Say no to £5bn M25 widening

The Department for Transport has just confirmed that the Highways Agency will push ahead with a £5 billion road-widening scheme of the M25 rather than a greener scheme to use the hard shoulder. See The Guardian article here.

Environmental campaigners said the DfT had not done enough research on the cost-effectiveness of hard-shoulder running on the M25. Converting hard shoulders for traffic use costs between £5m and £15m a mile, while widening a 63-mile stretch of the 118-mile M25 will cost £79m a mile. Amazingly one proposed motorway widening project is set to cost £1,000 per inch!

The excellent campaigning group Campaign for Better Transport said: "The more the government expands the main road network and generates traffic on it, the more surrounding roads will jam up. The biggest argument in favour of hard-shoulder running is that it manages the traffic much more carefully."

Please use this form here to write to the Secretary of State for Transport, Ruth Kelly, and ask her to include the M25 in the feasibility study and seriously consider ATM as an alternative to widening.