From People and Nature
Campaigners are calling on transport secretary Louise Haigh to scrap the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) – a monstrous £10+ billion, 22-kilometre six-lane motorway tunnel – and put the money into public transport.
Haigh has to decide whether to approve the Development Consent Order (DCO) for the LTC by 4 October. But the ruling could come even sooner: Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, asked Haigh to prioritise it.
The crossing is the largest road construction project in the National Highways portfolio. It would reinforce the car- and road-centred approach to transport policy taken by the Tories, and undermine already-failing attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector.
Campaigners say the £10+ billion could instead be ploughed into desperately needed improvements to public transport, the most effective route to decarbonisation.
The argument rolled out in support of the LTC, that it would reduce hold-ups at the nearby Dartford Crossing, is flawed – because more roads always produce more traffic.
Chris Todd of the Transport Action Network said: “The LTC offers Labour a huge opportunity to reclaim £10 billion that, with this project, would at best offer only five years’ relief from congestion at Dartford.
“That money could be used by the government for improvements in public transport that people everywhere are crying out for.”
Leigh Hughes of the Thames Crossing Action Group, which since 2016 has been coordinating local efforts to block the LTC, said: “The project will never fulfil its stated objectives. The Dartford Crossing will still be overcapacity. Mile per mile, this will cost more than HS2.
“There will be no access for buses or cycles. The plans on the table are for a ‘smart motorway’, with no hard shoulder, by stealth. And here locally [in south Essex] we will be in a toxic triangle, with pollution from the A13, the A127 and the new approach road.
“National Highways themselves estimate the LTC will add 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, at a time when these should be going down. This is not the legacy we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.”
Hughes called on people, wherever they are in the UK, to lobby MPs, calling for cancellation.
Senior Labour politicians have not commented on the LTC since the election – but there are signs that they might justify it as part of their drive to “rebuild Britain” by mobilising private infrastructure finance.
□ In her keynote speech on 9 July, Rachel Reeves said she would ask transport secretary Haigh to “prioritise decisions on infrastructure projects that have been sitting unresolved for far too long”. The decision on the LTC is by far the biggest of these.
□ Just before the election, a Labour party spokesman pointed to the LTC as an example of the Tories’ “broken approach to infrastructure”. They said delays were “unsustainable” – but made no comment on the worth of the project itself.
□ Straight after Reeves’s speech, Labour MP Torsten Bell also cited the long-delayed LTC as an example of costly and ineffective planning. “If we want net zero to happen, and to happen without higher costs, then things are going to have to be built. Things that not everyone loves.” He, too, failed to comment on whether the project is actually needed. Johann Beckford of the Green Alliance responded: “A resolution [to indecision on the LTC] is needed quickly. But the decision should be to scrap the project, at least in its current form.”
□ Former Siemens UK boss Juergen Maier, who wrote an unpublished review of transport policy for Labour, also railed against construction delays and called for “a long-term plan to build ambitious, economically transformative transport infrastructure, linked to a proper industrial strategy”. He did not distinguish between public transport and road projects.
Juergen Maier, Torsten Bell and Louise Haigh’s office were approached for comment, but did not respond.
□ Labour launched a broader review of infrastructure policy, including transport, energy and digital connectivity, in January. Maier is joined on the panel for that review by senior executives from Arup, Mace and Skanska – all firms that make tens of millions of pounds each year for their shareholders by delivering big construction projects.
Behind this policy offensive lies Labour’s plan to “get BlackRock [the world’s biggest investment firm] to rebuild Britain”, which will result in further privatisation of infrastructure.
Economist Daniela Gabor has warned: “The choice here is not merely between public and private financing of public goods, but whether British citizens should tolerate the government handing out public subsidies for privatised infrastructure.”
Within days of the election, Labour showed that it is ready to overrule local opposition to infrastructure projects, by promising to review decisions blocking the construction of two data centres. The energy, water and material cost of such centres are giving tech researchers nightmares.
The climate damage done by road-building must be considered, along with the way that it reinforces social inequalities, transport researchers say.
The Transport for Quality of Life group has warned that, to meet climate targets, total car mileage needs to go down by at least 20%, and possibly by 50%, by 2030 – but there is no legal requirement on the government or other authorities to reduce the volume of traffic.
The group’s research shows that current government investment plans, including LTC construction, will by 2032 push greenhouse gas emissions from the UK’s strategic road network up by 20 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide equivalent – while, to meet climate targets, they need to go down by 167 million tonnes per year.
Even the government’s own Climate Change Committee – which climate campaigners say puts far too much faith in electric vehicles to reduce transport sector emissions – is warning that transport decarbonisation is disastrously slow.
The committee’s review of climate policy progress, published last week, said that since 2008 transport sector emissions reduction had gone less than two-thirds as far as it had projected. Improvements “had been largely offset by the increasing size of new vehicles.”
The review also criticised “the inconsistency of the [government’s] revised roads policy statement with emissions objectives” and the diversion of HS2 cash to road building.
The LTC comes hard on the heels of the Silvertown Tunnel, a new Thames crossing a few kilometres upstream due to open next year – which was pushed through by the Labour mayor of London despite fierce local opposition on climate, air pollution and social inequality grounds.
Victoria Rance of the Stop the Silvertown Tunnel coalition said: “I can not believe that yet another 1970s-style road project is being seriously considered, given the climate and clean air crises we face. Surely the new government will honour its promises to take the climate emergency seriously, and stop the LTC. We need a transport policy that, first and foremost, cuts car traffic.”
The Greater London Authority is currently conducting a consultation on the proposed fees for drivers crossing the Thames via the Silvertown tunnel and the Blackwall Tunnel that runs alongside it. Campaigners continue to call for the Mayor to consider using the new tunnel for public transport and non-motor traffic, instead of cars and lorries.
There are two visions of transport policy. The first, centred on road expansion on the dubious pretext that it supports economic growth – and embracing flawed, emissions-heavy projects such as the LTC – will deepen the climate crisis and exacerbate social inequalities.
The second, championed by campaign groups including the Transport Action Network, the Better Buses campaign, Get Glasgow Moving and Fare Free London, envisages investment in public transport as a socially-owned and controlled public service, a shift away from private cars and rapid decarbonisation. SP, 25 July 2024.
□ Please voice your opposition to the LTC. Suggestions from the Thames Crossing Action Group here.
