Why should we build more roads?

There are a number of important reasons to build new roads and widen existing ones.

1. Road safety. Highly congested roads have very poor safety records, which lead to accidents, injuries and deaths, as well as all the economic costs that each accident brings. Motorways are our safest roads, yet the government is afraid to build them nowadays since they seem to have become an environmental "dirty word".
2. Improving local communities. Towns and villages which have primary routes running through their high streets become unpleasant places to live, work and shop. Building bypasses alleviates hard-pressed communities, significantly improving air quality, pollution and quality of life.
3. Reducing pollution. Vehicles that are moving at a free flowing speed cause significantly less pollution than vehicles stuck in a traffic jam moving very slowly.
4. Economic development. An efficient transport system is essential for a prosperous economy. It is estimated that congestion currently costs British commerce and industry £20 billion a year. Many business leaders, such as Rod Eddington of British Airways, have expressed concern that, without major improvements to transport infrastructure, much investment is likely to go elsewhere.
5. Journey time reductions. For every minute that people are stuck in congestion, there is a cost to the economy. Businesses lose a significant amount productivity due to employees being stuck in traffic jams.

When all this is considered, the case for expanding the road network should be obvious.

But we're already building too many roads!

That is simply not the case. The UK's road building programme is one of the smallest in Europe. Countries like Germany, France, Spain and Italy all have significantly larger road building schemes, and yet they are not "covered in tarmac", and neither do they have headline-grabbing anti-roads groups attempting to disrupt their progress.

What new roads do we need then?

See our Road Projects section for more information.