Wales sets four tests for future road building projects
Nearly all road-building projects in Wales have been delayed, changed or scrapped. The announcement, which “puts climate change at the heart of decision-making”, follows publication of the independent expert group’s Roads Review Panel and the Welsh Government’s National Transport Delivery Plan.
It confirms the fate of 59 road-building schemes that have been on hold since June 2021 when the Welsh Government announced that they would all be reviewed to see if they still represented value for money and met climate change targets.
Deputy Climate Change Minister Lee Waters told the Senedd, “We will not get to Net Zero unless we stop doing the same thing over and over.
“When we published the Wales Transport Strategy two years ago, we committed to start upon a llwybr newydd - a new path.
“The publication of this Roads Review, along with the National Transport Delivery Plan, and our new Roads Policy Statement, represents a major step forward on that journey.
“Let me be very clear at the outset, we will still invest in roads. In fact, we are building new roads as I speak - but we are raising the bar for where new roads are the right response to transport problems.
“We are also investing in real alternatives, including investment in rail, bus, walking and cycling projects.
“Of course, doing that in an age of austerity is very challenging. The UK Government is slashing our capital investment budgets. Even if we’d wanted to keep progressing all the road schemes in the pipeline we just do not have the money to do so. Our capital budget will be 8% lower next year in real terms as a result of the UK Government’s failure to invest in infrastructure.
“With fewer resources it becomes even more important to prioritise and the Roads Review helps us to do that.”
The independent roads review was led by transport consultant Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, presented its findings to Welsh Government in September 2022 and were made public today.
The findings come with some key recommendations from the panel, including four new road building tests, by which the Welsh Government will consider future road investment only for projects that:
Reduce carbon emissions and support a shift to public transport, walking and cycling
Improve safety through small-scale change
Help the Welsh Government adapt to the impacts of climate change
Provide connections to jobs and areas of economic activity in a way that maximises the use of public transport, walking and cycling
In developing schemes, the focus should be on minimising carbon emissions, not increasing road capacity, not increasing emissions through higher vehicle speeds and not adversely affecting ecologically valuable sites.
The Deputy Minister continued, “Our approach for the last 70 years is not working. As the review points out the by-pass that was demanded to relieve congestion often ends up leading to extra traffic, which in time brings further demands for extra lanes, wider junctions and more roads.
“Round and round we go, emitting more and more carbon as we do it and we will not get to Net Zero unless we stop doing the same thing over and over. In this decade Wales has to make greater cuts in emissions than we have in the whole of the last three decades combined - that’s what the science says we need to do if we are to future-proof Wales.
“If we are to declare a Climate and Nature Emergency, legislate to protect the Well-being of Future Generations, and put into law a requirement to reach NetZero by 2050 - we simply have to be prepared to follow through.
A number of the 59 projects have been classed as local authority schemes or economic development schemes and will be considered in future transport grant funding rounds, subject to meeting the future road building tests and commitments in the Well-being of Future Generations Act.