Government announce road investment plans

Government announce road investment plans

In what they are calling the largest investment made in British roads for 50 years, Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, unveiled budgets for the Department for Transport (DfT) yesterday.

The investment, to take place over the next decade, comes from plans by the government to spend up to £300 billion on the country's infrastructure. Of that pot of money, £28 billion is going towards the improvement of roads around the UK, with the DfT having it's budget increased to £9.5 billion over the next couple of years alone.

This money will go towards widening roads, resurfacing highways, as well as other projects and work that urgently needs doing to parts of the UK road network. Included in this is an upgrade to the A14 in East Anglia, and the building of a bridge supporting six motorway lanes over the river Mersey in the north-west.

Many are saying that the investment in our roads is needed sooner rather than later, and that work is needed over the next couple of years rather than the next decade. The £28 billion budget includes the capital to resurface over 21,000 miles of roads and highways, and many are insisting that this should be done sooner rather than later. The chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport, Stephen Joseph, has been one of the most vocal. He has been expressing concerns that money set aside for road network improvement will be ploughed into new road construction rather than the maintenance of local streets and highways, saying that it will "...condemn us to poorly maintained roads..." and an "...increasingly potholed network".

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