Road transport leaders have renewed their calls for the government to maintain investment in roads after the Guardian printed details of a leaked memo that warned of "looming spending cuts" due to a £30bn shortfall in public-sector funds.
Jack Semple, RHA director of policy, acknowledges the pressure on public spending, but says investment in infrastructure is vital for economic recovery. Any decision to delay road maintenance will make repairing the roads more expensive in the long-term,
he adds.
Efforts to reduce carbon emissions could also be hit by a failure to invest in the roads. One-and-a-half million tonnes of carbon dioxide is emitted each year because of congestion on UK roads. "There is an environmental as well as an economic impact of a failure to invest in the roads to increase capacity," adds Semple.
The DfT maintains that the £6bn roads programme is "progressing". It says the calculations in the memo seen by the Guardian refer to the department's "long-term funding guideline" and not to actual budgets, which will be set in the next Comprehensive Spending Review.
In last week's MT (2 July), both the FTA and the RHA warned that the government's abandonment of national road pricing must not affect investment in infrastructure.
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