£15bn plan to speed up Britain's busiest A-roads including banning slow-moving vehicles on up to 18 routes

Motorists will get new ‘mini-motorways’ as part of a £15billion overhaul of the nation’s highways.

Busy A-roads will be revamped – with roundabouts and traffic lights stripped out – to cut delays and transform them into ‘mile-a-minute expressways’.

Details, included in a strategy by the Highways Agency presented to Parliament, also include new slip roads to make the roads flow and banning slow moving vehicles such as tractors and bicycles.

There are up to 18 A-roads that are likely to be transformed in the first tranche with seven more to follow. The strategy document says: ‘Our ambition for the next 25 years is to revolutionise our roads.

’Our busiest A-Roads will become expressways, providing improved standards of performance, with technology to manage traffic and mile-a-minute speeds.

‘Users of motorways know they can expect a broadly consistent standard from the whole of their road, and that this ensures they have a safe, free-moving journey.’

But it notes: ‘The same is not true of A-roads, where piecemeal upgrades have often resulted in inconsistency and substandard stretches of the road that are often less safe and a regular cause of congestion.

‘By 2040, we want to have transformed the most important of these routes into expressways: A-roads that can be relied upon to be as well-designed as motorways and which are able to offer the same standard of journey to users.’

These will be ‘largely or entirely dual carriageway roads’ that are ‘safe, well-built and resilient to delay.

They will be built so that ‘traffic on the main road can pass over or under roundabouts without stopping’.

The strategy document seen by the Daily Mail says: ‘An expressway will be able to provide a high-quality journey to its users.

‘Most expressways should be able to offer mile a minute journeys throughout the day, particularly outside of urban areas.’

The Highways Agency has presented the Road Investment Strategy to Parliament ahead of it being transformed on April 1 into the new private sector roads operator called Highways England.

WHERE THE CHANGES WILL HAPPEN

The first group of nine expressways is expected to include the A303 and A30 from the junction with the M3 in Hampshire to Exeter.

The A1 north of Newcastle, which motorists have long campaigned to be made into a motorway, is another, as is the A14 from Huntingdon to Cambridgeshire.

These will also link with up to 400 miles of ‘smart motorways’ where hard shoulders are used at peak times to reduce jams.

A dual carriageway is planned for ‘the entire A303 from the M3 to the M5 at Taunton’, as well as building a tunnel as the road passes Stonehenge.

There will also be a new bypass on the A27 at Arundel together with improvements at Worthing and Lancing in West Sussex.

Also featuring will be construction of the Mottram Moor link road together with overtaking and safety improvements and duelling the A61 to improve Trans-Pennine connectivity.

A range of duelling and junction improvement schemes on the A47/A12 corridor supporting growth at Peterborough, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft is also planned.

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Fined if you leave your car engine idling whilst you pick up or drop off!

Twenty Pounds

Motorists face £20 fines if they leave their engines idling in what has been branded ‘another stealth tax’ on drivers.

 

A hit squad of ‘traffic marshals’ will target stationary cars as part of the crackdown aimed at cutting pollution to meet strict European environmental targets.

Motoring organisations accused Westminster council of ‘picking on car owners’ when the real problem is emissions coming from large vehicles.

There will be 85 traffic marshals at any one time scouring its streets when it introduces the scheme on May 1.

Islington Council, in North London, which introduced a similar clampdown last August, has 24 such marshals prowling roads and known hotspots with powers to hand out the £20 on-the-spot fines.

 

The fines, which rise to £40 if not paid within 28 days, are intended to be a ‘last resort’ if drivers refuse to turn off their vehicles.

Motorists outside school gates, on shopping runs or waiting to pick people up at stations are likely to be hit by the ‘draconian’ clampdown, which is aimed at those who leave their engines idling after pulling over rather than motorists stuck in traffic or at red lights.

Other councils around the country are also likely to start enforcing the ‘stationary idling offence’, which was quietly introduced by the Government in 2002.

Several councils, including Corby in Northamptonshire, Torfaen in Wales and Havering and Wandsworth in London already warn motorists that they face a £20 fine if they leave car engines idling when stationary.

Havering Council also warns parents dropping off children at school not to leave engines running because youngsters with asthma are particularly at risk from car pollutants – and urges people to contact the council if they know areas where cars are regularly left idling.

West Sussex County Council have introduced signs urging motorist to turn off their engines in Shoreham-by-Sea. 

 

The crackdown comes despite most modern cars being fitted with stop-start technology whereby the engine automatically cuts when it is stationary for a few moments.

The move angered motoring groups, who said it would do little to help cut pollution but would enrage already hard-pressed car owners and was simply a way of extracting more cash from drivers.

An AA spokesman Luke Bosdet said: ‘The real test will be how heavily they enforce this. If you get people nabbing motorists first thing on winter mornings as they are trying to clear frozen windscreens so they can drive safely to work then it really will be worrying.’

Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, told the BBC: ‘One of the real problems is cars stuck in traffic; research has shown pollution is up by 30 per cent in areas of heavy traffic. Do something to help get the traffic moving.’

The fines enforce Rule 123 of the Highway Code, which says: ‘If the vehicle is stationary and likely to remain so for more than a couple of minutes, you should switch off the engine to reduce emissions and oil pollution.’

Westminster councillor Heather Acton said: ‘We want to raise motorist awareness of the impact engine idling can have on the environment, with air and noise pollution affecting overall health, as well as it being an unnecessary use of fuel.’