Wales’ emergency stop on new road building

7 things the new Welsh Government roads inquiry needs to tackle

The announcement by the Welsh Government that it will freeze all new road building schemes pending a wider review in light of the climate emergency is hugely significant and welcome. Welsh ministers have stopped short of an outright ban, something which environmental NGOs like Friends of the Earth and Wales’ future generations commissioner Sophie Howe have strongly advocated. But deputy climate change minister Lee Waters has committed the government to an inquiry that will look at how spending can shift away from building new roads and towards maintaining the roads we already have. Crucially, the inquiry will also be tasked with looking at new tests to determine whether individual road schemes should get the green light.

The announcement signals the end of a pro-road building orthodoxy that has dominated public policy in Wales for decades. Despite study after study proving the opposite, the conventional political wisdom has been that increasing road capacity is the way to ease congestion. But it doesn’t work: create new roads and you create new traffic.

Details of the inquiry are yet to emerge, but the task ahead is a big one with a number of key challenges that need tackling.

1. Business. There are important implications for the private sector that need to be looked at. The construction and logistics sectors need to be involved, and there’s an important conversation to be had about how we re-prioritise infrastructure spending to tackle the climate crisis. And that needs to be more than de-carbonisation. How can we involve the private sector more in efforts to adapt existing infrastructure and put in place the new infrastructure we will need to cope with rising sea levels, in-land flooding, and hotter, more erratic weather?
2. Nature. The climate crisis is the most real and present danger facing Wales and we have just a decade to deliver change. But our planet is in the middle of a nature emergency too with record levels of species and habitat loss. Road building and pollution are big contributory factors. Calls for a National Nature Service, a pro-jobs nature recovery plan should be put into action. But the inquiry should also look at how averting further species and habitat loss can be baked into the new roads ‘test’.
3. Economics. Traditionally the viability of new road schemes has been based on a skewed set of considerations that favour and over-egg traditional notions of economic growth, and down-play or ignore wider social and environmental concerns. It’s time to test new schemes against true costs. At Sustrans, working with the Future Generations Commissioners we helped Welsh Government revise how it tests new schemes. The inquiry needs to build on this work and align decision-making and delivery much more closely with the Well-being of Future Generations Act.
4. Road pricing. With decisions in the past rarely made with true costs factored in, the public has been paying a hidden subsidy for road building. It’s time to look at how we finance future road building and maintenance based on the ‘polluter pays principle’. Road pricing can be an import tool to both manage demand and raise much needed money.
5. Public engagement. Across Wales, rural towns and villages are blighted by congestion and through traffic and to many a bypass will seem like the obvious solution. But more bypasses will only create further car dependency, harming the high street and ultimately posing a greater threat to the viability of Welsh towns. Those towns suffering from traffic blight need further support.
6. Equalities. Transport spending, like other areas of public spending, can have intended and unintended consequences on poverty and inequality. Road building disproportionately favours those who have access to a car. But a quarter of all Welsh households don’t have access to a car, and road building can entrench existing gender, race, disability and socio-economic inequalities. This is an important opportunity to reverse this trend.
7. Viable alternatives to the car. Measures to reduce motor traffic demand must come hand-in-hand with efforts to make public transport, walking and cycling more accessible and easier for people. Welsh Government has already made great progress in this area and that pace of change must continue.

Whilst the road ahead will no doubt be politically bumpy, Welsh Government is right in its efforts to get to grips with the problem now. Failing to act is to delay the inevitable.