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Motorways, should we expand our network ?

I would like to see what more or less typical teenagers in this country think about roads and their expansion (not expecting many road geeks to be honest however it would be great).

The UK is clearly missing some crucial links but on the other hand most of these motorways have three lanes on each carriageway (thanks to the engineers in the 60s and 70s). And I must clearly add that London is a fail in terms of roads for a city of this size. It may have M25 'Orbital' but it lack decent roads in the city itself.

At least a certain chunk of savings from cutting welfare expenditures could be pumped back into infrastructure. I'm not talking here about transforming this island into Los Angeles v2.0 but a couple of new mainline motorways and several upgrades / bypasses are well needed. Then we have a question of tolls. Well aren't the motorists enough taxed at the moment ? The example of M6 Toll clearly shows what kind of tolls we could possibly expect... but if it was at least partially pumped back into infrastructure then why not ?

The Conservatives used to be very much into roads till mid 90s (Roads for Prosperity anyone ?) Now it's all about going green and taxing out people from using roads more or less in order to reduce congestion. Netherlands is a good example where governemnt harmonically improves public transport as well as they keep upgrading their motorways (primarly widening and other various inmprovements)

Reply 1

didgeridoo12uk

i'd say trains are more of an issue than roads/cars.

the prices / links between some places are truly ridiculous.

and if the rail system was improved we could dump way more goods etc onto them which would free up our motorways from lorries (not to mention being a hell of a lot better environmentally)

Reply 2

technik

certainly needed back home in N.Ireland. If you peruse the internets you can find in-depth plans from the 60's that showed a rather extensive and useful network being thought up...of course we ended up with like 3 motorways, 2 of which end about half way to their intended destination

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