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Prime Minister announces plans for a £15bn ‘Road Revolution’

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a £15 billion plan to revamp Britain’s roads. He announced the 5 year plan to improve our roads in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry at their annual conference in London on Monday.

The Prime Minister has described the plan as ‘nothing less than a roads revolution’ which will lead to ‘quicker journey times, more jobs, and businesses boosted right across the country’. He plans to improve over 100 of the UK’s busiest roads and motorways, which will include adding extra lanes and trunk roads to some of the busiest motorways.

Here are some of the roads which will be affected if the plan comes into play:

• The A1 around Newcastle, including North of the city and the Newcastle-Gateshead western bypass
• The A303 to the South-West
• Roads across the Pennines
• The plan would also potentially see a tunnel built underneath Stonehenge

He called it the Government’s first-ever long term ‘roads investment strategy’ for the UK.

If it goes ahead, this plan will be the biggest road-building programme for almost 50 years. The investment will take place between 2015-16 and 2020-21

The plan was approved by many, with the president of the AA saying that it made ‘perfect sense’ to upgrade the UK’s roads ‘to help the UK economy by improving journey times for people and businesses’.

However the plan did also receive some hostility. Chris Todd from the Campaign for Better Transport said the plans would ‘trash protected areas and do nothing for the economy’. He went on to state that ‘These schemes will make people more dependent than ever on their cars, place greater costs on the NHS, while failing to tackle problems like the massive backlog of pot holes blighting local roads.’