Fears over future road evaluation

The roads programme could be cut further under new Highways Agency guidance on how to evaluate road schemes, according to a report published by Transport 2000 this week.

The report coincides with Transport Secretary Brian Mawhinney making the first of a series of speeches which will open up the debate he called for last December on the future of roads.

The new Highways Agency guidance - Guidance on Induced Traffic - is aimed at preventing the development of any road schemes that create extra traffic. It comes in response to research on trunk roads last December which concluded that roads can generate traffic.

Under the new guidance, five out of six major road schemes would fail to make the grade, according to Transport 2000's analysis, compiled by transport consultant Metropolitan Transport Research Unit.

Roads affected by the new guidance include city bypasses, urban radial links, major link improvements, including motorway widening or schemes which effectively form a major link. 'These will all be assumed to induce extra traffic. This must inevitably mean far lower Cost Benefit Analysis values, rarely justifying the environmental damage or the economic cost,' says the report.

Transport planner Keith Buchan, who worked on the report, said that of six road schemes he had assessed under the new guidance, five 'would have been seriously affected and it seems doubtful if they should have been in the Government programme.'

But the British Roads Federation condemned the report as 'wishful thinking' but contractors showed more concern. 'Mawhinney says he wants a debate on the future of roads but this guidance would indicate that the Government has already made its mind up on where roads are going - which is precisely nowhere,' said one leading roads contractor.

Mawhinney's speech to the CBI in London this week gave no reassurances. He said that the debate must 'look at whether our current actions and assumptions (concerning roads) are in the economic interests of our country, of companies and of individuals. Our aim is sustainable development.'

n Mawhinney's office was raided last week by burglars who gained access via scaffolding erected around the DoT offices. The DoT said the raid was a professional burglary to steal computer parts and not the work of road activists. The department said an overnight lock-up policy had prevented the theft of any sensitive documents.

But Tony Collins of Computer Weekly confirmed that information kept in the machines could have been retrieved.

More than 100 PCs were ransacked, including those in the offices of Mawhinney himself, and transport ministers Steven Norris and John Watts.