Better Transport

Campaign for Better Transport slammed the call issued today [20 October] by the Drivers' Alliance and the TaxPayers' Alliance for cuts in rail spending and for more roads [1]. Stephen Joseph, the organisation's executive director, said:

"Cutting railways back would be the worst possible way of helping motorists. Without railways, many of our cities would grind to a halt and there would be many more juggernauts. And all the evidence is that road building projects are incredibly expensive and lead to more traffic. This is a recipe for more congestion, casualties and pollution." 
 
Notes to editors
[1] Their analysis ignores or omits many important points including:

• Rail spending is high at present because of historic underinvestment, which is now slowly being put right
• Road costs include several not mentioned here, including the costs of casualties, pollution and policing, as well as the cost of congestion itself. On these figures, road users are undertaxed rather than overtaxed
• Road building is now extremely expensive. A £1.2bn cut in rail spending would buy just 21 miles of new road (the A14 scheme east of Huntingdon)
• Road building is now widely accepted as an ineffective way of solving congestion and indeed sometimes generate extra traffic so as to wipe out time savings