Skip to main content

Government triples road funding

The UK government is tripling funding on the road network over the next eight years with more than US$40 billion to be spent on upgrading and improving the network until 2021. By the end of the next parliament, the government will be spending US$5 billion each year on improvements and maintenance for the strategic network alone. This locked-in funding commitment will support nearly 30,000 new jobs across the construction sector and at the same time deliver a safer, more sustainable road network that is fit
February 12, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
The UK government is tripling funding on the road network over the next eight years with more than US$40 billion to be spent on upgrading and improving the network until 2021. By the end of the next parliament, the government will be spending US$5 billion each year on improvements and maintenance for the strategic network alone. This locked-in funding commitment will support nearly 30,000 new jobs across the construction sector and at the same time deliver a safer, more sustainable road network that is fit for the 21st century and beyond.

Roads Minister Robert Goodwill called on Britain’s road building companies to get ready for a massive increase in work. He said: “Funding certainty is critical to the construction industry in planning for the future and that is exactly what the government has delivered – with US$40 billion secure investment over six years and US$83 billion for the strategic road network over the next 15 years. However, we need to make sure everyone is ready to deliver the massive programme of investment that we need to keep Britain’s roads moving.

“To do that, we need to make sure we have the right people and equipment in place to deliver the 53 road schemes in preparation right now, plus the next generation of improvements over the next 7 years. This means taking on more apprentices and making sure suppliers have the capacity to deal with the increase in demand. If we get this right, this will provide road users with a high performing network that can cope with the expected 43 per cent increase in traffic over the coming decades that will help boost economy growth and deliver more efficient roads for motorists.”

Related Content

  • January 31, 2012
    Australian road pricing, road funding needs more debate
    Everyone in the road transport industry in Australia is talking road pricing - everyone, that is, except the politicians. Christine Keyes reports. At the end of 2008, Australia's road transport industry was wringing its collective hands, unable to raise more than $100 million from an individual bank for any Public Private Partnership (PPP). The A$750 million Peninsula Link project, announced by the Victoria Government in March 2009, was the first road project in the country to be put out to market as an ava
  • February 2, 2012
    Economic crisis needs non-partisan perspectives to stimulate growth
    Kary Witt, President of the IBTTA and Pat Jones, Executive Director and CEO, talk about the need to put aside partisan perspectives in order to deal with the current economic crisis
  • October 17, 2019
    How can US transportation be ‘re-envisioned’?
    In her address to this year’s ITS America Annual Meeting, congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, called for a ‘re-envisioning’ of transportation. Her speech is below – and ITS International asks a number of US experts what they would like to see ‘re-envisioned’…

    I would like to welcome  ITS America to the nation’s capital.

  • July 29, 2021
    EU mobility’s Covid escape route
    European Union roads could be more resilient after the pandemic ends, thanks to the goal of creating a more integrated mobility network, says ERF’s José Diez