Trebles all round! The Outer M25 is back

Anyone who has watched roads lobby dinosaurs placidly munching on their trunk road contracts even as Comet Climate Change approaches the Earth will not have been surprised by the Government’s decision to approve the destructive Lower Thames Crossing

The road will add £9 billion to the country’s pointless debt mountain, investment which could have been used for acutely needed sustainable transport. But no, the Department for Transport, ever the runaway muck-shifting truck careering down the hill towards climate disaster, was always going to barge it through.

That may have involved getting rid of an unsympathetic transport secretary on some bogus bit of popular press freakery, it may have involved completely ignoring cheaper and much more sustainable public transport alternatives and it may have involved lying to the increasingly desperate team at the Treasury that mere injection of cash into the UK construction industry, even building destructive white elephants, will appear on its toddler-toy plastic dashboard as “growth”.

That growth is set to be traffic, congestion, accidents and greenhouse gas emissions over a huge area, but don’t worry about that – here’s a prize beyond price for senior petrolheads at the DfT that they and their predecessors have lusted after for decades.

An Outer M25.

We all know the problems of the inner M25, daily proof of “induced demand” – the inevitable result of big increases in road capacity being a big increase in vehicle mileage. Build it and they will come, in their millions.

But what’s the solution at Dinosaurs for Traffic? Build an another one.

Long have they lusted after a route between the East Midlands radial routes like the A1 and M1, the M4 and M3 corridors (knitting the “logistics corridor” together) and the port of Southampton. And, while we’re about it, a link between Felixstowe and the Midlands which could justify their investment starvation of this vital rail link. Or a link from all of those to the Channel Tunnel – AKA the Lower Thames Crossing.

Other bits of it already exist or are under construction. The new A428 between the A1 and M11, is likely to become, once again part of an “Oxford-Cambridge Expressway” scheme which, linked to A34 improvements, could form a new motorway link between Cambridge and Newbury. There is pressure to revive the Ipswich Northern By-pass. And so it goes on. Go look at the map; you can be sure senior DfT people are.

I was interested to see there are plans to trim the Civil Service down a bit (don’t hold your breath). But they could do no worse than begin at the top and look at those who, when some rotten idea finally hits political reality, just quietly file it away until they can get some more gullible ministers round the table.

And while I’ve been writing this, Comet Climate Change has edged a bit closer.

Jon Reeds