'Green' road guide issued

(First Edition)

THE DEPARTMENT of Transport yesterday launched an environmentally sound good roads guide in an effort to counter growing opposition to its pounds 2bn per year roads programme.

The guide is aimed at road planners and designers but John MacGregor, the Secretary of State for Transport, said he hoped it would also be used by local action groups. He said the extra cost of limiting the environmental effect of roads cost the DoT pounds 60m each year and for some schemes added 15 per cent to the bill.

William Sheate, the assistant secretary of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, said: 'The DoT must be living in another world from the rest of us. Roads cause huge damage to the environment. However good the mitigation techniques encouraged by the guide may be, they cannot make the roads programme benefit the environment in the way the Secretary of State claims.'

The Good Roads Guide, Environmental design guide for inter-urban roads; Department of Transport; pounds 30.