News from Darren Johnson (past staff): Mayor’s £4bn roads plan is “counterproductive and wasteful”

Darren Johnson, Green Party Member of the London Assembly, has reacted to this morning’s announcement by TfL that £4 billion is to be spent on road schemes in London.

In a roads plan signed off by the Mayor of London, TfL is predicting “an extra five million road trips by 2030”. A share of the £4billion will be spent rolling-out SCOOT technology to 75 per cent of London’s signalised junctions by 2018. This system has been cutting delays for vehicles on the road by holding pedestrians for longer on pavements as they try to cross the road.

The Mayor is also spending £85m to increase traffic capacity along the A23 and A232 and accommodate a ‘predicted increase in traffic’ in the Croydon area. For reference the entire annual spend on cycling in London in 2014/15 is likely to be £82m, according to figures supplied to Darren Johnson AM by the Mayor’s Office.

Darren Johnson AM published a report in November 2014 entitled “Boris Johnson’s Roads to Nowhere” outlining a number of pedestrian, cycling and public transport schemes which he argues the Mayor should pursue to improve London’s prosperity and quality of life instead of spending large sums of money on roads.

Darren commented,

“This Mayor’s costly obsession with new roads threatens to send London hurtling back to a 1970s vision of a car-dominated future. Tunnelling, bridging, lane-widening and road-building will devour London’s transport budget. Building more roads to ease congestion simply does not work as new roads attract new vehicles, just creating more traffic and more pollution.”

“This city desperately needs clean, efficient ways of getting around such as new rail links, trams schemes, better bus services and proper cycle routes. This is what we need to be investing in, not more roads. TfL’s roads plan is counterproductive and wasteful and the opposite of what London needs as it struggles with an air quality crisis.”