Roads hit list issued

Environmental campaign group Alarm UK has become one of the first organisations to address the Government's roads review.

Its programme includes a number of alternatives to proposed road structures.

Alarm believes that the most environmentally damaging schemes are the Salisbury Bypass, the Hastings, Bexhil and Pevensey Bypasses, the M4 Relief Road, the Hereford Bypass, the M74 Extension in Glasgow and the Birmingham Northern Relief Road.

In the case of the Salisbury bypass, Alarm suggests a demand management solution whereby freight traffic is transferred onto the A34/M4 and a parallel rail corridor.

For the Birmingham Northern Relief Road the alternative suggestion is that freight is piggybacked on the West Coast Main Line. Lorry trailers could be carried on railway wagons on the West Coast Main Line taking lorries directly off the M6, say Alarm.

The environmentalists also suggest new plans for some of the more destructive among the surviving 13 road schemes that do not form part of the government review. The œ350 million M11 Link Road in east London is most prominent among this group.

Alarm argues that the M11 could be shelved given that so little has been achieved toward completion and "the road is the most destructive in the country." The traffic generating capacity of the new road is also cited as a reason for aborting the scheme.

Although the contracts have been awarded, the fact that the M11 is being built in sections means that the one part (contract 1) nearing completion could be left as "a stand alone" road. Alarm suggests that the remainder of the funding not required could be used to pay compensation and toward the support of local regeneration and rail improvements.