Tragedy struck Wales’s roads on Valentine’s Day. On February 14, 2023, the Welsh government announced that they would axe major road building projects to combat the effects of climate change brought on by cars. The decision is applauded from an environmental point of view. However, backlash from irritated locals has been strong. While the goals of sustainable development have generally been well received in Wales, whether the new policy can bring the people’s short-term desires and long-term goals together remains to be seen.
News of the infrastructure policy announcement was first premonished in June 2021, when Wales’s Deputy Minister for Climate Change Lee Waters announced that the government was to pause all existing road construction projects to reevaluate the environmental impact of continuing their development. In the following months, an independent Roads Review Panel was established, consisting of civil engineers, transportation researchers, and environmental experts. Their role was to review existing proposals and determine if they ultimately aligned with Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act and the public commitment to achieve nationwide carbon neutrality by 2050.
The Roads Review Panel was established by the Welsh Government to review 51 schemes in the planning stage. In the end, 31 schemes were deemed unfit for the new strategy standards. From this review of schemes, the Panel developed eight principles that all prospective public road construction projects must satisfy. These are now Welsh Road Pol icy and include promoting the shift to sustainable travel, minimizing carbon emissions during construction, controlling vehicle speed, and most importantly, not enhancing the capacity for more cars on the road.
The Effectiveness of Going Roadless
Wales’s approach to environmental transportation is quite unique. While the rest of the world is fixated upon phasing out gasoline-powered vehicles and making the shift to electric cars, Wales is actively tackling the other end of the traffic equation–roads. Investment into new roads is usually done for the purpose of increasing the transportation network’s capacity for more vehicles. New bridges, highways, and bypasses are planned and constructed to make room for traffic to flow through. Politicians have often made promises to expand roads in the name of easing congestion and improving the quality of residents’ lives. Most of the 51 road plans that were halted in 2021 were first introduced as a solution to bottlenecked traffic in the region, reported The Times.
The Road Review Panel’s decisions greatly contrast with the customs of previous governments. Mainly, the Panel recognizes that new roads, or roads with enhanced capacity are not a solution to congestion. Instead, they induce further travel by car, which perpetuates congestion. “If you create additional road capacity, people will travel more and further because they can,” said Professor John Parkin (Professor of Transport Engineering, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Transport and Society, University of the West of England, Bristol), who was a member of the Panel. “If we provide people with the opportunity to travel more and further by car, they will do so to access goods and services, meaning longer overall distances traveled, and thus more carbon emissions.” The Panel stated that new road projects should be progressed in a manner that would not increase average travel speeds or boost vehicle numbers.
While there have been previous studies pointing out the correlation between new roads and increased traffic, many governments have shied away from fully enacting recommendations to limit road capacity expansion. “It’s a difficult decision because we’re used to driving and we’re used to traveling in a certain way, and this policy will require adjustments to our future travel behavior.” Professor Parkin credited the development of the new Road Policy on the Welsh Government’s coherent approach, which is grounded in well-being legislation aligned with strategies for transport, carbon emissions and planning, and the commitment of Minister Waters.
Challenges to Stripping Asphalt
Minister Waters’ decision was applauded for its commitment and thoroughness in tackling the climate risk. Nevertheless, it could not avoid resistance from some locals that were awaiting the new roads to open. Residents in Llanbedr–a small village built around the A496 in Northern Wales–have been suffering from chronic gridlock in their neighborhood. “It causes standstills for maybe up to an hour at a time, and children can’t go to school safely,” said a Llanbedr local in an interview with ITV News. They hoped that the new bypass would take highway traffic away from their town’s small streets and narrow two-lane roads.
Councillor Annwen Hughes of Llanbedr shared that while she was sympathetic towards the goals of carbon neutrality, she was disappointed that the government would not consider a compromise. “What’s better-for cars to go along a bypass at 40 [miles an hour] or cars stuck in a traffic jam for over three quarters of an hour?” she said to ITV news. At the time of this writing, the village is planning on holding a rally to block the passing highway on March 25 to show their discontent with the government’s decision.
The Road Review report have sparked great public discourse about the future of roads, transportation, and way of living in modern society. In response to criticism from citizens and his political opponents, Minister Waters made his stance clear by stating, “if we sign up to targets of net zero by 2050, we have to be prepared to do things differently.” Indeed, in the age of a rapidly progressing climate emergency, the immediate and somewhat drastic measures of the Welsh government is indicative of a path that the rest of the world should pay closer attention to. Wales’s challenge, meanwhile, is to bring the public onboard with their plans, and that will only happen by encompassing and persuading the residents affected the most. Wales’s new public policy is therefore a test to see how the government can meet its citizens “eye to eye” in reconciling different perspectives and achieving a greener and more inclusive future.