The problem

The Government has allocated billions of pounds to finance new roads over the next decade. These roads will harm the countryside and the communities they are intended to serve.

New roads:

• Permanently damage the character and tranquillity of an area
  For example, construction of the M65 Blackburn Southern bypass in Lancashire has destroyed Green Belt land and Areas of Special Landscape Value. The noise of the road is noticeable even on the moors to the south.
• Bring further development pressures
  Once a new road has cut a swathe across the countryside, it seems obvious to place new industrial and residential developments nearby. Yet these generate traffic, and may again need further new roads to serve them. Thus, building one new road can rapidly urbanise a once rural area.
• Contribute significantly to carbon dioxide emissions
  Road traffic is responsible for 25% of the UK's emissions of carbon dioxide.

Rural roads under pressure
Rising levels of traffic and a proliferation of traffic signs are turning once peaceful lanes into urban thoroughfares. Speeding traffic is a particularly dangerous problem in narrow, winding rural roads and in tranquil villages. Cars often share rural roads with walkers, horse-riders and cyclists. Combining these users on a single rural road can have fatal consequences, and encourages car use for short journeys because people are too fearful to walk or cycle.

Broken promises
There are many promises made about roads. Road building is said by some to be a solution to traffic and congestion and a way to bring economic regeneration into an area and to connect rural communities with jobs and services. But research CPRE has commissioned says otherwise. In fact, road schemes:

• Generate more traffic and congestion
  Research we commissioned for our Beyond Transport Infrastructure report found that traffic levels in 2006 on major new roads had already past the level predicted for 2010, or were just below it. And bypasses don't always help. Even when a bypass does remove traffic, fumes and noise from a town centre, it attracts lots of extra traffic onto local roads and the traffic can soon start growing rapidly on the bypassed road.
• Don't always regenerate an area
  Our report Roads to Regeneration shows that regeneration claims are inflated and that transport is only one of a number of factors which can influence local prosperity.
• Don't help everyone
  Not everyone has a car – 28% of households in Great Britain and 15% of households in rural areas don't. People without cars often struggle to get to hospitals, supermarkets, doctors and other services. They need better public transport, not large infrastructure projects. Without decent public transport, the countryside becomes somewhere only those who own cars can afford to live.