Welsh Government to decide on future of more than fifty road projects

The future of more than fifty road improvement projects will become clear today when a delayed review commissioned by the Welsh Government is finally published.

As well as the review, the Welsh Government’s decisions on each of the schemes will also be revealed in its National Transport delivery plan. 

The projects were paused by the deputy minister for climate change when he set up the Welsh Roads Review Panel led by transport expert Dr Lynn Sloman in September 2021 to examine the case for continuing with them.

Welsh ministers say they want to reduce Wales’s carbon footprint to "protect people and wildlife from the climate emergency” and that “to do this, we need to reduce the number of journeys taken by private cars and increase the number of people walking, cycling and using public transport.”

Two major schemes have already been axed as a result of early advice from the panel. A planned Llanbedr bypass was cancelled in November 2021 and plans to replace roundabouts between junctions 14 and 16a on the A55 were halted in February 2022.

Before that, in 2019, plans to build a new stretch of M4 around Newport were scrapped, a decision which continues to cause controversy. 

The panel delivered its report last year but publication was delayed because, the deputy minister said, the Welsh Government needed to reconsider its response following the UK Government’s Autumn Statement.

Based on the panel’s thinking as set out in its two early reports, it seems likely that its final report will advise that most of the 54 road projects should be cancelled. 

It's also expected to set out a “framework” for future decisions on road building. 

In response to previous criticism, the deputy minister appointed Lord Terry Burns to chair a North Wales Transport Commission with the aim of exploring other ways of improving transports in the North. 

Conservatives have strongly criticised the Welsh Government’s review with the party’s leader in the Senedd, Andrew RT Davies, calling it “a foregone conclusion.”

Speaking in September 2022, he said that “The Labour Government in Cardiff Bay have a dogmatic hatred of private cars. They make it their business to make private car use as unpleasant and costly as they can.

“But many people across Wales do not have the option to use alternative transport, because the alternatives the Labour Government provide are so shoddy.”