The UK builds only 65 miles of highways in 10 years

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Britain has built only 65 miles of new highways in the past decade, with a large percentage of this number as a result of Quirk statistical instead of actual construction.

Britain’s highways increased from 2,265 to 2,330 miles between 2014 and 2024, equivalent to 65 miles, according to the Ministry of Transport data.

Some other European countries have built thousands of miles of new highways during the same period.

But the former civilian employee of DFT Michael Dnes told the Financial Times that three new periods of highways in that period have been opened on A1 (M) to Newcastle, M8 near Glasgow and the M90/Queensferry.

The total shared length of these sections is 24 miles, according to DNES accounts, which are now working in Stonehaven, raising a question about the location of the other 41 miles.

Dnes said the contradiction can be explained by improving the accuracy of munitions. The National Agency in Great Britain can measure the so -called “Wigge” in the roads, which marginally extended the length of the registered highways.

DNES said it was indicating that the progress in building highways in Britain was so slow that it could be “mired because of the craftsman’s craftsmanship.”

New highways are often controversial with environmental protection advocates due to their effect on climate change and local biological diversity. However, many drivers are frustrated by British roads that are often interested.

Statistics will raise questions about the reason that the UK is very slow to build highways in recent decades, with the addition of only 422 miles since 1990.

In the same period of 35 years, Spain built 6917 miles, France 3,057 miles, Germany 1440 miles, Turkey 2082 miles and Poland 1,545 miles, according to European Union data.

One of DFT officials said that Britain has not created many highways in recent years because successive governments “have given the priority of improvements on the current highway network.”

Another official said that the UK highway system was “mature” much more than the largest European countries, as it rapidly grew in the 1950s and sixties, and thus less in need of expansion.

Edmund King, head of AA, said that successive governments had supported “smart” highways “at the expense of actually improving the network.

Smart highways are sections on the road where the traffic flow is managed by controlling the speed limits. It is supposed to increase the ability by taking advantage of the solid shoulder as a current lane.

But King said, in practice, “They do not work because a third of drivers do not use the inner corridor” for fear of broken vehicles in the future.

He added that the closure of sudden passages can cause more congestion than the regular highway, as the hard shoulder is available, noting that 900 million pounds has been spent on upgrading “badly designed” systems.

Although the government pledges to provide a “record level of spending on the road network reform” in the budget, it is expected that the investment in building roads will decrease next year by this by this. 5 percent On the current customization.

“Anyone traveling on the UK roads know that we need improvements in both current road quality and new additional ways to make travel easier and faster,” said Nobel Francis, Director of Economics at the Building Products Association.

Asphalt sales sizes have decreased in five of the past six years and are now at their lowest levels in a decade, according to the Metal Products Association, which represents the heavy material industry.

Aurelli Dylanoi, Director of Economic Affairs at MPA, said that asphalt producers are still facing “investment strategies that suffer from delay and cancellation and new workforce tubes – along with the pressure of the budget over the local authorities that affect road maintenance.”