Both we and the Government know that people are more concerned about being on time rather than getting there slightly faster.

We persuaded the Government to take carbon dioxide emissions more seriously. Under the old method transport schemes, driving further always outweighed the carbon cost. This is because the old system counted the revenue from fuel duty as a benefit, and one which was around five times more than the cost of the CO2 emitted! Thus, schemes which helped drivers reduce their fuel consumption – like ‘green wave’ projects – fared badly, even though they reduced our carbon footprint.

This new system isn’t perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction. It should make it easier to show how much better public transport and small-scale, demand management projects are at tackling transport problems than just building more and more roads everywhere and hoping the traffic goes away.

26 March: For the past six months each English region (except London) has been compiling a wish-list of the transport schemes that they would like Government funding for. Although they could have picked any number of public transport schemes, most of them wanted to spend most of the money building roads.

We've been keeping a close eye on the goings-on, and have worked out what the problems are. It seems that despite fine words from Government, many of the regional decision makers are still obsessed with a particular road scheme - like Wiltshire County Council and the Westbury bypass - and basically blocked the rest of the region's schemes until theirs got accepted.

What the regions want to build

In other regions decision makers weren't taking carbon dioxide emissions seriously, either ignoring the impacts or downplaying them at every opportunity. We've produced a briefing on the Regional Funding Advice which makes it clear that the Government needs to be much stricter if it's to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Climate Change Act.

It's not too late though: there won't be any decisions made until June, so we've got a few months to get our message across. Surely someone at the Department for Transport understands that building lots of roads now makes it harder to cut CO2 in the long term?

24 March: I've just heard some fantastic news about the Mottram-Tintwistle bypass. Last month it was rejected for funding by regional government, and today the Highways Agency have pulled out of the public inquiry.

The inquiry started in July 2007 but has only sat for 15 days, because the inspector ordered the Highways Agency to do more work on their traffic modelling. This modelling was supposed to prove the need for the road, but was full of dodgy calculations.

That was eighteen months ago but despite tweaking their data over and over they still can't justify building a major road through a national park and have finally thrown in the towel. I'm sure that Save Swallow's Wood and Friends of the Peak District are over the moon - and rightly so. They've fought a fantastic campaign to stop road building from trashing the environment.

There's still the problem of lorries trundling past people's front doors, but now that the road is off the cards, perhaps we can all sit down and look at better options. Local people have suggested banning HGVs from the national park altogether, which sounds like a sensible place to start.

16 March: Developers want to widen Titnore Lane near Worthing, destroying ancient woodland and making way for a retail park. Local campaigners have an online petition and are asking for your help.

Worthing Council is meeting in a few weeks time to discuss the plans, and the more signatures the group can get the better. If you haven't signed up yet, they'd really appreciate the support!

16 March: I gave evidence to a Government committee in January and they’ve just issued their report, which agreed that the Government needs to stop funding road building and invest in public transport instead.

The Environmental Audit Committee has long been a critic of the Government’s approach to transport, calling for more investment in sustainable transport and cheaper rail fares. When the Government announced £1 billion for transport last Autumn, their ears pricked up, and they asked me to come in and explain what it would go on. Sadly I didn’t have good news: just £54 million was new money for public transport. The majority went on building roads.

The Committee agreed with us that if we’re going to spend our way out of the recession we should be investing in greener transport to help us kick the carbon habit. They also felt, like so many people, that rail fares were too expensive and should be brought down. Cat, our public transport campaigner, was pleased to hear that they’d backed her campaign to tax domestic flights to keep rail fares low. There’s no point in asking people to take the train if the fares are too expensive!

9 March: I've often said that road building is too expensive. Tonight I'm appearing on Channel 4's Dispatches, which has looked into the issue and agreed.

Road building projects keep getting more expensive because local authorities underestimate the cost to make them more attractive and get them into the roads programme. Local councils know that no one, least of all the Department for Transport, is going to hold them to account if their scheme gets more expensive, so they make them look cheap and shrug when the prices spiral out of control.

The Highways Agency's programme of major schemes is now almost £4 billion over budget, and local roads are 38% over budget. Meanwhile public transport schemes are often dropped for the slightest increase. It's time the Government got its house in order and dropped roads whose costs are out of control.

5 March: I've been hearing rumours that the Government can't find enough funding for the M25 widening schemes. I need your help to make sure these damaging and costly schemes don't get built.

Last year we asked you to write to Ruth Kelly, asking her to use active traffic management (ATM) on four sections of the M25 instead of widening. She decided that two sections were perfect for ATM. However there are two sections left, and the Govermment was planning on widening them through a Private Finance Initiative scheme.

Since then the economic downturn made PFI less viable and the M25 widening schemes struggled for funding. This should have been the opportunity to introduce ATM, but instead the Government wants to take money from a £2 billion infrastructure pot that would otherwise be funding schools and hospitals.

This is clearly a crazy idea: we know ATM isn't perfect, but it's cheaper and less polluting than widening motorways. That's why I'm asking for your help to persuade the Transport Secretary to drop the widening and introduce ATM instead. If you're stuck for what to write, we've produced a template letter to help you get started.

26 February: When I think of our National Parks, I think of untouched countryside where we can get away from it all. But road builders wanted to plough a dual carriageway through the Peak District National Park - until decision makers in the North West kicked it into the long grass.

The A47 / A628 Mottram-Tintwistle bypass is one of those schemes which should never have been suggested: a dual carriageway which would have sent thousands of lorries trundling though the Peak District. It was once expected to cost £90 million back in 2003 but is currently estimated at £315m.

Local campaigners at Save Swallow's Wood and Friends of the Peak District fought a vociferous campaign to stop the road, and after years of hard work they've won a significant victory. The road was about to secure funding when a last-minute meeting of council leaders decided it wasn't a priority and refused funding until 2016 - basically ending its chances of ever getting built.

This is great news, because we've been fighting this road scheme for years now; we asked you to contact your MP and exactly a month ago enlisted your support to help Save Swallows Wood persuade decision makers to reject it. They think this final barrage of letters helped tip the balance - and who are we to argue?

6 February: I'm shocked that Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for plannning, has just rejected requests for a public inquiry into the Bexhill-Hastings link road. The scheme would be a textbook example of unsustainable transport.

Luckily this isn't the end of the matter: East Sussex County Council still need to persuade the Government that the road would be good value for money. We'll be working closely with campaigners from the Hastings Alliance to show that there are much better alternatives out there.

4 February: Wiltshire County Council has been overstating the case for the Westbury Bypass for years. Now local campaigners have shown just how unattractive and unaffordable the new road would be.

Wiltshire is trying to get the Government to fund the bypass (through a process called the Regional Funding Advice). They claim that the road can be built on time and on budget.

Not according to campaigners from the White Horse Alliance. Last week they warned regional decision makers that the road's environmental impacts were likely to delay construction. They also pointed out that the scheme would cost almost a third more than Wiltshire had indicated and massively increase HGV traffic around Westbury.

The White Horse Alliance is asking people to contact Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon, asking him to oppose the road and invest in sustainable transport instead.If you don't have time to write, why not help the Alliance keep up their good work?

26 January: I've heard that regional funding may be spent on building the Mottram Tintwistle bypass, which would destroy a nature reserve and increase traffic, pollution and CO2. Let's stop this from happening.

The Campaign to Save Swallows Wood is asking people to write to the decision makers in the North West, telling them to invest in public transport instead.

11 December: I've just been told that East Sussex County Council has given itself planning permission to build a new road between Bexhill and Hastings. Here's hoping the Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon agrees with us that there needs to be a proper inquiry.

Years ago the council decided it wanted the road, so all the transport studies which followed assumed that one day it would be built. As a result no one has properly looked at alternatives. The road is now tied up in dodgy development plans that only work if the road is built; but local campaigners have unearthed tons of problems with the arguments in favour of building it.

So Geoff, if you're listening: this road needs an inquiry. Don't take the council's word on it: listen to the hundreds of local people who don't want the road, who want to save the Coombe Valley and who really, really, want a future that isn't dominated by ever-rising traffic.

25 November: I've just heard the Dorset County Council has started work on the Weymouth Relief Road. They must be feeling pretty confident, because the Department for Transport hasn't approved it yet.

Dorset has only just submitted its economic arguments to the Department. Final approval won't be granted until the start of next year.

So is the County Council jumping the gun, or do they know something that we don't?

24 November: The pre-budget report should have kickstarted a sustainable future. But as public transport fares skyrocket, Chancellor Alastair Darling has opted to fund road building and encourage people to drive bigger cars.

The headline transport measures - accelerating the roads programme and reducing proposed VED increases - are both designed to make it easier to drive. This may look like a quick win to many, but the cost of motoring has been falling year-on-year (down 8% in real terms since 1997), while train fares have been steadily rising and are set to increase by up to 7% this January.

Building more road capacity won't get the economy moving again: it will just encourage more people to drive. The Chancellor had the chance of guiding us towards a sustainable transport system by investing in high-quality, low-cost public transport. Instead he's plumped for a flock of tarmac turkeys - and just in time for Christmas.

Read the Campaign for Better Transport pre-budget report press release

18 November: The Secretary of State for Transport's decision to 'fast track' the dualling of the A11 in Norfolk is being reported as a solution to the recession. I think this is misguided: we need recession-busting public transport, not costly road schemes.

Norfolk desperately needs new trains and buses to relieve the pressure on the road network - and a recession will only increase that need. Cutting down on spending often means selling a second car or trying to drive less, but without decent public transport this leaves communities isolated and unable to reach essential services.

This is particularly relevant for bus passengers: people on low incomes and pensioners are the most likely to be dependant on buses and the most likely to struggle to make ends meet during an economic downturn. Any money being squandered on road building is money that could be improving local buses, reopening disused branch lines or even buying new carriages to relieve overcrowding. 

The solution ought to be simple: invest in public transport to help people leave their cars at home and support local post offices and other essential services to reduce the need to travel. The Government must listen to reason, not the pleas of the road builders.

November 6 - It’s almost too good to believe: Boris Johnson has finally canned the Thames Gateway Bridge. Decades of campaigning have paid off!

Plans for this thoroughly daft cross-Thames motorway have been around since the 1940s, killed off time and time again only to return from the dead to haunt another generation of campaigners. We fought it tooth and nail throughout the last public inquiry – and helped persuade the inspector to reject the scheme – only for Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Hazel Blears to ignore their recommendation and decide to resume the inquiry.

But Boris never liked the scheme and wouldn’t support it in its present form or location. A number of alternatives were bandied about - including a cable car – although rumours in the press suggested that motoring groups were desperate for the six-lane bridge. Just as we were gearing up for another fight he published Transport for London’s business plan which deleted the hated bridge – although it did contain plans for a Velib-style cycle hire scheme and a curious project to pedestrianise Park Lane.

So fingers crossed that the bridge has died for good, and won’t be crawling out of its grave to scare us once again. The time for zombies is Halloween, and that’s over already...

There are good alternatives to the bridge, and to other damaging road schemes

16 October: I've just heard that the Highways Agency has upped the speed limit on the hard-shoulder running section of the M42 from 50 to 60mph. This move will wipe out all the benefits and increase CO2 emissions - despite their claims to the contrary.

Late last year Rebecca reported on succesful trials of hard shoulder running (also called ATM) at 50mph, which saw emissions decrease by up to 10% and were amazingly popular with drivers. Then in April the Government decided to ignore its own findings and increase speed limits to 60mph. Rebecca discovered that at 60mph emissions actually increase - ruining a rare opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions.

But that's not the end of the matter. Now the HA has decided to increase the speed limit to 60mph on the ATM section of the M42 - and is making grand claims for the benefits of 60mph ATM. But these benefits are from the 50mph tests!

Of course the Government could have found out the differences were between 50 and 60mph ATM - but, as we revealed earlier this year, they didn't bother to study them.

9 October: On the Sussex coastline a beautiful patch of ancient woodland is under threat. Local developers are trying to build about 1,000 houses and a new supermarket - and widen the roads to cater for all the traffic that would be generated. I've just heard we have a new opportunity to fight this disastrous plan.

The scheme was rejected once already, but developers tweaked it and re-submitted it for planning permission. Now local campaigners tell me Worthing council has just extended the deadline for objections. Protect our Woodland has more information about the plans and really need our help. Register your objections on the council's website - it only takes a few minutes.

3 October: I've just heard that the Government has approved the Weymouth 'relief' road - and I'm furious about it. We've been supporting a great team of local campaigners trying to stop this road because it will be an environmental disaster.

Most roads damage the environment, but this one was a wrecking ball: smashing through an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and ancient woodland as well as cutting a deep gash in the Ridgeway.

Former Biodiversity Minister Jim Knight has been a committed supporter of the scheme since day one, taking every opportunity to blame objectors for delays and cost increases. Nothing could be further from the truth; the road suffered massive delays because Dorset County Council let the first round of planning permission expire!

When Dorset asked for feedback, 6,000 people objected, as well as ourselves, Natural England, the Wildlife Trust, CPRE and other conservation and environmental organisations. Despite strong local opposition the local paper has consistently championed the road, ignoring major errors by the County Council, which has still refused to examine alternatives.

Approving this road was Ruth Kelly's last act in office and makes a mockery of the Government's talk about climate change. It's time this Government stopped playing political football with the environment and faced up to the fact that road building and tackling climate change will never be compatible.

23 September - After months of planning, the Campaign Against the Levels Motorway (CALM) is holding a rally outside the Welsh Assembly.

CALM is campaigning against a new section of the M4 which would plough through a number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest. The 24km toll scheme is supposed to tackle congestion, but local campaigners say it would instead increase traffic around Newport, encouraging people to commute to Cardiff and Bristol.

There is congestion on parts of the M4, but surely the solution is to improve local services and public transport - not spend a fortune on a new toll road?

You can help them by signing their petition online, or joining them on Facebook.

22 September - East Sussex County Council will sit down on the 8th of October and consider whether to build a new road between Bexhill and Hastings. The road would ruin nearby Combe Haven valley - and we need your help to stop it [editor's note: link removed].

The council wants to build the £96 million road to encourage more car-dependant development: more houses and offices designed around private cars. It also wants to help more people to drive to existing industrial estates.

Local campaigners have asked us to help them secure a public inquiry for the scheme. They hope that an inquiry will give them the opportunity to discuss the problems with the scheme in public. They're writing to the Government Office of the South East, who can recomend an inquiry, and desperately need more people to write.

You can use our website to contact GOSE [editor's note: link removed] and make the case for an inquiry. We've even provided a template letter [editor's note: link removed] which explains why the road is such a bad idea. We haven't got much time, so even a short letter would help.

Fighting a road scheme? Don't miss our exciting campaigners' conference on the 25th of October, with George Monbiot as a special guest speaker.

11 September: I've been following the build-up to the Aberdeen bypass inquiry with increasing amazement. It's a textbook example of decision makers trying to force a road through without any proper debate.

The Scottish Government has instructed the inspector that the inquiry can debate "technical and environmental" aspects of the road all day long, but is forbidden from discussing whether a road is even needed in the first place.

The local group, Road Sense, tried to challenge the decision, but the inquiry inspector rejected their claims, because it would have increased the cost of the inquiry too much. Given that the road is predicted to cost between £295 and £395 million, you might think a few extra pounds spent debating whether Abdereen even needs a new road might have been well spent.

29 August: I’m always being asked what the alternatives to road building are. People look at their town centre, blighted by congestion and traffic, and imagine a nice clean bypass moving all that traffic somewhere else. Surely that’s the solution, they say. If only it were that simple!

Unfortunately, every time you build a road, more traffic gets generated, because people find it so much easier to drive that they stop using their bikes and hop back in their cars. That’s why Campaign for Better Transport thinks that the solution lies with providing people with alternatives, so they have some real travel choices.

Crazily, someone has probably already thought of a great alternative, but can’t persuade the council to adopt it. That’s because the way the Government decides between two different transport options tends to be biased towards road schemes. It makes re-opening a train station or getting a new tram scheme much harder than it should be - even though last week I showed just how expensive the roads programme had become.

16 July: I'm incredibly disappointed by the Government’s decision to postpone the 2p fuel duty rise. It would have cost drivers about £25 a year, but the money raised could have revolutionised our public transport network.

The problem isn't so much the cost – an RAC report last week showed motoring has dropped 18% in 20 years – it's what the money gets spent on. The Government should have promised to invest it in public transport to give us real travel choices, allaying people's fears of it being squandered on MPs’ second homes and John Lewis lists.

10 July: Today I found myself in a strange position: arguing against the planned car tax hikes. Green taxes should persuade people to change their behaviour, not just penalise them for a decision they've already made.

These planned taxes are problematic because they charge people for a decision they made up to seven years ago. We should be encouraging drivers to buy the cleanest car they can, and providing alternatives for people so they can give up their cars altogether. The latest car tax plans do neither.

If I were in charge, I'd make clear that car taxes would rise sharply but predictably - and I'd invest all the money in improving public transport and boosting walking and cycling. The public needs to know that green taxes are either changing behaviour or funding alternatives - or they'll lose faith in the 'polluter pays' principle altogether.

9 July: After the long-awaited revelation from the Department for Transport of its latest cost estimates for the local roads programme - up 56%! - I've been speaking to local campaigners, and finding more examples of massive overspend.

Take the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road, which started life as a fairly affordable (if unnecessary) £47.1 million back in December 2004. A few years later, and it has risen to £89.25 million - and increase of almost 90%. I spoke to local campaigner Derrick Coffee, who told me that the cost of the road had increased even further, and was now £96m.

"We sat down and calculated that for less than 10% of the cost of the road, Hastings could be provided with two major 'Greenway' pedestrian/cycle links, a real time bus information system, and a new railway station at Glyne Gap," he said. I know what I'd rather have...

Meanwhile the Weymouth Relief Road should win an award for fastest cost increase. Last Monday, when the DfT put out the latest figures, it was estimated to cost £79.6 million (up from £54 million), but when I spoke to Dave Peacock today, I learnt that since the last estimate, it's risen again - up to £89.7 million!

Meanwhile the Corby Relief Road - up 211% since it first entered the roads programme - is still on the books. When it was first proposed, Corby was the largest town in Europe not to have a railway station, but with a new station opening this year, perhaps the need for a new road has diminished somewhat. Especially one that is now three times more expensive than first thought...

7 July: After almost a year of constant pestering, we've finally convinced the Department for Transport to reveal that their local road schemes will cost a staggering 56% more than originally expected.

My predecessor, Rebecca, was promised that this information would be published back in August 2007, but it's only just slipping out now. Some of the overspend is quite shocking - the Corby Link Road is over 210% more expensive than first thought, increasing from £12m to £39.5m.

But the prize for greatest increase in price goes to the New Mersey Gateway, a road bridge which has increased from £209m to £390m - an increase of £181 million, or three times more than the Government spends each year propping up essential but unprofitable rural buses.

Although these are the craziest hikes, there's plenty of other schemes which have shot up in price. You can peruse the local road schemes programme on the DfT's website (pdf), and read more about it in today's Guardian article.

23 June: Last week I met up with Jenny, a campaigner from the White Horse Alliance, who is trying to stop an unnecessary bypass around Westbury. Their public inquiry has just started, and the group is working hard to stop the bypass getting the green light.

The Alliance is part of an amazingly successful coalition of local groups who have fought long and hard to protect their local environment from unnecessary road schemes. By working together they've managed to defeat the Wellow Bypass at the New Forest, the Salisbury Bypass scheme, the Harnham Relief Road, the Wylye Valley and the Codford-Heytesbury road schemes - not bad going!

Even getting the inquiry was a struggle - the first date was set at the convenience of the Council, but none of the Alliance's experts could attend. Thankfully their lawyers, Earth Rights Solicitors, managed to persuade the Government's Treasury Solicitors to move the dat.

Jenny told me that the Council likes the sound of sustainable development - but has gotten a little confused about just what "sustainable" means. According to their planning officer, the bypass is "moving us to a lower carbon economy" - a claim hotly contested by the group's climate change expert, John Whitelegg.

Rebecca, my predecessor, worked really closely with the Alliance, helping them raise money and advising them throughout their campaign. Let's hope their hard work pays off, and the scheme is rejected.

The Alliance has set up a blog so you can keep up to date with the public inquiry. If you want to help them, you can donate via their website.

11 June: Throughout the fuel protest, motorists have complained that high fuel prices are forcing them out of their cars. I'm not so sure that's true, but even if it is, isn't the solution to make public transport cheaper, not cutting the cost of fuel?

According to the International Energy Association (quoted in the Daily Telegraph), fuel sales in the UK have fallen 20% in the last 12 months and drivers have begun using public transport or cycling more instead of driving. I'm sceptical, because on my cycle to work I still pass a lot of cars sitting in traffic.

It seems clear that despite a small minority of drivers who won't ever leave their cars behind, most of us only drive because it’s cheaper or easier than going by bus or train. As the cost of driving rises it often becomes easier to make the switch to public transport. Of course, this all depends on there being a bus or train which can take you where you want to go – and for many people outside cities, that’s still a long way off.

So what can be done to help people leave their cars at home? Well, there are easier ways than just pricing motorists off the road. We could start by making public transport cheaper – and pouring money into new services to help rural communities break their car dependency. Most people are prepared to change, but need a little help to do so.

Maybe we need a serious public transport lobby group to rival the various motoring groups? I'd love a lobby group that screams blue murder about costs while all the time their favourite mode of transport gets cheaper every year...