Next steps on road studies
Over the past few weeks, further information has been published about government studies which could lead to major new road proposals in National Parks. The Department of Transport has now published scoping reports for the six feasibility studies aimed at identifying solutions to long-standing ‘road hot spots’. Three of these six studies cover roads which affect National Parks but there is little recognition of this in the reports.
The Highways Agency has also recently published the evidence reports for the route based strategies it is undertaking for the whole of the trunk road network. The majority of these studies include routes which run in or close to National Parks and we had asked for more recognition of this when commenting on the draft evidence reports earlier this year.
Although some of our comments have been taken on board, it’s disappointing that the Highways Agency has not addressed several
of the issues we raised. We’ll be continuing our work to ensure that these studies do not result in road proposals which damage National Parks.