Good luck to those that are pushing for road improvements in the North - Carl Les

Nearly all produce comes from within 10 miles, so coupled with the fact that there are 22 golf courses nearby in that part of East Lothian, including Muirfield, host to this week`s Scottish Open, it`s no wonder Gullane is the little gem on the Firth of Forth that it is.

In fact all the other guests in the Badger were American men who had flown over, at some considerable expense with their bags of clubs and trolleys, to catch a few days' golf where it would be played before the Open started. No worries about the £1,000 a day green fees there then.

This is a long preamble to get to the real point that I drove up the A1, the most direct route, to get there. The improvement works on the Western Bypass around Newcastle are now complete, so helping traffic flows around the city, although for through traffic like me it probably needs a bypass around the bypass. Even alternatives like more public transport and electric vehicles will need better roads, if we want to give people choice of when to come and go, and where from and to. Leeming Bar to Newcastle is an easy 45 minute run now. But once again, north of Newcastle leading to the border and then in Scotland itself, the road alternates between single and dual carriageways, with risky crossover junctions and right turns across busy flows of traffic.

I’ve said before that London and Edinburgh are likely the only two capital cities in Europe not joined by excellent rail and road connections. The East Coast Main Line is a good route, but needs infrastructure improvements to seriously increase capacity and ensure much needed better reliability. The M1 / A1(M) together provide a good 300 mile road connection from London to Newcastle, but the final 150+ sections leave a lot of gaps. Another major road improvement opportunity missed over the years like the A66 and A64, and now so much more expensive because of higher standards of design, increased construction costs and more compensation to be paid to the increased number and value of the businesses and homes that have grown up around routes.

Convenience is one thing, and certainly business can put a figure on the inefficiency cost of traffic congestion, but the real congestion cost comes accompanied by other direct and indirect costs when there is a collision, especially a serious one.

Here alongside the dreadful trauma for any family where there has been serious injury, even a fatality, there is the cost of medical treatment, often long-standing, absence from work, compensation payments and insurance pay-outs. No wonder then that Northumberland County Council’s Leader Glen Sanderson, backed by the area’s Mayor, Kim McGuinness, and with support from the local MPs and a rainbow of local councillors of all political colours, have launched a new campaign for dualling. I wish them luck.

The previous government accepted the argument, promised an upgrade but did not start one, and only committed to start the scheme just ahead of the last election which sadly it lost. The incoming government cancelled it altogether declaring it poor value for money. Probably a bit too northern, and certainly too rural. Fortunately the Treasury Green Book of analysing funding priorities is more flexible now and avoiding the financial consequences of unsafe travel carries more weight.

Tragically six people have been killed only recently on stretches of this road in three collisions just a few weeks apart.

As Mayor McGuinness stated at the launch “We want to grow the region and we want it to be a place that thrives. We’re creating jobs and creating transport infrastructure elsewhere in the region but we are being held back by government who will not take action on this”.

She went on to say “We`re not going to shut up about this, and that`s critical. Everybody agrees this needs to happen”.

I don`t want to be seen as a champion of roads alone, all modes of transport are important, but good roads are a fundamental building block to all of us, and all forms of road user, including green ones. Road building provides significant supply chain employment, roads built provides wider wealth creation through business growth, stopping collisions on A1, A64, A66 reduces unnecessary spending on medical and social interventions.

Good luck to those further north. Our council, our Members whose wards are concerned, and our MPs are not going to shut up about ours either.

Coun Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.