Action Briefing Aug 2003- Sept 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

West Midlands News

Memory Lanes

Many of you will remember the beginnings of the West Midlands Transport Campaign (WMTC) back in the early 1990s. Initially we were campaigning to stop the building of the Birmingham Northern Relief Road (BNRR, or M6 Toll), the Birmingham Western Orbital, the Kidderminster Blakedown and Hagley (KBH) bypass, the parallel tolled M6 motorway from Cannock to Manchester, the widening of the M42 from Junctions 1 to 10 and the widening of the M6 in Warwickshire.

Ten years on and we are awaiting the opening of the BNRR in 2004, after which we will continue to expose the highly secretive nature of the concession agreement and try to ensure that a toll road such as this is never built in the UK again. We will also be ideally placed to comment and influence the debate on road user charging.

The parallel M6 was dropped and at most the M6 will be widened to 4 lanes if the conclusions from the Midlands to Manchester Multi-Modal Study (Midman) come to bear. The widening of M6 in Warwickshire has been dropped from the programme, however some debates may well come forward if there are new pressures on that stretch either from the M6 Toll or any future developments in the Rugby area as a result of the Milton Keynes development proposals. The M42 widening has been dropped until the success of ATM is measured. The widening of the M42 from Junction 1 to 3a in North Worcestershire has been dropped.

The KBH was never taken forward by the Highways Agency roads programme following the infamous public inquiry and has been effectively scrapped unless the County Council come forward with a business case which they are prepared to support (an unlikely scenario given the financial situation within local authorities).

It has been a rollercoaster of a time and as you can see we have lost some and won some but our main messages of "you can't build your way out of congestion", "the illusion of free flowing traffic on an inter-urban motorway becomes an urban congestion nightmare" and "we can't go on as before" are today as true as they ever were and now we have far more sophisticated tools to deal with our car addicted society. The next 10 years will be dominated by the debate on road user charging and the redistribution of road space from the single occupancy private car to mass transit systems and greater provision for the less able, pedestrians and cyclists.

There have been far too many people involved in these campaigns to mention by name but they know who they are so from all of us to all of you; huge thanks for your commitment, time, energy, tears and laughs.

Chris Crean