Transport Insights

On Tuesday, cyclist, public transport user, ev driver and pedestrian Harry revealed on Bluesky that he had discovered from a freedom of information request that the total number of miles of roadworks that the Labour government had “lifted for Easter” was not “over 1,000” as claimed but…

0.8 miles.

It followed propaganda promoted by Labour Party general secretary Hollie Ridley which claimed that the Labour government was “on the side of drivers”.

I haven’t got the exact data, but Harry says 31 of 34 schemes listed by National Highways “always planned to finish before Easter”.

In fact, the original Department for Transport press release did not claim that the roadworks were being lifted “for Easter” but referred to roadworks “being lifted or completed in time for the Easter getaway”.

But transport secretary Heidi Alexander claimed to be “lifting 1,127 miles of roadworks over Easter”, falsely implying that the roadworks were temporarily being put aside over the bank holiday weekend but would return.

The propaganda was disseminated by Labour MPs, including Rachel Hopkins and Peter Prinsley.  I emailed them to ask them if they stood by the (false) claim or would like to apologise for spreading misinformation.

So far, neither has taken the trouble to reply.

As the new government’s first transport secretary, Louise Haigh promised to end culture wars in transport, which was no doubt one of the reasons that Morgan McSweeney got rid of her.