Environmentalists attack M74 extension

Friends of the Earth Scotland, the Scottish Greens and Transform Scotland today (27 June 2011) responded to the Royal opening of the M74 northern extension.

Friends of the Earth Scotland has opposed the project since its earliest stages, due to its detrimental impact on the environment and the local community.

Stan Blackley, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said:

“The Public Local Inquiry into the M74 project in 2005 considered the transport, environmental and community impacts of the new road and ruled strongly against building it, yet Scottish Ministers approved construction anyway. That remains one of the worst environmental decisions since the beginning of devolution. This new road will, as the Inquiry stated back I 2005, have ‘very serious undesirable results’ and any benefits will be limited, short-term and ephemeral.

“Half of all households in Glasgow do not have access to a car, so this new road will do little or nothing to help them. Instead, it will increase air pollution and carbon emissions – the project’s own environmental statement confirms this. The new road is completely at odds with Scottish Government commitment and targets for cutting carbon emissions, and will make it more difficult for Glasgow to tackle its considerable air pollution problems in the run-up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games.”

Green MSP Patrick Harvie said:

“This is a dark day for Glasgow. Successive Scottish Governments have ignored the evidence and blundered on with this scheme. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been blown, along with the chance to build a city designed around people and their needs. A fraction of this vast sum could have delivered major public transport improvements, and to make the city easier to cycle and walk around.

“Sadly this won’t be the last unjustifiable roads scheme the other political parties force through. Aberdeenshire still faces the threat of a bypass which has been designed to increase traffic and support building over the green belt, and Scotland’s national finances are being skewed to prepare for a replacement for a bridge that doesn’t need to be replaced. Successive Ministers have tried to sound green, yet not one of them has had the courage to stand up to the roads lobby and instead to put Scotland first.”

Colin Howden, Director of Transform Scotland, said:

“The M74 will not solve traffic congestion in Glasgow, it will instead generate more traffic. At best, the road will provide temporary congestion relief, with the extra road capacity being filled with new traffic. What we do know from the independent public inquiry is that the M74 will undermine public transport investment, increase pollution, worsen social exclusion, and damage efforts to tackle climate change.

“The advocates of this project systematically misled public debate by making wild claims that the road would generate tens of thousands of new jobs. In the event, the public inquiry concluded that most jobs created would be at the expense of other areas around Scotland. We will be pressing the Parliament to ensure that proper, independent analysis is done on the impacts of this project in order to ensure that public funds are not in future wasted on misguided vanity projects such as this.”

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact:
Per Fischer, Press Office, Friends of the Earth Scotland
t: 0131 243 2719

Notes to Editors

Blog: The M74 extension that should never have been built

Friends of the Earth Scotland lodged papers with the Court of Session back in 2005
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4514847.stm

The Public Local Inquiry report found that the “traffic benefits of the project would be […] limited, […] uncertain, and (in the case of the congestion benefits) probably ephemeral” see www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/37428/0009548.pdf. This finding was based, amongst other things, upon the report of the Scottish Government-commissioned Central Scotland Transport Corridor Studies – M74 Corridor; MVA, May 2002. Despite the fundamental limitations of the terms of reference of the M74 corridor study, the Final Report published in May 2002 served a very useful public interest purpose in highlighting the fact that the combined effect of the new road and the overall background trend of traffic growth would be to create in 2010 “a [road] network which is more congested (even with the additional capacity provided by the M74) than in 2000. As well as severe queuing at a number of points, there will be a decrease in overall traffic speed.”

Friends of the Earth Scotland is * Scotland’s leading environmental campaigning organisation * An independent Scottish charity with a network of thousands of supporters and active local groups across Scotland * Part of the largest grassroots environmental network in the world, uniting over 2 million supporters, 77 national member groups, and some 5,000 local activist groups – covering every continent.
www.foe-scotland.org.uk