ROADS TO CONTAIN CONGESTION - DRIVING INTO THE FUTURE

Is the escalating congestion problem congestion on UK roads impossible to solve? Apparently not. In fact, according to a study by independent consultants Halcrow, the Government would need to increase the total land taken by roads by less than 3% in order to avoid worse congestion on motorways and trunk roads by 2031. Only an extra 0.05% of land area would be needed for these road improvements.

In the report, an overall 46% increase in road traffic by 2031 is broken down by Government Office Region and compared with the capacity of today's trunk roads. From this, an estimate is made of the extra trunk road capacity required to accommodate this additional traffic. This gives an indication of the sort of expansion that would be needed to match trunk road capacity to traffic growth over the next three decades.



The additional capacity required is estimated to be the equivalent of about seven hundred and fifty kilometres of new dual three lane Motorways and a similar length of new trunk roads. This is equivalent to a 25% expansion of the existing Motorway network. In practice, much of the additional Motorway capacity would be provided by expanding roads in existing corridors.



Where open construction would be damaging to the local environment, it is proposed that roads should be put in tunnels. However, these are more costly than open construction, ranging from £30m to £100m per kilometre for twin two lane tunnels and from £50m to £160m for twin three lane tunnels. Different construction methods have been examin...