Quentin Willson, Motoring Journalist, Broadcaster and Co-Founder of the FairFuelUK Campaign said: ‘Why are we spending £100bn on a 250 mph railway when our roads are congested, pock-marked ruins? To really lower carbon emissions spend the money on free-flowing roads, off shore wind, solar and EV charging hubs. There will be no electric revolution if we don’t have roads to travel on.’

Howard Cox, Co-Founder of the FairFuelUK Campaign said: ‘Today Cabinet Politicians have ignored economic reality and decided to screw motorists, van drivers and truckers, the very commercial heartbeat of UK PLC. It’s staring everyone in the face, freeing up our motoring economy will benefit the environment and massively boost the economy so much more than one railway line that millions will never ever use. Government is blindly to spend £100 billion of tax payers money, getting to Birmingham 30 minutes quicker, generating a quarter of the economic benefit that spending the same amount on new roads across the UK would deliver. Go figure! ’

Further Background.
UK drivers are fuming that building HS2 & 250 miles of new cycle lanes will now take precedent over repairing or even improving our existing constipated moon cratered roads that we ALL use. The already anti car rhetoric has been exacerbated even further by The Prime Minister ignoring millions of drivers who lent him their vote. Over 90% of drivers, in the largest survey (72,000+) of road user opinion by FairFuelUK, indeed want better low priced public transport & improved roads infrastructure across ALL of the UK, but they don’t back an ego driven big-ticket venture just to get to Birmingham 30 mins quicker. When HS2 was costed at £55bn a few years back, the CEBR, for FairFuelUK, showed spending that ‘same amount’ on roads across all of the UK would benefit the economy 4 times more. Boris Johnson, be warned your northern vote lenders passionately want better rail services, public transport & improved roads across the North. But it seems that cancelling HS2 would have been a huge embarrassment to you, whereas investing more wisely in the north including on roads would be loved so much more in the long term. Had the same investment currently budgeted for HS2 been directed into roads, there would be benefits of £250.7 billion to the economy. This is more than four times the expected net benefits of the entire HS2 network. Why did the Cabinet ignore these facts? Simply diverting investment from roads to other forms of transport is unlikely to solve the environmental issues in the transport sector. In fact, it is likely to exacerbate them. Had the same investment of HS2 at £55bn been spent on road, based on historic averages for road investment, there would be benefits of £251 billion. For the cost of HS2 at £55bn, it would be possible to widen over 1,900 miles of motorway, every motorway in England. Smart Motorways would be unnecessary.

1 Comment

  1. Why would cancelling HS2 be an embarrassment – to anyone? Nobody supports it except the people making money out of it.

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