Spring 2008. Local authorities can press on with the road schemes contained in the 2nd round of Local Transport Plans; cash available for new national trunk roads is well up on a couple of years ago. National road pricing is (still) "many years away " according to the Transport Secretary (March 2008).

2007 was another year of major investment in both motorway / trunk and local road building, with work starting or plans being progressed for schemes originating from the announcement of the sums of money available for roadbuilding in the 10 years to 2010. The Highways Agency's budget for major schemes for 2007 - 2008 is £969 million, up from £599 million in 2005 - 2006. Roadbuilding announcements in March 2005 and September 2005 will keep this figure high for the next few years.

To recap briefly, on coming to power Labour suspended most of the road schemes proposed by the Conservatives, and their White Paper on integrated transport seemed to confirm a move towards alternative solutions to congestion. It faced, however, a backlash from motoring lobby groups like the AA and the freight industry, and business interests like the CBI and Regional Development Authorities who lobbied more effectively than in the 90s. Afraid also of losing favour with some of the press, who quickly depicted Labour as anti-motorist and mounted an effective support campaign for the fuel protests, they retreated, not even fighting a rearguard action, and in July 2000 announced major road building plans at all levels. It seems that the 1989 programme of the Conservatives may be implemented, at least in part.

The M6 Junctions 11a to 19 widening is put at £2.9 billion assuming a completion date of 2017.

Back to 2008, and how much do all these roads cost? A written response by Stephen Ladyman in October 2006 was that new motorways cost on average £29.9 million per mile, dual carriageways on average £16.2 million and single carriageway £10.6 million. It varies wildly though. The latest estimate for the planned (and from the M25 to south Luton, in progress) 115 mile M1 widening project is £5.1 billion, which works out at £21 million per mile [March 2007]. On the M25, already widened to 5 and 6 lanes either way between the M3 and M4 (work completed November 2005), the plans to add a 4th lane to a further 63 miles (most of the remaining 3 lane sections) between 2008 and 2016 are costed at £78 million per mile [Countryfile, BBC1, February 2008]. In Scotland the stilted M74 extension is expected to cost £131 million a mile [February 2008]. Announcements in March 2005 about Yorkshire mean work may be underway on widening almost half of the M1 in 2009. The A1 is being upgraded in many places such as from Ripon to Scotch Corner which alone will cost a third of a billion pounds. A series of schemes to turn the entire A66 into a dual carriageway fit for heavy HGV use is ongoing with the latest section to open the Temple Sowerby bypass in October 2007.. The cost will be at least £128 million. The A14 Ellington to Fen Ditton improvement, the biggest non-motorway scheme in the Highways Agency's programme, where work could start in 2010, is estimated at £944 million [March 2008], (up from a government approved budget of £490 million in 2005): in fact costs are often upwardly adjusted as a project gets further into the approval process as noted by the Nichols Report [March 2007], with frequent further cost overruns when it comes to actual construction. Schemes for widening and dualling feeder roads around motorways like the A453 from Nottingham to the M1 also feature at a national level, and are likely to become more pressing as motorway capacity increases.

Though the M6 Expressway was dropped on July 20 2006 in favour of widening, the pressure on motorway capacity is likely to generate other parallel motorway proposals. A new 14 mile £400 million toll motorway south of the existing M4 between between Cardiff and Newport is climbing up the agenda and could be ready by 2013 according to the Welsh Assembly [September 2007].

The schemes discussed so far, with the exception of the M4 in Wales, all fall into the Highways Agency's Programme of Major Schemes. This is the new, post-Nichols Report (March 2007) name for a set of schemes known for several years previously as the Targeted Programme of Improvements (TPI). The Programme of Major Schemes comprises current or planned motorway and national trunk road schemes costing over £5 million. In March 2007 the Programme of Major Schemes represented £12 billion of projects according to the Nichols Report Many schemes in the TPI, now in the Programme, entered following recommendations of the 33 government commissioned Multi-Modal and Roads-Based studies which from 1998 looked at and reported back on transport issues along particular strategic corridors. In some cases the corridor was large, for example the south coast from Ramsgate to Southampton, in others quite short, for example the stretch from the M1 to the centre of Nottingham. It's argued the composition of their steering groups created a headstart for roads-based solutions; most of the multimodal studies recommended major road building in their final reports published from late 2001. Further research has made some of these recommendations look questionable: in late 2005, for example, the Department for Transport contradicted the London - South Midlands Study by announcing that widening of the M11 near Stansted would not be needed until 2021 at the earliest.

By April 2008, following completion of 7 major schemes in 2007 - 2008, the Programme of Major Schemes will consist of 56 schemes in either the planning or construction stage.

The government's target as laid down in the 10 year plan in 2000 was 100 bypasses and 130 major local road schemes by 2010. While those targets are not going to be met, many are under construction (Haydon Bridge Bypass, Ridgmont Bypass, A27 Southerham to Beddingham, Tunstall Northern Bypass, Temple Sowerby, Ilkeston - Awsworth Link Road, Dobwalls and East Leeds Link Road to name just 1 from each of the regions.) [November 2007]. More air travel, meanwhile, is leading to a flurry of road schemes affecting access to airports such as Luton (better dual carriageway from M1 for completion in 2008), Exeter (Clyst Honiton Bypass), Bournemouth (new access road across floodplains), Edinburgh (new road from M8 proposed by BAA) and Doncaster.

Councils and business interests are promoting new road river crossings too. In March 2006 (then Secretary of State for Transport) Alastair Darling confirmed government funding for a new dual carriageway bridge between Runcorn and Widnes expected to cost over £300 million. A planning application is likely to be submitted in early 2008. Work is scheduled to begin early in 2008 on the £185 million 2nd Tyne road tunnel due to open in 2010. It will be a toll tunnel: as with a toll road, the private operators will have an interest in increasing traffic levels. A £385 million 6 lane dual carriageway Thames bridge in south east London is still in the balance: it completed its long public inquiry in May 2006 but in July 2007 the government announced a second public inquiry would be held, possibly in spring 2009. All the major parties in Scotland have committed to a new road crossing for the Forth; plans to dry out the cabling and manage demand for the existing one alone have disappeared after proving unpopular as a byelection issue in Fife in February 2006. The cost of the new bridge is estimated at between £3.2 billion and £4.2 billion [December 2007].

What's changed since the early / mid 90s? For a start, since 1998 hundreds of miles of "non-core" roads, including some motorways, have been detrunked: responsibility for their development passes from central government in the guise of the Highways Agency to the local transport authority: that is, normally, the city or county council. In theory, this should provide better opportunities for integration of transport at a local and regional level. By July 2007, the detrunking programme was 85% complete, with 1988 miles detrunked.

Detrunking has made it quite important to understand the new regional and local planning systems contained in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act which was passed on May 13 2004. The systems are fairly complex.

There are now 9 Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) drawn up by Regional Planning Boards (RPBs) at (partially unelected) regional assembly level (Note however that there are proposals that could lead to regional assemblies disappearing from 2010, with Regional Development Agencies (even less accountable) becoming responsible for the RSS) (July 2007). A Regional Transport Strategy forms part of an RSS. RSSs reflect national and local government's vision for each region over a period of 15 to 20 years: which broad areas should be Business Growth Zones, which housing and so on. Their legal status makes them hard to challenge once they've been adopted: regional government websites detail when this will be and should include the current RSS although in the complexity of a government website they are not always easy to find. "Broad public consultation" [PDF, 2.5MB] is required in their drawing up, although individual RPBs decide what this means. The RSS is submitted to a Secretary of State, who can make changes. A public examination may be held following these changes, although who the RPB contacts and invites to this is their own decision.

The RSS acts as a context for a number of documents known collectively as the Local Development Framework. Although highly complex, these actually speed up the planning process by offering fewer opportunities for challenge. The RSS of necessity feeds into the Local Transport Plan (LTP): if the RSS says a bigger airport is needed, the LTP has to consider how it would be accessed. Local authorities have since 1998 been required to produce 5 year Local Transport Plans for submission to the Department of Transport. These detail how the authority will deliver national and regional government's transport objectives and by their quality are, among other things, a bidding document for government funds. English authorities had to hand in their final plans by March 31 2006. It's difficult to generalise, although there is no doubt that the LTP2s keep many significant local road schemes on the agenda: the Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (part of Shrewsbury's TIF proposal but unlikely to gain funding that way following a decision not to charge for its use) [December 2007], the £95 million Norwich Northern Distributor Road, also tied in with TIF funded congestion-charing research (June 2007), the Weymouth Relief Road (a Public Local Inquiry was held in November 2007) and the Hastings - Bexhill road for example.

Of potential relevance to schemes in the LTP2s, in May 2007 the government revealed in a White Paper proposals to speed up the planning process for major infrastructure developments such as roads by replacing public inquiries for such schemes with a decision by a panel of experts. This would include planners, lawyers, environmentalists and community experts, with the public being involved through "open-floor debates".

The RFA prioritisation feedback in July 2006 confirmed no central government funding for Sheffield's proposed tram extensions, but some emergency funding for Blackpool tram!

Also coming out of 2004 legislation was the requirement on the 8 regions outside London to bring together major local transport schemes (costing at least £5million) with certain Highways Agency Programme of Major Schemes projects on "Other National Routes" (PDF 1.46MB) (often referred to as routes of regional importance) in a prioritisation process. This was based on a projected sum of money set out in July 2005 known as the Regional Transport Allocation (PDF 674KB) which was intended to give an idea of regional budgets until 2015/16. These prioritisations were handed in to central Government for the first time in January 2006. The Department for Transport gave feedback on the regions' prioritisations in early July 2006, with Douglas Alexander mainly endorsing the priorities set out: both public transport schemes such as a Manchester tram extension and some new road schemes (such as the East Kent Access Phase 2 (£64 million)). In the wake of the prioritisation process [November 2006], the Department for Transport reviewed the national / regional importance route split because of a perceived difficulty getting road schemes on the edges of regions into a high priority position as their benefits may apply more to a neighbouring region. The government is expected to invite the regional assemblies to submit new advice in summer 2008, with possibly around 6 months to prepare the advice.

It's clear that proponents of new roads have become more sophisticated since the 90s. The New Approach to Appraisal (NATA), introduced by the government in 1998, means trunk and local road schemes have to be appraised against environment, safety, economy, accessibility and integration factors before a government decision on funding is made. This has made councils and the Highways Agency more aware if the need to work mitigating factors into their plans. Route Management Strategies, commissioned by the Highways Agency, are careful to put impact on wildlife and the environment at the top of their intended Route Outcomes. Multi-modal studies are happy to talk about buses, rail, trams, cycling and walking. Councils soften the blow of a new bypass by talking about it being part of a range of transport measures designed to provide solutions. For every road bridge proposal, there will be a plan for a cycle lane, for every road scheme, a new mammal tunnel or some newt fencing.

Will certain schemes focus protest, as last time round? If so, maybe the revived schemes through the South Downs around Hastings approved in late 2004, part of a route rejected in 2001? The A417 up Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire, a study having recommended widening from 3 to 5 lanes with some sort of roundabout flyover at the top and dualling of nearby stretches? Scotland, which staged the biggest protest camp for a while against the Dalkeith Northern Bypass evicted over a few weeks in January 2006, has the M74 extension, a stilted motorway extension into Glasgow city centre, going against the findings of a public inquiry, and the Aberdeen bypass coming up. But it seems hard for protest camps to reach anything like the sizes of the mid 90s: Jobseekers Allowance has ensured that far fewer people are now politically active, not seeking employment. Engaging with the complexities of the planning processes seems to offer the best chance of affecting things this time.