Some fear that curbing road-building will put the brakes on the economy
Last month the Welsh government accepted an expert panel’s recommendation that this scheme and 30 other road projects be shelved. The projects have fallen foul of a climate-friendly, car-hostile transport policy introduced in 2021, plus a lack of cash. Ministers want car mileage per person in 2030 to be 10% lower than in 2019, and journeys shifted to “sustainable modes”—trains, buses, bikes and walking. A shift to electric vehicles will help, the panel says, but will not be enough.
. Andrew Davies, the Conservative leader in the Senedd, or Welsh Parliament, says ministers have “put a ‘closed for business’ sign on Offa’s Dyke”. It’s not as if the transport system is fit for the 21st century already, he adds. Even some Labour politicians are vexed by the chopping of schemes in the north-east, around Wrexham and on theThe economic case for more tarmac is not always robust: the panel pointed out that the expected benefits of some proposed schemes fell short of their costs.
That is a big if. The Welsh government has plans to boost the alternatives to cars. It intends to oversee closer integration, from tickets to timetables, of different forms of public transport—which is lacking all over Britain. Buses on demand have been deployed in some areas.
Lord Burns’s remit includes the Menai Strait, where a new but greener crossing may yet happen. Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh-nationalist party, who represents Anglesey in the Senedd, says he anyway preferred a “simpler” option: adding a two-lane structure next to the Britannia Bridge, which would provide cycle lanes and walkways.
A more robust link to the mainland might be valuable for a proposed freeport near Holyhead, at the former home of Anglesey Aluminium, which closed for good in 2013, and for a putative modular nuclear reactor at Wylfa, where an atomic power station shut in 2015. The island could do with investment: a poultry factory employing more than 700 is to close. The point of the third crossing isn’t relieving congestion, says Mr ap Iorwerth. “It’s about resilience. We don’t want to be isolated.
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