NEWS RELEASE - Friday 1st February 2002

Executive announcement on M77 & Glasgow Southern Orbital: road building programme "out of control"

Commenting on the Scottish Executive's next phase of the construction of the new M77 and Glasgow Southern Orbital roads - which together will add £100 million to the Executive's road building programme - TRANSform Scotland have contrasted the Executive's spending plans on road building with their failure to deliver on public transport.

Colin Howden, Campaign Manager of TRANSform Scotland, said: "The Scottish Executive's grotesque boasts about its road building programme demonstrate how it has misled the public on transport. Its road building programme is every bit as destructive as the one the Tories bulldozed through in the early 1990s. Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems promoted in their 1999 manifestos the vast road building programme we now see; they did however promise major improvements in public transport. Yet since November 1999 the Executive has committed itself to nearly £500 million of new trunk roads. (1) At the same time it has failed to deliver even one mile of new railway." (2)

"Last week the Executive ditched its transport delivery plan, this week it is back to the discredited policy of 'predict and provide' road building."

"Politicians concerned about the Executive's budget commitments would do well to ask how this extravagance can be justified when the Public Transport Fund has just £50 million a year for all new public transport, walking, cycling and traffic calming projects for the whole of Scotland. (3) If the Scottish Executive is sincere about its desire to develop public transport then some of the £500 million committed to its out of control road building programme should be redirected to this more sensible end."

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

(1) The £500 million Scottish Executive road building programme:
M77 Fenwick-Malletsheugh - £60 million
A1 Haddington-Dunbar - £40 million
A78 Bypass of Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston - £33.1 million
A830 Arisaig - Kinsadel - £10.8 million
A96 Fochabers - Mosstodloch - £17.3 million
M74 Northern Extension - £250 million
A1 additions south of Dunbar - £11.4 million
A876 Kincardine Bridge - £60 million
Glasgow Southern Orbital road - £40 million

The total cost of these projects is £522.6 million. (References available on request.)

(2) The only new rail line in construction is the Edinburgh Crossrail scheme - less than one mile of new track.

(3) The annual amount the Scottish Executive spends on the Public Transport Fund - which pays for all public transport, walking, cycling & traffic calming improvements across Scotland - is £50 million a year.