UK adds just 65 miles of motorway in 10 years

29 comments

1. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Are we at peak motorway coverage?

2. What this does ignore is that we’ve built a fair amount of dual carriageways that most people would consider a motorway, it’s just not up to motorway specification.

3. Highways England have spent most of their time introducing smart motorways only to have to build back in safety areas shortly afterwards.

4. If this had happened over a period of mass infrastructure projects in new national railways, new cycle lanes everywhere, trams, metros, mass public transport investment outside of London – then it would be more forgiveable

   But that’s not what happened, we haven’t been constructing new motorways **nor** new railways, metros or public transport (well we did put bus fares up from £2 to £3, that’s a change of sorts) – state infrastructure spending in the UK is permanently hamstrung by penny pinching Scrooge’s in the Treasury who think the way to growth is by not investing in anything

   China on the other hand built ~27,000 miles of high speed rail in the last 20 years, pretty much from scratch – luckily for them they don’t have HMT “policy experts” advising. In contrast the UK has 67 miles (HS1), and HS2 is “on track” to being probably the most expensive railway in history, when it is eventually completed.

5. we’re pretty well covered to be honest. other than a motorway crossing the pennines to connect manchester and sheffield i can;’t think of any routes that aren’t already there

6. Fuck motorways, we need a restoration of lost rail

7. Because they’ve been busy building and rebuilding the m621 outside Leeds for shits and giggles since 2016

8. Our government doesn’t have money for new motorways but have enough money to pay landlords to subsidize rent of underpaid workers (aka Housing benefit) or to provide free housing for illegal migrants coming by boats without identity documents 🤔

9. They should dig out the plans they had for the M31 that was going to connect the M4 with the M25 at J10 with the A3 and cutting across the M3 at Bagshot/Lightwater (J3 of the M3). They did make a start of it when they built the motorway which now the A329(M), but that stopped at Bracknell and was then abandoned. I wonder if if was because the motorway would have had to cross Crown Estate south of Ascot / Windsor.

10. so?

    The more worrying thing is the lack of public transport investment.

    we need better busses, better and more local trains, metro lines and cycle lanes.

11. Does that include additional dual carriageway or widening of existing motorway?

12. Don’t see the issue, I love nothing more than sitting on an A road for hours on end because of a lane closure (British sarcasm, sorry)

13. I know potholes that are far way older than that. They did build a bike path though, that’s something I guess

14. Can we just improve what we have? Near me in Cheltenham, its north junction is only one way which causes a lot of traffic having to drive through bits of town to get to the southern 2 way junction. To be fair there is a plan to sort this out, but it’s been going near 5 years and is still in planning g and approval stages. Sorting this type of thing would be of more benefit than more tarmac (in many places not all obvs)

15. Need to put some more effort in public transportation and active travel quite honestly. More roads isn’t going to magically solve our problems.

16. Curious how much we have done post Brexit considering a lot of EU money is given on transport – especially roads.

17. Under the Tories, seeing as they’ve had the most effect on the time in question, what was actually invested in? Road? Rail? Busses? Biking? Walking?

    Anything?

18. I think they should focus on roads that don’t need extensive courses in evasive driving to navigate

19. You want to be

    • removing choke points
    • widening existing routes
    • removing poor drivers/driving habits (re-testing every 10 years)
    • adding capacity for diversions when closures are required

20. What did you expect with austerity? You cut public funding, you have no roads, no healthcare, no schools. It’s 101.

21. Are all of those 65 miles of motorway just the Smart Motorway downgrades in the northern half of the M1?

22. Almost like the Conservatives weren’t investing any tax money in things we actually needed and instead funnelling it to their mates.

23. Thats because we are too busy pretending to be Americans driving suvs around so we had to spend more time widening the roads instead

24. It’s taken over 10 years of partial closures to add one lane to half a mile of the A1.

    Imagine how much motorway could have been added if there were ever actually poeple working on these sites when you go past them.

25. Not building enough new roads.
    Not building enough new railways.
    What are we doing?

26. It’s not that Britain isn’t building new motorways, we are building roads with a similar standard to motorways, we just won’t call them motorways. Examples of this are the: A14 Huntingdon, A417 Missing Link, A11 Dualling scheme, A421 Black Cat, A465 Heads of the Valleys & A122 Lower Thames Crossing schemes.

27. I’d settle for dual lane for the A1. Main road up the east of the country shouldn’t be switching to single lane in places. If there’s an accident (which happens frequently) the diversion can be lengthy. I’m sure there was one a few months ago where a truck crashed on the diversion so the diversion had a diversion. Bloody stupid. The only alternative roads north are pretty windy!l and go through villages.

    Having the roads across to Cumbria/the M6 being entirely dual would be nice as well. The A69 and the A66. The A66 shuts a bunch in snowy weather too.

28. That’s ok, pretty much everyone on Reddit from around London thinks motorways should just be replaced with cycle lanes anyways.

29. We could do with the M6 toll Being nationalised and a western orbital link being built between M42 /M5 link and upto the M6 link with the toll road.

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