The Programme: 'Fix' that led to massive costs: Christian Wolmar and Nicholas Schoon look at the shift in government thinking in the face of a fierce 'green' campaign

England's road programme was developed in the 1980s during a period of strong economic growth, with the conviction that new roads were necessary to cope with huge predicted rises in traffic levels.

The programme was published in 1989 as a White Paper, Roads to Prosperity. It did little more than list 450 schemes that the Department of Transport wanted to build. It contains only 52 paragraphs to justify the programme that aims 'to meet the needs of industry and other road users for a modern strategic road network which also helps to reduce accidents and to improve the environment'.

The department's environmental 'fix' in devising and promoting the programme was to concentrate on widening existing motorways and trunk roads instead of ploughing through open countryside, to plant lots of roadside trees and to explain how popular bypasses are.

Spending rose to record levels, about pounds 2bn per year, in order to try to complete the task within 15 years but severe cost overruns on most schemes and the slowness of the planning process meant that any target for finishing the process drifted further into the future.

The process of planning trunk roads and motorways, from earliest proposal through to the start of construction, via consultation, public inquiry and choice of exact route, takes about eight years. John MacGregor, the Secretary of State for Transport, is seeking ways of speeding this up.

Even while the programme was being conceived, the department could have realised that the doubling in road traffic forecast between 1988 and 2025 could not simply be dealt with by an expansion in the road programme.

Phil Goodwin, director of transport studies at Oxford University, said: 'While the programme was being pushed ahead, people started looking at the forecast growth rate and realised the supply of roads just could not be increased to cope with that level of demand. You can't build yourself out of trouble.'

But the road lobby pushed through its programme, backed by several transport secretaries.

Now, however, even the basis of the road programme, that industrial and commercial prosperity depend on it, is being questioned. A study by Friends of the Earth, the environmental lobby group, presented to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee showed that transport costs represent a tiny proportion of total production costs, probably as low as 3.5 per cent. Even reducing these costs quite sharply would have little impact

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