Roads and Bypasses

New roads aren’t always a bad thing – bypasses have protected the rural character and tranquillity of many villages, but, they have also led to infill development in many others.

So, before we build a new road, let’s make certain we’re really solving the problem, and not just generating more traffic and encouraging urban sprawl along the route.

Most transport professionals now agree that road-building is no more than a short-term answer to traffic congestion and that we have to provide high quality public transport systems which will achieve modal shift. The government has admitted in both of the last two Transport White Papers that 'predict and provide' is not sustainable as far as road-building is concerned and equally the public have come to realise the scale of direct and indirect environmental impacts which new roads such as the Newbury Bypass cause.

Yet similarly damaging schemes are still being contemplated for Cheshire right now.

Let’s make sure that, before a new road ploughs through green fields, we know that all the other options have been considered.

Let’s improve public transport, help local shops to thrive, and make it easier for people to live closer to their work, so we’re not as reliant on our cars.

And if we do have to build the road after all, let’s make that there is a robust economic case for it, that it has been subjected to a full strategic environmental assessment, that it is a last resort and that its planning and routing causes the least possible damage to the countryside.