Better Transport

31 August: Councils across the UK are discussing toll roads as a way of delivering unaffordable bypasses, but our report on the M6 Toll shows that toll roads are all cost and no benefit.

Earlier this year I blogged that the number of people using the M6 Toll was in steep decline, suggesting that toll roads weren't a viable alternative for cash-strapped politicians trying to get roads built. But it gets worse. Since then I've discovered that the M6 Toll has failed to make any significant cuts in congestion on the M6.

You can read what we found in our latest report, but here's a precis. The M6 Toll isn't attractive enough so not enough people are using it. This means congestion on the M6 is fast approaching the level it was before the toll opened. Plus there's considerably more traffic on either side of the toll, causing even more delays.

What's really interesting is that the toll isn't profitable, despite there being no restrictions on how much they can charge. Midland Expressway Ltd, which owns and operates the toll, lost £26 million last year, despite putting the toll charge up to £5 (when the road opened, it cost just £2). And drivers are getting a raw deal too: outside of the rush hour, taking the toll road only saves 10 minutes.

I'm worried that politicians with unaffordable road schemes – like the Kingskerswell Bypass – will heed the Government's advice and try to build their road scheme with private money. Not only would be get the environmental destruction which goes hand in hand with road building, but we'll be stuck in traffic jams with costly toll roads sitting empty.

23 August: The Daily Telegraph has discovered that local councils across the UK are considering workplace parking levies. With so little money around, they'd be mad not to.

A quick recap: since 2000 local councils have had the option of introducing a workplace parking levy on businesses which provide free or very cheap parking for their staff. The council then spends the money on improvements to public transport in their area.

So far, only Nottingham has introduced a WPL, which will raise money for a massive extention to their tram network. The cost? £250 a year from 2012, rising to £350 from 2014. Businesses with fewer than 11 spaces are exempt.

There are two really good things about the WPL programme. The first is obvious: the council needs to put forward the right scheme for their area, because otherwise they'll get voted out at the next election. That's how Nottingham City Council got their parking levy - by persuading people it was the right thing for Nottingham.

Secondly, in the midst of a recession where every service is at risk of being cut, parking levies generate a new, ring-fenced revenue stream to fund otherwise unaffordable improvements. Want a better bus? A better tram? In 2010, the only way you'll get it is to find the money yourself, because central Government doesn't have anything left in its piggy bank.

What this should do is spark is a debate about what sort of transport people want, and how they want to fund it. Councils should be considering parking levies, even if only to dismiss them, because there are so few funding options.

In many cases, it will be workplace parking levy or no public transport improvements for years to come. If so, councils have a duty to explain that to their constituents, and let them decide whether the best thing for their area is to have improved public transport or a small number of businesses providing free parking to their staff.

9 August: The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has been working up some scenarios for life in 2050. Their vision of transport is crippled by a startling lack of imagination.

If someone asked you to imagine life forty years into the future, what would it look like? According to DECC, it's basically the same as it it today, only a little bit greener. So most of us get into our cars and drive to work, only this time some of the cars are electric. Even their most radical scenario assumes we'll be travelling 25% further in 2050, albeit by public transport.

Personally, I just don't buy that. In the last forty years travel patterns have been transformed by the internet, low-cost airlines, mass car ownership and globalisation. Without wanting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld, there are some things we can confidently predict, and there will be unknown unknowns we can't foresee.

Here's what we do know: energy prices will rise, making travel more expensive. Technology will do away with a good proportion of trips, probably long-distance business trips, as teleconferencing because normalised. We'll have more home-grown produce and manufacturing, because the cost of transporting food around will outweigh the savings from using foreign labour.

Development over the past forty years assumed mass car use, but high oil prices and the need to avoid climate change is likely to see communities developed around walking and cycling, not motorways and A roads. Ironically, it's likely that we'll spend lots of time and money reopening the post offices and GPs surgeries which we just closed.

Anyway, this is just a long-winded way of saying that the future is likely to be rather different from what life is like now. Not too different though... after all, look what happened when we asked people what life would be like in the 21st century...

04 August: There should be a public inquiry into the Postwick Interchange, the first stage in the Norwich Northern Distributor Road (NDR), but it's been deferred indefinitely. No inquiry, no road, so is this the end of the NDR?

This is a complicated one, so hold on why I try to explain. Norfolk County Council want to build a ring road around Norwich, and the NDR would be the north-eastern section. To make this possible, they arranged all their housing in the Joint Core Strategy (JCS) so that it could only be delivered if they got their road. 

The council were so cocky, they refused to consider any other options, confidently telling the JCS inspector that there was "no plan B". The last Government wanted lots of houses, so it went along with this farce, giving the NDR the nod-through in December.

The council left nothing to chance. It split off the first bit of the road, called the Postwick Interchange, and wove that into an application for a business park under the guise of an access road. They applied for planning permission to the District Council, who approved it earlier this year. It looked like nothing could stop this tarmac turkey.

But one hurdle remained: planning permission for new slip roads linking the Postwick Hub to the A47. We, along with local people and other national NGOs, objected to the slip roads, on the grounds that what the council was doing was crooked and denied local people any say in the process.

Then a letter came from central Government. They'd decided to hold an inquiry into the slip road, but had decided to defer it for the forseeable future, because of the spending review. In other words, there was no point in having an inquiry, because the road wasn't going to get built.

This is great news for local campaigners, and for the people of Norwich, who are no longer forced to accept this steady drip-feed of asphalt. It's not so good for the council, who - when they finally accept defeat, some time in 3010 - will have to re-do their whole plan for the city.

Maybe this time they'll leave some space for sustainable transport instead of gambling everything on their road being built.

27 July - Councils have developed an obsession with replacing failed road schemes with privately-funded tolled roads. Let's hope this love affair is swift and fleeting.

The basic story goes like this: a council, desperate to build a road but unlikely to get public funding, starts thinking up new ways to raise the cash. They quickly alight on private funding, paid back through road tolls. Out goes the press release, and everyone gets to hear how hard they're working to deliver the project.

But back in the real world, toll roads don't work, because most people would rather sit in traffic than pay extra to use a toll road. Traffic on the M6 Toll has fallen 9% compared with the same quarter in its opening year, and 23% at weekends. It's probably the only road scheme to discourage traffic!

None of this matters if the road were cutting congestion around Birmingham. Unfortunately, it's had almost no impact, as the Highways Agency's own study shows. One year after opening, weekday traffic on the M6 fell between 8% and 13% compared with the year before; hardly the congestion-buster it was made out to be.

Peak-time traffic impacts were even worse. Traffic only fell between 4% and 7% in the AM peak; evening traffic actually rose 3% at one junction. Meanwhile traffic on the M6 before and after the toll road rose 6-7% in the week, and a staggering 13% to 21% in peak times. The Highways Agency attributed this rise in traffic to more people using the M6 because of the toll road.

The M6 Toll shows clearly that toll roads don't cut congestion. They're not a solution to traffic jams, no matter how much councillors might want them to be.

19 July: Yesterday traffic on the German Autobahn was brought to a halt by a massive street party, attended by 3 million people. Why can't we do things like that?

Under the heading of 'Still Life', 40 miles of the A40 between Duisburg and Dortmund were closed to motor traffic. Instead, millions of people walked, cycled and danced along the highway.

The Government-organised event was part of the celebrations of the Ruhr being European Culture Capital 2010. It was so popular that at one point they had to close the road to cyclists, because of traffic jams.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, we're still obsessed with building roads, not dancing on them. The closest we come to mass street parties is London's Skyride, which gives over a portion of London's roads to cyclists for a few hours. Not really the same, is it?

15 July: After years of hard work by the No Way! group, the Shrewsbury Relief Road has bitten the dust - for a decade, anyway.

The £102 million road, which would have carved its way through the Shropshire countryside and encouraged infill development on greenfield land, was put on hold in May pending the results of the spending review. Now councillors accepted that the road has "not a snowball's chance in hell" of getting built, and have pulled the plug.

Instead of the costly road, they're looking at cheaper ways to solve the problem. As No Way! have pointed out, 65% of people in Shrewsbury want the council to focus on public transport, walking and cycling.

Of course some councillors haven't given up hope - they're talking about bringing the road back in 2020 - but by then we'll be living with the effects of climate change, and road building will be totally out of style.

The No Way! group, whose lengthy fight to protect Shrewsbury and the surrounding countryside from this terrible road has reaped such rewards, should be first in line for our thanks. But the council also deserves praise for being honest with the public about the scheme's chance of success, and open-minded enough to look at alternatives.

If more councils - like Norfolk, Tameside or Wiltshire - were this magnanimous, we'd be well on our way to having a sustainable transport network in the UK, rather than a collection of traffic jams and a bus which only comes once a week.

9 July: Norfolk County Council has cut £10 million from its budget, decimating public services. Why not cut the Norwich Northern Distributor Road instead?

At the end of last year, the Government caved in and gave the NDR programme entry. Well, sort of - much to the county's dismay, they approved a shorter, cheaper version of the road. But the county still has to find £40 million - £23 million for the shorter road, and a further £17m to build their preferred, longer version.

In March, they announced that they'd found and ringfenced the money. But four months later they've cut £23 million from the county's budget, postponing around 30 public transport and road safety projects and halving a grant aimed at getting people back to work.

Norfolk is banking on the road bringing new businesses to Norwich, bringing in additional revenue and allowing them to recoup the £40 million. But it's a massive gamble, because the road is unlikely to survive the spending review.

It's time councillors accepted that the road isn't going ahead, and used the money they've saved to protect essential services. Otherwise, come election time, they may find themselves in need of the very unemployment services they cancelled for their vanity road scheme.

5 July: Ever since the recession hit, think tanks have been falling over themselves to persuade us to privatise the road network. It's not the panacea they think it is.

On paper it sounds great: DfT logs onto eBay and puts several million lane miles of motorway and A road up for sale. One bidding war later and they've several million to spend on the A14, A453 and dualling the A1 north of Newcastle.

Unfortunately there's a major flaw - the need for a revenue stream. Roads have no intrinsic value, other than the land itself (which you can only get at if you dig up the M1). So central Government has to pay the new owner so we can use the roads. What do the think tanks suggest?

The RAC Foundation's latest salvo, the snappily-titled Governing and Paying for England's Roads, proposed slashing VED and fuel duty, building lots more roads and creating a roads regulator to ensure motorists got value for money. Oh, and a little thing called road pricing.

If its goal was to make road user charging acceptable, it's a resounding failure: just 46% of the public could be persuaded to give their support. To put things into perspective, that's significantly fewer people than support the death penalty.

The reason why road user charging is so unpopular is no secret: many people feel that they have no option but to drive. Whether they do is almost beside the point, because what's important is how people feel. If people think they have to drive, then they'll get very cross if the Government proposes charging them for what they regard as the privilege of getting to work.

What the RAC Foundation has failed to grasp is that people want choices, not charges. They think you can buy public support by building more roads. But as the AA's motorists' survey found, about two-thirds of drivers want more money spent on public transport, and just 41% of drivers want more bypasses and relief roads.

Road user charging might have some benefits. It might be appealing to Ministers looking to avoid massive cuts in public spending. It might even be sound economics. But it's political suicide, and will remain so until the public are able to choose how they get about and can see that the money raised will be invested in real improvements that cut congestion and carbon.

18 June: Yesterday the Treasury confirmed that the A14 Ellington to Fen Ditton - Britain's most expensive road scheme - was suspended pending a spending review in the Autumn.

In a nutshell, the A14 is £1.3 billion for 21 miles of road between Cambridge and Huntingdon. The road is part of the Trans-European Network, so it's chock-full of lorries trundling from Felixstowe to the Midlands and beyond. These lorries cause congestion and where collisions occur they take longer to clear up.

But what the Highways Agency is proposing isn't going to do anything about lorries. Nor will it cut congestion in anything other than the extreme short-term, because journey times in future will be slower than they were when the scheme was first suggested.*

If there was one scheme in the roads programme which typified the problem with how we plan for transport, the A14 is it. It's an over-designed and over-budget scheme which just stores problems up for the future. It doesn't belong in a modern transport programme. And we couldn't afford it even if it did.

Self-appointed, self-interested business leaders will tell you otherwise, of course. In fact, they already are. But these are the same people demanding massive cuts in public spending, while refusing to pay any more taxes to cover the infrastructure they insist must go ahead.

Instead of suspending the A14, the Government should cancel it, and start looking at cheaper, greener options. Why wait until Autumn?

* If you don't believe me, have a look at table 5.1 of the Cambridge to Huntingdon Multi Modal Study, which shows that journeys in 2016 will take longer than in 2000, even after the road is built.

8 June: In less than a fortnight the coalition's first Budget will outline how little money remains for transport projects. We've worked out how each region would fare if budgets are cut by 10%, 25% and 50%.

Regardless of how much money is left, each region will face some tough choices. What is immediately clear is that schemes over £100 million are going to be really hard to justify, because spending so much on one scheme means cancelling a number of others.

The total value of all the schemes under review is £5.2 billion. There was originally £5.8 billion available over the next five years, but £2.1 billion is allocated to projects which have already started.

Even if there are no cuts, regions will have to cancel several schemes, because DfT asked them to 'over-programme' by 20% (i.e. to include 20% more schemes than there was money for). If there are cuts of 25% this translates into cuts of £3 billion, leaving just £2.2 billion.

The impact varies from region to region. The north west is hardest hit, with £965 million worth of uncommitted schemes and just £380 million available to spend. If this is cut by 10%, the region has just £291 million to spend and would have to cut two thirds of schemes. A cut of 25% means just £156 million, making expensive schemes, like the £90 million Mottram Bypass and the £133 million Heysham M6 completely unaffordable.

The east midlands has the most money available, with £458 million worth of uncommitted schemes and a budget of £437 million. Its most expensive uncommitted scheme, the A453 widening, was recently delayed indefinitely by the Government, leaving more money for other schemes. A 10% cut would leave £367 million, and even a 50% cut would leave £85 million.

Full breakdowns of each region's spending profiles are below.

• The national picture
• East Midlands RFA
• East of England RFA
• North East RFA
• North West RFA
• South East RFA 
• South West RFA
• West Midlands RFA
• Yorkshire and the Humber RFA

27 May: The roads programme's been slashed in the first round of cuts: a portent of good tidings to come, or just coincidence?

Monday's announcement has taken a while to percolate through, but now we know some of the impacts. The A453, A43 Corby Link Road and the A23 Handcross to Warninglid have all been postponed, and we know that there's a comprehensive review of transport projects lurking on the horizon.

But what we don't know is whether these schemes were cut for being too expensive - A453 congestion could be better reduced by improving the adjacent railway line than by widening the road, for example - or whether they just happened to be the easiest schemes to cut.

What the coalition needs is a solid framework on which to assess options properly. The current appraisal methodology only tells them whether something is good 'value for money' or not (and even then it's biased towards big road schemes because the Government gets to count extra fuel duty as a benefit). What it can't tell them is what the best way to spend the transport budget would be.

It's vital that we get such a system in place. While it's great to see these road schemes 'parked', we need to see that there is a plan at work, and we need to know that good schemes - like smaller, high-value projects which cut travel demand, or like lifeline rural buses - will be spared the brunt of cuts to come.

Otherwise these roads will just be resurrected a few years down the line, no doubt rebranded as integrated transport strategies or whatever the latest buzz word happens to be...

17 May: The National Audit Office has announced plans to investigate last year's supremely expensive M25 widening deal. Pity it's too late to stop it.

Widening the M25 is a fool's errand, because it has an annoying tendency to just fill up with (mostly local) traffic. But last year, the Government finally signed a contract with 'Connect Plus' to widen two sections: J16 to J23 and J27 to J30.

The cost? A mere £6.2b, for which we also get some potholes filled in and the renovation of a tunnel on the A1(M). That might not sound like much, but to understand just how bad a deal it was, cast your mind back a couple of years.

The contract was once envisaged as costing £1.3b, but by 2006 this had risen to £4.5 billion. For that, Connect Plus were expected to widen four sections, increasing road space by 101km. By 2008 the cost had risen to £5b, then £5.5b. Meanwhile two of the sections were abandoned after the Highways Agency adopted our recomendation to use hard-shoulder running.

The dire economic climate made banks reluctant to lend, which pushed the cost of the deal ever higher. By the time it was signed, we were only getting 40km of new road space, but paying almost £2 billion more than first expected. What a bargain!

14 May: The new Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond, has announced an end to the 'war on motorists'. I didn't realise it had begun.

If the media is to be believed, motorists are one of the most persecuted groups struggling for a place within our Big Society (alongside hard working families). But their campaigns bely the fact that motoring continues to get cheaper, while public transport fares are rising well above the rate of inflation.

Don't take my word for it though: ask former Transport Minister Sadiq Khan. He told Parliament on 5 February 2010 that: "Between 1997 and 2009 the real cost of motoring, including the purchase of a vehicle, declined by 14 per cent., bus and coach fares increased by 24 per cent. and rail fares increased by 13 per cent. in real terms."

So while public transport users have to put up with above-inflation fare rises, car drivers are enjoying ever cheaper motoring. Politicians starting phoney wars... Wag the Dog, anyone?

12 May: We don't yet know who the new Secretary of State for Transport is going to be, but we do know that their first priority must be to rethink the A14 public inquiry.

On 20 July the public inquiry into the A14 is supposed to begin. It's a farce really: local parishes, district and county councils are all being asked to shell out on lawyers, consultants and staff time preparing their cases for a road scheme which is totally unaffordable.That really isn't on.

With smaller, less expensive schemes, you can see the merits of undergoing an inquiry, so that the merits of the scheme can be considered. But the A14 is so expensive that building it means cancelling tens of other projects. It isn't good economic sense to concentrate limited funds in one area when traffic problems across the country are crying out for intervention.

The Government should cancel the public inquiry; or at the very least, broaden it to include a full multi-modal appraisal. Either way, we need a decision from the new Secretary of State. Local people, whose lives would be shattered if this road went ahead, deserve that much at least.

6 May: Parliamentary candidates don't often mention transport, except to promise schemes they know can't be afforded. The electorate deserves better.

As usual, transport has played a minor role in the general election, being regarded as a primarily local matter. Although each of the main parties has made broad-brush statements about promoting public transport, introducing high-speed rail and tackling congestion, they've mostly refrained from promising too much because they know that big cuts are lurking on the horizon.

Not so their candidates. While there was a refreshing honesty in Shrewsbury, with candidates being up front about the North-West Relief Road being unaffordable (and doing nothing to cut congestion), the general trend is for people wanting to be MPs to make rash promises to deliver major schemes.

Take Reading East, where the Labour, Tory and Lib Dem candidates seem to be locked into an arms race, each claiming to have been campaigning for a new road bridge for longer than the others (top prize to the Lib Dems, with a stonking 80 year battle). Tory MP Rob Wilson even described the bridge - which has no funding or planning permission - as "one of the major things for the next Conservative government to get on with." Never mind the economy, then.

Or Tameside, where the three candidates want to build a bypass around Mottram. The Highways Agency's efforts fell apart last year, after finally admitting that they couldn't prove the case for the scheme at the much-delayed public inquiry, so it's safe to say that this road isn't going anywhere.

Then there's senior Lib Dems ignoring their own policy to promise the dualling of the A1, A11 and the A30, and the Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Adonis, appearing in photoshoots with Jim Knight, MP for Weymouth, next to the awful relief road which was only built to shore up his sliver of a majority.

Focusing on these big schemes is doubly dangerous. Firstly, candidates haven't assessed whether these roads are the right solution; they're just saying what they think people want to hear. Secondly, it focuses attention onto big infrastructure, when most of us would rather the Government fixed the roads we've got before it started building new ones, especially as finances are going to be very tight over the coming years.

So let's call an end to pork-barrel politics. It's time for MPs and candidates to be honest with the electorate. An election in which prospective MPs didn't promise things they can't deliver? Now that's a change I could believe in.

29 April: Whoever wins next week's election will have to make big cuts in transport spending. So why are MPs and prospective candidates making promises they can't keep?

Last week I wrote about how prospective candidates in Shropshire were being honest about the Shrewsbury North-West Relief Road, telling voters that it was undesirable and unaffordable. Sadly this isn't the case around the rest of the country.

Asked about plans to dual the A11 between Fiveways and Thetford, candidates for the three main parties fell over themselves in their eagerness to promise that it would be done. Lord Adonis told the Eastern Daily Press that he'd take it forward ASAP - despite not knowing whether the scheme will get planning permission and having no idea how he'd afford it.

At least Adonis was keeping to his party's transport policy (he did, after all, write a fair bit of it). Several high-profile Liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten that their policy is to slash the roads budget by 90% and fund rail instead. Nick Clegg promised to dual both the A11 and the A1, and Vince Cable wants voters to think he'll dual the A30.

Transport is important, and candidates should stop playing favourites and promising things they know can't be afforded. Voters deserve honesty, not this tri-partisan tissue of lies.

26 April: With major cuts in transport spending on the horizon, the next Government must resist the urge to slash spending on road maintenance while there are unaffordable road schemes we could do without.

Today's Financial Times suggested that the path to slashing the deficit lay, in part, in halving the roads maintenance budget. MPs and civil servants tend to regard filling in potholes as optional, while new infrastructure is depicted as essential to reviving the economy. This isn't the right approach - and it's not popular with the public.

Road building is very capital intensive: i.e. it involves lots of machines, land and materials, with minimal employment. Repairing potholes, on the other hand, involves paying lots of people to, well, fill in potholes. Road maintenance employs more people, per £ million spent, than road building, because you're spending less on capital and more on people.

Secondly, the economic benefits of road building are uncertain at best. The Highways Agency found that claimed benefits for widening trunk roads were "generally not accurate", and tended to be lower than predicted. Even then, they're relying on millions of tiny time savings - often of ten seconds or so - which no one even notices, much less values.

To make matters worse, road building concentrates money in one place, while maintenance spreads it around. The A14 widening - £1.3 billion and rising - is more than twice as expensive as the Highways Agency's maintenance budget for a whole year. Cancelling that means we could afford to fix some of the potholes caused by the extremely cold winter. What's better for the country: employing thousands of people across England, or a few people in Cambridgeshire?

The AA - hardly a radical environmental group - recently asked its members to rank 13 different 'election pledges', including spending on public transport, road maintenance, road widening and new roads and bypasses. 68% supported fixing potholes, 67% spending on public transport, and less than half wanted money spent widening (46%) or building new roads (41%).

So the message to Government is clear: ignore the pet projects and outdated road schemes, and spend what little money we have fixing the roads we've already got.

23 April: The one thing Parliamentary candidates in Shropshire can agree on is that the Shrewsbury Relief Road won't solve Shrewsbury's traffic problems. So why is Shropshire Council still pushing it?

The BBC asked the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates if they supported the road. The Conservatives said there was no money; the Lib Dems preferred a busway and Labour wanted an integrated public transport network (although they also wanted the road, even though they think most people wouldn't benefit from it).

So none of the candidates think the road will solve congestion or help people get to work, but the council still wants to waste £102 million building it. Do they know something we don't, or could it be that councils get so attached to particular solutions that they don't realise it's time to quit?

April 12: A new report by John Major's favourite think tank has suggested introducing road user charging but giving everyone a share in the profits. But what's the point?

The Social Market Foundation's report, Roads to Recovery (.pdf), argues that the aggregate impact of lots of individual rational decisions (like leaving the office on the dot of five to be home as early as possible) produces irrational results (everyone trying to get home at the same time and causing gridlock in the process).

As a solution to this 'tragedy of the commons', the SMF proposes replacing VED with a toll on major roads. But because road user charging is unpopular, we'd all get a share, worth around £1,500.

Their proposals might make road user charging more acceptable. But in their rush to make the unpalatable palatable, the SMF has forgotten the reason we all jump in our cars: development based around cars and not enough viable alternatives.

Their system of mutualisation removes the best argument for charging people to drive: a reliable revenue stream which could fund better public transport improvements.

People drive because the services they need are in the wrong place, and because Government - local and national - spends too much on road building and not enough on public transport, walking and cycling.

Implimented properly, road user charging could be a means to achieve this, but it's not an end in itself.

9 April: This morning on the Today programme, David Cameron talked about the Conservative Party’s plans for a network of new toll roads. But the UK's only major toll road - the M6 Toll - has angered drivers and environmentalists alike and - unsurprisingly - failed to cut congestion.

The M6 Toll was first mooted back in 1980, but never really got anywhere, partly because it was prohibitively expensive. By 1989 it was proposed as a PFI scheme funded by future tolls, and construction started in 2002.

It all went downhill from there. Original daily traffic forecasts of 74,000 never materialised, as drivers baulked at paying a premium, opting instead to take the slower, more congested (but free) M6. The Highways Agency's one year after study showed that just 50,000 vehicles a day were using the road, with a minimal impact on congestion on the M6.

By 2008 traffic on the toll road was in steady decline; the first quarter of 2009 was 10% lower than the first three months of 2008, which was 10% lower than the same time the year before. Traffic is now averaging around 39,000 vehicles a day - half of the 74,000 first envisaged.

Congestion in Birmingham? It's worse than ever.

8 April: Birmingham City Council's plan to subsidise the expansion of Birmingham International Airport (BIA) by paying to move a trunk road looks unlawful.

The council has been particularly vocal in promoting airport expansion - far more so than the airport. BIA have expressed doubts about the merits of expanding when fewer people are flying, but the city council has urged them to hurry up, despite vocal objections from local people about noise, climate change and air quality impacts.

They're offering to subsidise the expansion by paying to move the A45, which is in the middle of the land they want to turn into a new runway. This was to have been paid for by Advantage West Midlands, but they've run into financial difficulties.

Now lawyers have pointed out that giving £16 million to a private company is not the sort of thing councils should be doing, because it's basically a massive bung. Could this road scheme - and the airport expansion which relies upon it - be sent back to the drawing board?

6 April: Last Thursday, buying a really polluting car got a bit more expensive, whilst the greenest cars became tax-free. It's a step in the right direction, but is it enough to change people's buying habits?

There are certain moments in each of our lives which dictate our travel patterns for years to come. Moving house is an obvious one. If in the first few days you find out about shops in walking distance then your car travel will fall; if your first few trips are by car then you'll probably keep driving even after discovering that the bus takes half the time.

Choosing a new car is another opportunity for your carbon footprint (or at least, the travel bit of it) to change dramatically. Going from an old banger to a new, small engined runabout will cut your fuel bills and CO2 emissions, whereas splashing out on a large 4x4 or 'executive' car could easily double your transport's impact on the environment.

The Government hopes that their new 'showroom' tax will persuade people to drive greener cars. It's a nice idea, but I'm not convinced it will work. New cars aren't cheap, and the tax on the most polluting cars - the AA suggests a £35,000 Nissan Murano 3.5V6 CVT as an example - is only £950, or 3% of the value of the Nissan. Greener cars - anything up to band D - pay no tax at all for the first year, but I can't see that persuading many people to buy one instead of a larger car.

For taxes like this to work, they need to be much steeper, and ringfenced for improving sustainable transport. If you want to drive a really polluting car, then you'd be free to do so, but the rest of us would get cheaper train fares out of it. 

1 April: It’s too easy to fixate on fantastical solutions to everyday problems, as our April Fool’s Day joke suggested.

What's not so funny is that the joke is based upon real proposals that have been given serious consideration.  Not least of these is the Transport Select Committee's proposal this week to dual every last inch of trunk road.

We can’t build our way out of congestion.  Instead, we need to invest in small-scale, high-value schemes, and embrace community design that reduces our need to travel, not locks us into car dependency.

1 April: Its time to be honest: decision makers spent too much time kowtowing to DfT guidelines and not enough time pursuing the schemes of their dreams. Today, we're launching our PET Projects: high-tech, innovative schemes we want politicians to take to their hearts.

We've all seen it before: ashen-faced MPs in the local papers, saying they’d love to give us a bypass but can't because a coalition of troublemakers has insisted our money should be spent on cycle paths or walking buses.

And sure as rabbits lay eggs, someone will produce a study to show that bypasses increase traffic. What rubbish! Anyone could tell you bypasses reduce traffic (or at least, shunt it somewhere else, which is the same thing).

Well we've had enough. It's time for MPs to start promoting the Campaign for Bigger Transport's PET Projects. These are really exciting schemes which need to be built straight away; ideally without a public inquiry or interference from commie judges.

We don't need measured consideration of the potential options, or any wishy-washy environmental impact assessments. We need monorails, and motorways, and bypasses. And tarmac. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs, and you can't regenerate the economy without lots and lots of tarmac. Just get on with it!

30 March: The Transport Select Committee has finished its inquiry into motorways and trunk roads, and concluded that better planning would do more to tackle congestion than another massive road building programme.

Although the Committee's report does not call for the end of the roads programme altogether (and was never going to, given that some of the Committee's members are huge proponents of road building) it sensibly recognises that demand management is a much better way to tackle congestion. As we showed in our report last year, we can't view major roads in isolation, because 85% of congestion is in urban areas.

Instead, the MPs concluded that making better use of the roads we have, with money spent fixing potholes instead of on a major programme of road building, was the best option. They also recommended making sure that new developments are centred around public transport and have essential services - shops, jobs, schools, hospitals - within walking and cycling distance

22 May: A committee of MPs has called for major changes to transport to improve air quality, with a crackdown on traffic and a push for cleaner vehicles.

In recent times transport policy has focused on averting climate change: a threat which is, to many people, somewhat abstract and far away. But while we're all counting our carbon, a more mundane killer is claiming the lives of more people than road traffic collisions, smoking or obesity.

Each year, 50,000 people die from respiratory and other illnesses linked to poor air quality, according to today's report (.pdf) by the Environmental Audit Committee. Transport is a major player, emitting around a third of nitrogen dioxide emissions and a fifth of PM10 particulates.

The Committee found that London had seriously dangerous levels of pollutants, with up to 5,000 people people dying every year. London is already in trouble with the EU for breaching their strict limits on air pollution, and air quality is predicted to worsen if Boris Johnson removes the congestion charge's Western extension.

Committee Chairman Tim Yeo commented that "Pollution from road vehicles causes the most damage to health and we must generate the political will for a dramatic shift in transport policy if air quality is to be improved."

Would it be remiss to suggest the Government could always scrap the A14 and invest its £1.3 billion costs improving air quality and saving lives?

15 March: The Confederation of British Industry has published a report outlining its strategy for cutting congestion. There's some interesting ideas, but most of their solutions focus on clearing everyone out of the way while they drive ever further.

Unlike most transport commentators, the CBI should be applauded for speaking to IT companies about how new technology will change the way we travel. But their report (pdf) is too dismissive of modal shift and behavioural change strategies. There's plenty of evidence to show that these programmes are really effective. Amusingly, the CBI report ends up calling for a number of 'smarter choices' measures, like car pooling, teleconferencing and flexible working. Mainstreaming 'smarter choices' is clearly essential to tackling congestion, so why is the CBI so dismissive of these vital programmes?

The answer comes from the CBI's choice of solutions, which focus on clearing unimportant trips out of the way of important business people. Hence the suggestion of yellow school buses, which would certainly cut some congestion, but reads like an effort to clear the school kids out of the way of more important business travel. If businesses want congestion cut, then they should lead by example.

They also call for the Government to improve 'pinch points', a quasi-mythical construction which road builders think is holding back the natural flow of traffic. But as the Highways Agency's 'post-opening project evaluations' have shown, removing one pinch point just creates another a few miles further down the road.

85% of congestion is in urban areas, and no one is seriously suggesting bulldozing towns and cities to make way for more road building. Even if there were pinch points on trunk roads and motorways, removing them would just shift traffic to the really congested urban areas that little bit faster.

If the CBI was really concerened about relieving congestion, it would focus on reducing traffic in urban areas. The only way to do this is to give people alternatives to car use, and to reduce the need to travel through intelligent planning - two topics the CBI's report is all but silent on.

26 February: Our report on regional transport wish-lists found that south west England was obsessed with building roads instead of improving public transport. Now an influential committee of MPs has agreed.

The South-West Regional Select Committee conducted a wide-ranging examination of transport priorities across the south west. They found that while regional policies were mostly pro-public transport, local councils preferred to ignore all that and pursue their pet road projects.

The result? People in rural areas had pitiful bus services and were forced to drive everywhere, while congestion increased and CO2 emissions rose ever higher. Hardly the sort of sustainable transport network that people tell us they really want.

Thankfully there is a solution: cancel the pointless bypass schemes, like the Kingskerswell Bypass, and invest in sustainable, affordable transport. Improving the London to Exeter line, to reduce congestion on the A303, would be a start. Come on south west: what are you waiting for?

19 February: We've long argued that the models on which transport investement decisions are made are faulty. Now a major study by the Department for Transport has agreed.

I know: it's Friday, and transport modeling is about the last thing you want to read about. But it's vital that transport professionals use accurate models, because they form the basis for all their decisions. Bus scheme or road? Tram or cycling? The model will tell you.

Earlier this year we published a report which showed that the Highways Agency's forecasting was totally innacurate. We said then that the Government needed to stop spending so much on road building until it could show that the models were accurate: i.e. that the impact on local people would be as predicted.

Now Denville Coombe, a well respected consultant, has produced his report for DfT, which found that just one in four regional and sub-regional models could predict the impact of highway schemes and one in seven for public transport!

Hardly a reliable basis for spending billions of pounds, is it? You can read Coombe's report online (be warned, it's pretty techie!).

15 February: We've written to Lord Adonis, warning him that preventing a public inquiry into the Postwick Hub - phase one of the Norwich Northern Distributor Road - is likely to be unlawful.

Norfolk County Council is the highways authority for Norfolk, so they're responsible for granting planning permission for road schemes. So people in Norwich were very surprised when Norfolk asked Broadland District Council for permission to build the Postwick Hub.

The Hub, you see, is a major road scheme, complete with overbridge, major roundabouts and access to the A47 trunk road. But Norfolk dressed it up as an access road to a nearby business park.

Broadland approved the road... but it's not a highways authority, so it has no powers to grant planning permission. But then the Highways Agency published orders on Norfolk's behalf. Norfolk is fighting hard to prevent an inquiry, even though there is a presumption in law that an inquiry should take place.

As you can see, it's a complicated mess (and this is the condensed version!). That's why we, along with CPRE and CTC, the national cyclists' organisation, have written to Lord Adonis asking him to call the whole thing in for an inquiry.

Hopefully an independent inspector will be able to work out what's going on, because Norfolk doesn't seem to have a clue...

4 February: We keep telling the Government that building new roads will make it harder to reduce CO2. Well guess what: yesterday they admitted that we are going to miss our 2010 targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

The plan had been to cut CO2 by 20% from 1990 levels, getting a headstart on the much bigger cuts we'll need to make to avoid climate change. By the end of 2008 we'd only managed 10% cuts.

One of the main problems is that while emissions from some sectors - such as business and energy - have been declining, CO2 from road transport has risen 7% since 1990 (pdf). Even though cars and vans getting greener, CO2 is rising because we're all driving further.

This is the problem with the Government's transport strategy: they keep hoping that cars will become green enough to make up for the extra distance we're having to travel. Unfortunately this isn't going to happen any time soon (and even if it did, what about all the traffic, noise and road casualties?).

It's time to stop spending so much money on road building and start investing in more sustainable alternatives, like the affordable measures we outlined in our manifesto: Improving Everyday Transport.

3 February: Earlier this year hundreds of you objected to the £1.3 billion A14 Ellington to Fen Ditton. Now the Highways Agency has announced that there will be an public inquiry where everyone can argue their case.

This announcement wasn't really a surprise, given the number and scale of objections. But the Government has been increasingly reluctant to call road and housing schemes in so the proposals can be properly examined. This means that poorly considered schemes often sneak through because many councils simply refuse to consider proper alternatives to damaging road building.

Thankfully your objection helped us secure an inquiry into this terrible and costly scheme. We'll be fighting to make sure this inquiry sees off the Agency's disastrous plans.

18 January: We've unearthed loads of reports by the Highways Agency which prove road building is poor value for money and doesn't solve people's transport problems.

We often hear from road builders that the case for road building is rock solid. But a number of reports, commissioned by the Highways Agency, show that people who build roads cannot predict what will happen once the tarmac is poured.

We've taken the four most recent 'post-opening project evaluation' reports, where the Highways Agency has looked at a road which they built five years ago, to compare their forecasts to what actually occurred. They show that the Agency underestimated the negative impacts – such as the volume of traffic, or CO2 emissions – and over-estimated the positive impacts.

In many cases, rather than solving the problem, the bypasses we looked at just moved traffic from once place to another. So while one community had fewer vehicles travelling through it (although still had more traffic than was predicted) another one a few miles away was faced with gridlock.

Times are tough, and the Department for Transport has warned councils that big cuts will have to be made. Our report shows that road building is a costly gamble, and in this economic climate, one we can't afford to make.

11 January: Norfolk County Council is trying to get planning permission for the first stage of a major road by pretending its a small change to a minor junction.

The Postwick Hub Interchange might sound like something executives propose in 'blue sky' brainstorms, but it's the first stage in the Norwich Northern Distributor Road. If Norfolk is succesful, it would make it harder to stop the NNDR.

Although the Government has agreed in principle to fund the NNDR, there are going to be big budget cuts over the next few years. It's highly likely that the scheme will get cut, because it's hard to see how a ring-road around north-east Norwich could be a regional priority.

We think that the Hub and the NNDR shouldn't be considered seperately, which is why we've objected to Norfolk's application for planning permission. Even the Department for Transport agrees that there's no point building such an over-designed junction if - as looks likely - there's no major road to connect it to.

4 January: The Highways Agency is planning to spend £1.3 billion widening the A14, and wants your opinion. If you agree with us that sustainable transport would be a better investment, you have just two more days to let them know.

The plans would see a major new road carving through the Cambridgeshire countryside, with substantial road building on the surrounding roads. Not only would it massively increase CO2 emissions and traffic levels, but even after building the road it would still take longer to drive between Cambridge and Huntingdon than it did ten years ago.

Worse, transport budgets are likely to be cut severly over the next few years. Spending so much on one scheme means others - road, rail and bus, as well as flagship sustainable travel programmes - will have to be cut.

We've just finished our response, and sent it to the Highways Agency. The opportunity to have you say finishes on Wednesday, so you still have enough time to object to these ridiculous proposals.

18 December: The Government has decided to approve the Norwich Northern Distributor Road, whilst preparing to slash the already tiny pot of money which helps get local buses up and running.

Check out my boss's blog for more details, or our recent press release.

23 November: Earlier this year we helped persuade the Government not to give the Westbury Bypass planning permission. But Wiltshire Council won't take no for an answer.

Normally this is the end of the matter, because you can't build a road without planning permission. But the council's performance director, Sharon Britton, thinks otherwise. When council officials meet tomorrow, she plans to tell them that the Government's comprehensive refusal to grant planning permission has merely "put back the implementation of this project".

Thankfully there's no money for the daft road, because it's been reallocated to the vital Swindon-Kemble rail upgrade. We're meeting the Local Transport Minister early next year to discuss ways to improve transport in Westbury without destroying the local environment. In the mean time, perhaps the District Auditor should investigate Wiltshire's determination to waste taxpayers' money on a scheme that cannot legally proceed.

18 November: If the Highways Agency gets its way, that A14 between Ellington and Fen Ditton will become the Fenland motorway. We're doing everything we can to stop Cambridgeshire being condemned to gridlock.

There's just over a month left to respond to the Highway Agency's draft orders, and I'm in the middle of writing my response. The scheme would cost £1.3 billion, which is loads of money, especially when councils have been told that there will be cuts in transport spending. If this scheme gets built, other ones will get the chop.

This wouldn't be too bad if the road decreased CO2 and traffic, but it won't. In the first year the HA thinks it will increase CO2 by 120,000 tonnes. It's also going to increase traffic too; so much so that journeys will still take longer in future, even with the costly road building.

So having poured over pages and pages of technical blurb, I'm left with one searing question: why would anyone want to spend so much when all they're getting is more traffic, congestion and CO2?

9 November: This week the case for the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road will be examined at a public inquiry. Here are three reasons we're working hard to get it rejected.

1. The road would destroy the Combe Haven Valley, a beautiful and treasured green space just outside Bexhill and Hastings. The valley is already designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its biodiversity and wildlife, but the road would pass straight through it. It would also increase carbon dioxide emissions.

2. East Sussex County Council has never really considered whether building a link road is the best way to improve transport on the Sussex coast. Government and regional studies have shown that what Hastings really needs is better train services, including opening a station at Glyne Gap. But if the link road goes ahead there won't be any money to improve rail or bus services for a very long time.

3. There's not enough money to pay for the road. East Sussex was supposed to raise tens of millions of pounds from developers. So far it hasn't raised a penny, so will have to find £20 million in its existing budgets to cover the shortfall. This means that other council services will suffer.

4 November: I've been working with Norfolk residents trying to stop Norfolk County Council (NCC) building a new road through north-east Norwich. The council is so determined that it won't consider whether the road is even needed.

NCC just published plans for development around Norwich, including thousands of new houses. Instead of supporting areas of proposed new employment (like Norwich city centre), Norfolk has concentrated 10,000 new homes in North-East Norwich, right where they want to build the Northern Distributor Road (NDR).

They claim that the housing can't go ahead without the NDR, but they've never considered whether better public transport would fit the bill - or whether building all their homes in an area without decent buses or trains is a good idea.

Even the Department for Transport is unconvinced, and has asked Norfolk to show what other transport options they've considered. The council responded by refusing to build any new homes until the DfT agrees to fund the road. It's such a stitch up!

Next month the local group and I are meeting DfT officials to show them just how dodgy the whole thing is. We have to make sure that they aren't taken in by Norfolk's bluster.

30 October: I've just heard that money once earkmarked for the Westbury Bypass could be spent upgrading rail links between Swindon and Kemble. Sounds sensible to me.

The Westbury Bypass was one of those roads which was just a bad idea: massive landscape impacts, on the wrong side of the town and doing very little about congestion along the A350. So we cheered when the inspectors listened to us and refused it planning permission earlier this year.

But we don't think the South West should lose out on much needed investment. The rail line between Swindon and Kemble is single-track, which slows down journeys because trains can't pass each other freely. Sorting this out should always have been a priority, not building a tarmac turkey right under the iconic white horse of Salisbury Plain.

27 October: Over the next two months, the Department for Transport will be deciding whether to approve the Norwich Northern Distributor Road. We're working hard to make sure that the scheme doesn't get approved.

Norfolk County Council, on the other hand, is still dragging its feet. The Department for Transport has repeatedly asked what other schemes it considered before decided to build the road. NCC is supposed to have done this work several years ago, so showing its working ought to be a simple matter: if, that is, it ever looked at any other options.

Now the council is trying to hurry up the Postwick Hub, which is really the first phase of the distributor road. The Government has said it will fund the Hub if the NDR gets the go-ahead, but warned that this is anything but certain.

Norfolk is piling on the pressure to get the Hub started early, so we wrote to the Minister for Planning, John Healey, asking him not to give in to their demands. We're pretty sure that he'll agree with us that there's no need to rush, especially as DfT will have decided whether to approve the road by the end of the year.

13 October: The Committee on Climate Change's first annual report shows how reducing our carbon footprint will take more than just making cars a bit greener. We have to stop building roads and start investing in public transport.

The CCC looked at our work on regional transport spending and agreed that building new roads makes it harder to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead the committee proposed integrating transport and planning, so that developments are designed around public transport, walking and cycling instead of forcing people to drive.

The committee were really supportive of smarter choices too. Interestingly their report confirmed what we've been saying for some time: no matter what we do, we can't keep driving further and hoping for the best. Total vehicle kilometres will have to fall, even if we're all driving cleaner cars.

So now we know what needs to be done to clean up transport's emissions. It's time for the Government to start making the right choices - and up to us to make sure that they do so.

The committee's report, on its website

9 October: Ministers have decided to fund the Bexhill-Hastings link road. They're ignoring their own studies which show that better rail links are what's really needed.

The road is supposed to attract inward investment, helping to regenerate the area. But local campaigners and even Government studies have shown that building a road is not the best way to achieve this: improving rail links would make Hastings and Bexhill much more attractive.

The scheme has also doubled in cost, from £45 million to just shy of £100 million. Add to that the local authority's failure to secure any developer contributions and you're looking at some very poor financial management. Waving through schemes whose costs have skyrocketed like this when we're supposed to be tightening our collective belt sends a terrible message to councils up and down the country.

Cancelling this scheme and investing in alternatives would have shown that this Government took climate change and the recession seriously; instead they're ducking the difficult decisions and locking in car dependency instead of giving people real choices about how they want to get about.

October 1: Today the Infrastructure Planning Commission opens its doors for business. It looks set to shut down the few opportunities local people have for influencing what gets built near them.

It's not all bad: the National Policy Statements, which are Parliamentary-sanctioned declarations of what the Government wants to see built where, at last mean someone is going to look at our transport networks in the round (rather than just letting it all happen piecemeal).

But amongst other retrograde steps the IPC removes the right of local people to cross-examine witnesses, which we've used to great effect to discover errors and false assumptions in plans to build new roads. Last month a number of our local campaigners and I met with the IPC, and ask them how they planned to deal with situations like the Mottram-Tintwistle Bypass, where the flaws in the Highways Agency's modelling only came to light under examination at a public inquiry.

Of course, only time will tell just how big an impact the new planning regime will have, but it feels to me like the IPC will erode what little trust people have in the planning system. Rather than speeding up the process, it's likely to lead to more protests - like the Archway Inquiry in the 1970s, from which my boss, Stephen Joseph, and many others, were dragged from in protest at its undemocratic nature, and which contributed to the overhaul of the planning system and the introduction of lots of new rights (which the IPC has just taken away).

30 September: Despite being told that there was no money for the Hereford Outer Distributor Road, Herefordshire Council has refused to accept that it won't get built.

Earlier this year the Department for Transport kicked the Hereford Bypass out of the West Midland's transport wish list, agreeing with us that the scheme was neither deliverable nor a particularly good way of meeting the city's transport problems. Officials suggested that Herefordshire Council might like to look at some more sustainable transport interventions instead.

Fast forward several months and you'd be forgiven for expecting that a flurry of new plans would be underway. Instead the council has continued working up its plans for a bypass. They've just published a report looking into various options for the bypass - basically a selection of different routes.

Like many councils, Herefordshire is so wedded to its pet bypass that it's unwilling to even consider other options - even when told that no one will pay for it. It's time the council faced reality, dropped the bypass and started doing something about Hereford's traffic problems instead of wasting taxpayers' money on a pipe dream that will never happen.

28 September: Councillors in Norfolk are threatening to "knock heads together" to get the Department for Transport to build its northern distributor road. Ministers must not give in to these playground antics.

Last summer Norfolk submitted a business case for a new distributor road to the north of Norwich. The road would link the Rackheath eco-town to Norwich International Airport, leading the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP) to describe the £127m road scheme as "an integral part of our plans to improve the local public transport network and reduce reliance on the private car" (!)

Luckily the Department for Transport saw through this, and some time ago demanded that Norfolk explain in more detail which options they looked at before deciding on a road scheme. Councils are supposed to look at all sorts of different options, including non-road ones, and choose whichever best fits their objectives. It's something the county council clearly failed to do, as, several months later, DfT has writen to them yet again asking for their evidence.

Unperturbed, the chairman of the GNDP has decided to send a delegation to London, telling the local paper that he would "knock heads together"and sort out "the pointy heads at the DfT" who are delaying his road.

Now I don't know about you, but I can't see DfT's decision makers being particularly happy about being insulted in the Norfolk press; especially as the only thing holding up the NDR is the county council. The Government's guidance is very clear: councils shouldn't decide to build a road and then twist all the facts to suit, as Norfolk has so clearly done. If the NDR is not built, the blame lies squarely at their door.

8 September: The AA's report shows that congestion on the A14 has been dropping sharply. Can we cancel the widening now?

It's not all good news though: the AA believes that the drop in traffic jams (down 31% between 2006 and 2007, 23% between 2008 and 2007 and a further 22% between 2009 and 2008) was caused by the recession: fewer people driving to work, and a marked decrease in HGVs. Not something to crow about.

But imagine if the Government took this opportunity to lock in more sustainable travel instead of spending £1.2 billion building a new six-lane road. They could invest in better rail freight to take HGVs off the road; make sure new developments have public transport from the get-go and ensure that businesses are doing their bit to help us get to work without our cars.

£1.2 billion isn't chicken feed; if there really is that much money up for grabs (and given the recession, it's doubtful) then it should be invested in sustainable transport, not wasted on the crazy Fenland Motorway.

7 September: Congestion has fallen sharply through the recession, but traffic has only dropped slightly, which shows that small changes can have big impacts.

The AA and Trafficmaster have just published a survey of congestion across the UK. They found that congestion has fallen 31% over two years - enough to unclog even the most notorious of traffic jams. But while congestion is down by a third, traffic has only taken a little dip: according to the Department for Transport, we drove 3.3% fewer miles in the first quarter 2009 than we did back in 2007.

That slight drop in traffic has a big impact because once roads get busy, a few extra vehicles can cause major problems. That's why we're so keen on 'smarter choices' programmes: a few people changing how they travel means we don't have to spend a fortune on damaging and costly road building.

Interestingly the AA rated road works, weather, collisions and the volume of traffic as more important causes of traffic jams than 'pinch points'. Does this mean they'll stop campaigning for wider roads and start lobbying for fewer rain clouds?

31 August: Tomorrow's fuel duty rise won't be popular - unless the Government spends it on public transport.

The latest fuel duty increase isn't much - 2p on a litre which costs an average of £1.05 - but it's raised a lot of hackles. A concerted campaign by the motoring lobby has persuaded people that Britain's motorists are paying too much.

This is pretty far fetched: the cost of motoring has been falling steadily, down 13% since Labour came to power, while the cost of other modes has risen sharply: buses are 17% more expensive and trains 7% in real terms.

If we want people to drive less then we have to reverse this trend. It's right that motoring taxes go up, but we have to give people real alternatives. It's no good charging drivers if there's no other way of getting around.

Investing in public transport is popular, affordable and, crucially, sustainable. It's time the Government showed it was serious about tackling congestion and climate change, and allocated a portion of motoring taxes for public transport.

29 July: Campaigning against road building can feel like a struggle, so I'm excited that the DfT has kicked 21 schemes off its books.

Fighting roads can make you feel a bit like Sisyphus: just when you think the fight is over the road reappears and you have to start all over again. Consider the Hereford Bypass: defeated at public inquiry in the 1990s, it lay dormant for years before sneaking into the West Midlands RFA.

But last week the Department for Transport threw open its drawers full of rotten schemes and started having a clear out. 21 schemes were sent to the shredder, including the A120 Braintree to Marks Tey (designed to increase the number of lorries using the road), the Melton Mowbray Bypass and the aforementioned Hereford Bypass.

That these schemes were still on the books (and not on the ground) is testament to the hard work and diligence of local campaigners, who asked enough questions (like "what is this scheme for?" and "how much will it really cost?") that the promoters couldn't just wave them through.

Encouragingly, it also shows that the Department is slowly accepting that roads aren't always the solution. Let's hope they keep thinking that way, because there are plenty of other schemes around the place which are equally deserving of fiscal euthanasia.

That list in full:

• A303/A358 South Petherton to M5 Taunton
• A40 Gloucester Bypass

• A509 Isham to Wellingborough Improvement
• Pleasley Bypass
• A6003 Caldecott Bypass
• A617 Glapwell Bypass
• Shirebrook Link
• Melton Mowbray Bypass
• A6 Kibworth Bypass
• Syston Eastern Bypass
• Completion of Lutterworth Western Relief Road
• Wymeswold Bypass
• Sharnford Bypass
• A45 Stanwick-Thrapston Dualling

• A47 Blofeld to North Burlingham
• A120 Braintree to Marks Tey

• A109/A1067 Seaton Burn Junction
• A19/A189 Moor Farm Junction

• Longbridge Link Road
• Stourport Relief Road
• Hereford Outer Distributor Road

24 July: The Transport Select Committee's latest report agreed with us that spending motoring taxes on public transport would help tackle public mistrust about green taxes.

Most people don't mind paying taxes, provided they see some real benefits: better hospitals and schools, or more frequent buses and trains. But the Government has always objected to ringfencing motoring and other green taxes, choosing instead to pour the money into general spending.

But people aren't convinced, which is why we told the committee earlier this year that the Government should spend money it has raised from motoring to give people alternatives to their cars. It's common sense really: if you have to drive to work you'll resent paying taxes for the priviledge, but if you driving pays for other people to take the bus or tram then that's fairer for everyone.

The solution is simple: the Government should be honest with people about how much it's raising from drivers, and make sure that a good portion of that cash goes on public transport to break the cycle of car dependency.

22 July: The Government has just approved billions of pounds worth of transport schemes – the majority new roads – but it is writing cheques it knows can't be cashed.

Last Summer the Department for Transport asked each English region for a wish-list of transport schemes. The regions could have chosen to fund rail, bus, walking, cycling or tram schemes, but overwhelmingly opted for road building projects. To make matters worse, the schemes are mostly a reheated list of out-of-date schemes which won’t solve transport problems and will just increase CO2 emissions.

Since then it has become obvious that big budget cuts will have to be made. But the Government has decided to rubberstamp the lists, even though it knows that there isn't the money to pay for them, so local councils will spend millions on schemes which will never see the light of day. The tough decisions are being delayed until the next spending review, after the election.

This really isn't on; these road schemes should never be built, but the Government should tell councils the truth – that these schemes are terrible value for money and will never get funding – and let them get on with working up alternatives. Instead it is leading them down the garden path, while traffic gets worse and worse and no one does anything about it.

July 22: Over the past week or two local residents opposing the Kingskerswell Bypass have been fighting at public inquiry to stop the road getting planning permission. Here's four reasons not to build it.

1. The road would cost £130 million, which would be better spent improving capacity on the local rail network in Exeter, opening new rail stations at key locations (including in Kingskerswell), installing new public transport links between employment, education and residential areas and increasing the frequency of the Exmouth line service by providing passing loops.

2.  The bypass would increase CO2 emissions in the local area by 18%, as well as encourage more people to drive, increasing traffic on local roads which will just become more congested. That's why 2,000 local people signed a petition against it.

3. There are great alternatives. Fantastic local campaigners engaged consultants Steer Davis Gleave to work up some options, and they came up with a comprehensive package including re-opening Kingkerswell station, promoting walking and cycling and introducing 'tidal lanes'.

4. The 4 lane, 70mph road would send thousands of vehicles within 200m of the historic church and village causing noise, pollution and visual blight, open up Kerswell downs and the green field valleys within Torbay to future development and threaten County wildlife parks, 2 scheduled ancient monuments, a rare and fragile limestone grassland habitat and an historic conservation area.

We won't know the results of the public inquiry for several months, but let's hope the inspector sees sense and rejects this crazy scheme. 

July 15: I've just read the Welsh Transport Strategy, and discovered that the Welsh Assembly has finally stopped plans to build an M4 toll road around Newport.

The scheme trebled in price since 2004, and carried a £1 billion price tag. Local people pointed out that it wouldn't reduce congestion but just encourage people to commute from Newport to Cardiff and Bristol, as well as destroying a uniquely beautiful area called the Gwent Levels.

This is a great victory for the Campaign Against The Levels Motorway who've not just been fighting the scheme, but also putting forward practical proposals to reduce traffic throughout south Wales.

The Assembly must have been listening because it's recommended improving public transport and making best use of existing roads around Newport, which is expected to reduce traffic on the M4 by 11% without the need for expensive road building.

6 July: We asked esteemed transport professor Phil Goodwin to think about how we'd tackle congestion on motorways, and he's discovered that even the most outrageous plans for road widening would still leave us stuck in traffic.

The problem, he found, is not just that widening motorways generates traffic (although that's a serious issue in itself) - it's that most of the congestion is in towns and cities. There's no point in making a motorway wider if the surrounding roads are chock-a-block, because cars will just speed along the motorway and grind to a halt as soon they try and leave.

In fact the only way to speed up trips on the motorways is to tackle all the shorter trips - junction hopping - and to provide alternatives so that people don't feel they have to drive everywhere.

The Government is just launching 14 'corridor studies' which will decide the future of our transport network. We'll be showing them our report, and persuading them that they should be as tough on the causes of congestion as they are on congestion itself.

2 July: We've been fighting the Westbury Bypass for years, and the Government has just rejected its application for planning permission. This shows that is no longer acceptable to force through destructive roads in the face of concerted local opposition.

The case for bypasses is always spurious but Westbury Bypass took the biscuit: it would have put a road just below the famous White Horse of Salisbury Plain, diverting cars and HGVs through open countryside while doing nothing about traffic problems in the area.

At the public inquiry Wiltshire Council had to constantly revise their plans to try and justify the scheme, finally resorting to forcing lorries on a massive detour (because otherwise they wouldn't have bothered using the bypass at all).

But the inspector saw through them and conclusively rejected the bypass, arguing that the landscape impact was too high, and, crucially, that the traffic levels weren't enough to justify it. He also agreed with local campaigners that it would have caused problems for other communities along the A350.

We've never denied that Westbury had some traffic problems, but building a £30 million bypass and destroying the countryside was never an option. This decision should send a shiver down the spines of road builders, because spells the end of roads getting waved through regardless of whether they are needed or how much damage they would do.

25 June: A recent Government report has found that bypasses tend to have way more traffic on them than expected - and cost a lot more too.

After a road is built, the Highways Agency carries out a 'post-opening project evaluation' to check whether its predictions about a road were correct. The agency has just looked at a bunch of these evaluations and found - you guessed it - its predictions were way off:

• In 60% of cases, there was more traffic on the bypass and the old route than had been predicted
• In 40% of cases, there were over 25% more vehicles on the old (bypassed) route than expected

This shouldn't come as a surprise - we've known for years that road building generates traffic - but what's really damning is just how poor the Highways Agency is at working out what the impacts of road building will be.

So why are bypasses still being considered around Shrewsbury, Manchester, Westbury and elsewhere

16 June: I know there's a recession on - and that budgets at all levels of Government are tight - but why is everyone so keen to cut projects to improve urban spaces?

The South West Regional Development Agency - a panel of unelected business interests - has just cut a number of high-profile projects to improve the public realm. Meanwhile they are pushing ahead with a number of terrible road schemes, including the Weymouth Relief Road, Westbury Bypass and Kingskerswell Bypass.

Public realm projects are all about reducing the impact of traffic, planting trees, redesigning high streets to be more pedestrian-friendly and generally making towns and cities nicer places to be.

So why are these projects - which can turn around our struggling high streets, already under threat from out-of-town shopping centres - being cut, while the South West is spending millions on roads that will increase traffic and further the decline of public spaces?

8 June: Councils in Manchester want to scrap their walking, cycling and road safety schemes to fund an assortment of costly and unnecessary road schemes, as we told the Guardian today.

Earlier this year we reported how the Mottram-Tintwistle bypass was rejected from the North West’s transport wish list. When, days later, the Highways Agency announced that it was pulling out of the public inquiry, we thought that the scheme – which would have put a dual carriageway through the Peak District National Park – was finally going to be laid to rest.

But Tameside Council was determined to get its bypass, and together with other councils across Greater Manchester, dreamed up a monstrous funding proposal. The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities decided to raise council tax and pilfer 40% of their combined local transport budgets to fund six major infrastructure projects, four of them road schemes.

Money that was supposed to be spent on travel plans, road safety schemes, public transport and measures to get people walking and cycling would instead be wasted on the Mottram Bypass, the Stockport Bypass, the Wigan Inner Relief Road and the Ashton Northern Bypass.

This is bad enough, but we're worried that if the Manchester package goes ahead, other councils will want in on the action. It's a very real threat: transport budgets will tighten while we're in a recession, and councils that can't fund their road schemes will be looking for 'creative' ways to get funding. So it’s really important that we stop this idea in its tracks, which is why we wrote to the local transport minister, Paul Clark, asking him not to approve this funding package.

If you agree, why not take a minute to send a quick note [Editor's note: action now closed], asking for the scheme to be rejected. And if you live in Greater Manchester, why not drop your councillor a line, telling him or her you don’t want money already allocated for road safety and congestion-busting squandered on road schemes?

20 May: Despite our best efforts, the Government has just signed the contract to widen the M25 - even though the costs have already skyrocketed.

A year ago this was supposed to cost £5 billion and would have widened four sections. Then, with your help, we persuaded Ruth Kelly to implement hard-shoulder running on two of the four sections, which would have saved a fair amount of money.

But since then the costs of the M25 scheme have skyrocketed, and it's now expected to cost £6.2 billion to widen just two sections. It's an extraordinary increase at a time when Government departments are supposed to be cutting back on public spending because of the credit crunch.

The whole deal really winds me up - not least because we know that people want better, cheaper public transport, not road schemes. Bringing regulated rail fares in line with the European average would, for comparison, cost just £500 million. Surely that would have been better value for money than this bloated tarmac turkey?

8 May: I've been spending lots of time recently getting my head around the Westbury bypass. This week I met with some of the campaigners against the bypass to help them deliver a postcard to Hazel Blears, who's considering granting the road planning permission.

Stephen Joseph, our director, joined the hundreds of residents who've written messages to the Secretary of State, asking her not to approve the road. There were so many that there wasn't enough space on this giant postcard for them all to fit. Here's hoping that Blears listens to reason and doesn't approve this monsterous scheme.

30 April: I've just come back from facilitating a meeting between campaigners from Camp Bling and the heads of Southend Council. The group is celebrating - because they've stopped a £25 million road scheme.

Southend Council wanted to build a dual carriageway through Priory Park, the burial site of an East Saxon king, felling 11 trees in the process. This was expected to save just 15 seconds - a crazy waste of money and pointless destruction of green space.

The group decided on a two-pronged approach, with Parklife fighting the scheme through the planning and funding process and setting up Camp Bling on the land under threat. They stuck it out for three-and-a-half years, the longest road protest site in England, despite arson attempts, cold winters and bleak, rainy summers.

But yesterday's news is welcome relief, and after some much-needed celebrations comes the painstaking process of taking down the site. At the meeting the group and councillors agreed that they'd be off the site in a couple of months, leaving it as they found it. The council plans to turn the land into a memorial garden planted with native species from Saxon times.

22 April: The 2009 Budget may have been hyped as the greenest ever, but it was nothing like the kickstart we had hoped for.

Just last week we wrote to the Government and laid out our thoughts on how local transport could contribute to some pretty major greenhouse gas cuts, and we had hoped that the Chancellor might have mentioned some of our measures. Some, like a major boost for highway maintenance, would have kept thousands of people in steady jobs and others, like lower rail fares, would have kept people from being priced off the railways.

The Government is focused on expensive 'capital intensive' projects, like road building, which cost lots but employ relatively few people. We know that loads of great projects which would reduce CO2 lose out, so we're proposing a carbon reduction fund (PDF, 64k) which would allocate money to local councils and businesses to spend on low-carbon pilots or any manner of schemes to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

We think that the Government should use the downturn to boost the green economy. If you agree, why not drop your MP an email and asking for bigger investment in sustainable transport?

16 April: The Government is betting that electric vehicles are the solution to transport's rising carbon footprint. I'm not so sure: where's all the electricty coming from, and will the National Grid be able to cope?

Electric cars aren't 'carbon neutral': you still have to make the electricity that powers them. The Government may like to talk up its plans for renewables, but it's trying to build new coal-fired power stations up and down the UK. CO2 emissions from electric cars running on coal are unlikely to be much better than petrol or diesel cars - especially if you factor in the energy it takes to make them in the first place.

Last year we commissioned research into low-carbon transport. This found that electrifying the 26 million cars in the UK could increase the amount of energy we'd need by a factor of four! Somehow I can't see that all coming from renewables.

It's such a pity, because for the £250 million this programme will cost we could have invested in all sorts of great, low-cost packages, like car clubs, walking and cycling and public transport. It looks like the Government's great strategy is just a bail out for the car manufacturers dressed up in greenwash.

7 April: After months of campaigning, we’ve finally persuaded the Government to change how it decides whether transport schemes are good value for money or not.

There are loads of possible solutions to transport problems, so the Government designed a framework to help local authorities weigh up which scheme might offer the best value for money. In theory they would look at all the different factors: comparing whether the scheme would reduce congestion, make an area more accessible or reduce greenhouse gas emissions to how much it would cost to build. In practice, roads always came out best, justifying damaging road schemes.

Put simply, the old framework relied too much on journey time savings, but did not distinguish between a handful of people saving a decent amount of time and a lot of people saving far less time. It also put time savings above reliability. Both we and the Government know that people are more concerned about being on time rather than getting there slightly faster.

We persuaded the Government to take carbon dioxide emissions more seriously. Under the old method transport schemes, driving further always outweighed the carbon cost. This is because the old system counted the revenue from fuel duty as a benefit, and one which was around five times more than the cost of the CO2 emitted! Thus, schemes which helped drivers reduce their fuel consumption – like ‘green wave’ projects – fared badly, even though they reduced our carbon footprint.

This new system isn’t perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction. It should make it easier to show how much better public transport and small-scale, demand management projects are at tackling transport problems than just building more and more roads everywhere and hoping the traffic goes away.