Shrewsbury relief road cash boost
Wednesday 22nd July 2009, 3:34PM BST.
The Government today agreed to an £85 million payout for Shrewsbury’s long awaited relief road.
The Department for Transport announced funding for the scheme as part of its proposals to improve transportation in the West Midlands over the next 10
years.
The plans were first mooted more than 30 years ago as a way of slashing town centre traffic.
For full story and reaction see Thursday’s Shropshire Star
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Well, I don’t doubt Shrewsbury needs this road although it will be interesting to see what other road schemes in the county DON’T see the light of day because of “lack of funds”…
What’s the betting that road pricing is sneakily put back on the agenda?
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No doubt the enviromentalits will be doing their best and costing everyone countless millions to slow down this very necessary addition to SHREWSBURY,S road system.No doubt other projects will get cancelled but please get on and do it and stop wasting money on feasability studies
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Jeepers mockingly mentioned ‘lack of funds’, as though the Treasury was awash with cash.
The exchequer is £175bn in the red for 2009.
This means that every single person in the UK is £2,800 in debt.
In an era of climate change and looming peak oil, is it sensible for our government to be spending tax-payers’ scarce money on a controversial road, which all the evidence shows will raise carbon emissions and only cut town centre traffic for a short period of time?
Why is so little of our money being invested in a sustainable transport system, which the rest of the world can learn from, for the sake of the next generations?
And why, when the coffers are bare, is the government pushing us further into debt with expensive, highly controversial road-building projects?
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Huw Peach’s comments are the only controversial thing about a new road building scheme in Shrewsbury.
As motorists pay £45,000,000,000 a year in taxes and the government only spends half that amount on roads I fail to see how the motorist is costing the “taxpayer” anything.
The only form of transport that is sustainable is that which pays for itself ie. motoring, buses and trains have to be heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. If Britain made motoring illegal we could not afford the cost of public transport to replace it.
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Keith, who said anything about ‘making motoring illegal’?
Please stick to what I said, which is that we should be looking towards the future and designing a transport system, which takes climate change and peak oil into account, especially when funds are scarce.
The sustainable approach to creating a transport infrastructure is to close the gap between what we know about anthropogenic climate change (climate scientists say that the world must cut its emissions by 80% compared with 1990 levels to limit global warming to a 2C average rise) and the policies that our politicians introduce.
Could you now explain why this viewpoint is controversial, Keith?
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Huw Peach is one of these rabble rousers that deliberately misinterprets comments just to cause further annoyance.
I am well aware that the Treasury has no money, which was why I suggested road pricing may come quietly back on the agenda. Environmental concerns or not, there are roads falling apart in all parts of the county, and other towns and villages in need of relief roads too. There are going to be concerns that Shrewsbury is always going to be the focus of attention.
I agree that there needs to be a more sustainable transport structure and that vastly improved public transport is a big part of this. So far there has been precious little sign of any new thinking in that direction.
The trouble with environmentalists like Huw Peach is that they’d see everyone back in horse and carts if they could.
Belt up Huw and stop trying to see enemies where there aren’t any. And try living in the real world, where there is ALWAYS going to have to be something of a balance.
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My point, Jeepers, was to say that -in a tight budgetary climate- a more sustainable transport structure is only going to be possible when regional funding bodies take climate change and peak oil seriously and start spending tax-payers’ money on cheaper, smarter, non-road methods of reducing traffic and vastly improving public transport instead of on controversial, environmentally damaging roads.
There will continue to be ‘precious little sign of any new thinking in that direction’ as long as those who advocate non-road policies are dismissed as rabble-rousers, who want everyone in horses and carts.
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this means big changes for sleepy shrewsbury i predict we will be a booming city to rival telford by 2020 with many new houses, roads and factories and jobs
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Peaches: surely then same road could be used in future by buses, electric cars, hydrogen cars, carts, bicycles … etc?
Building roads is a proven a good way for the government to spend money durin a recession.
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I think Huw is addressing somewhat more “global” issues than are strictly pertinent to a thread concerning a small stretch of new road in a rural backwater like Salop (although he does have a point about sustainable transport, which companies like Honda, Mercedes, BMW, and even the beleaguered GM are trying to address even if governments are not).
I think this relief road is a good thing if it diverts more traffic away from the town centre, or makes journeys around the county town shorter. This means more efficient use of the fossil fuelled powerplants making the journeys. A good thing also if it frees up available road space in the town centre for public transport.
For me, if I worked in the town centre, I’d live somewhere in the ‘burbs near the river and buy a little motor launch.
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i agree with hugh this is white elephant it wont solve congestion, its just being built to expand the towns development boundary so they can carpet north west shrewsbury with concrete “affordable” homes and plastic factories
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huw is right to address the value for money arguement because £100million of tax payers money could go a long way in these hard times and there is more ongoing costs of maintaining it too so this will be higher council tax in shropshire for many years to come
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u could run alot of buses for 85 million and it would be greener
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With the road not likley to be open until 2017, most of the protestors are unlikely to still be walking the earth.
Sally – there is no way that shrewsbury will ever want to ‘rival’ Telford. In fact would anywhere want to be like Telford?
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its not a good scheme for the tax payer, it will not deliver the same economic gains as improvements to the motorway or roads in bigger towns simply because our economy is small and we are out on a limb
wem to welshpool is no strategic route, there is no major need for this scheme it will just save a few lazy people 5 mins in traffic, same as if they got on their bikes and cycled instead
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yes the northern bypass should be built but the main priority for road improvements in shropshire is the dualling throughout of carriageways of the a49 from dinmore in the south to whitchurch and beyond in the north.
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Hopefully it will include the floodlands option as well…
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ignore the greeny lefties we need more roads and only the conservative government will deliver this for you, and we will cut your taxes
labour does stealth taxes on cars and wastes your money on social projects in the ghettos, lets get clown brown out and get cameron in to sort out this mess, cut taxes and be the motorists friend again
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ill give you 85% of th money but i want all the credit, the government transport depatment sounds like duncan banntyne on dragons den!! Government might magic the money from somewhere for the building but then all the tax payers of shropshire will pay the maintenence for the next 1000 years!
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what a waste of money
traffic is declining year on year in shrewsbury town centre, so we dont need this road and we do need the money spending on debt and such
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