Labour urged to make change to UK motorways to end ‘shambolic’ problem
The UK has seen just 65 miles of new motorway rolled out in the past decade, despite the number of drivers reaching more than 40 million.
12:28, 05 May 2025
The UK has seen just 65 miles of new motorway rolled out in the past decade, despite the number of drivers reaching more than 40 million.
The Labour Party government has been urged to add more stretches of motorway as millions of drivers cause congestion[1] to pile up. The UK has seen just 65 miles of new motorway rolled out in the past decade, despite the number of drivers reaching more than 40 million.
According to reports, the length of UK motorways has increased from 2,265 to 2,330 miles between 2014 and 2024, despite more drivers hitting the road.
Noble Francis, economics director at the Construction Products Association, said:[2] "Anyone who travels on the roads in the UK knows that we need improvements in both the quality of existing roads and new, additional roads to make travelling easier and quicker."
One DFT official said Britain had not built many motorways in recent years because successive Governments had "prioritised enhancements to the existing motorway network".
Another official said the UK's motorway system was more "mature" than other much larger European countries. Edmund King, president of the AA motoring organisation, said successive Governments had backed "smart" motorways "to the detriment of actually improving the network".
King said that, in practice, "they don't work as one-third of drivers don't use the inside lane" for fear of broken vehicles ahead.
On Reddit, one driver fumed: "They spent GBP67 million on upgrading the A1 in Northumberland from single carriageway to dual (so not even motorway!) and then cancelled it before construction started as it was going to cost to much.
"The bureaucracy of any development is comical." A second raged: "While in general I'd prefer investment in public transport methods we still have gaps in the motorway that need sorting.
"As an example the M67 stopping in Mottram pushing traffic between Manchester and Sheffield onto the Woodhead or Snake passes is mental!
Obviously running a motorway on top of the peaks would be bad but we have the ability to use tunnels. If the treasury doesn't want to cough up the money we should make the toll roads."
"We wonder why the west is falling behind, China has added 28,000 miles of high speed rail in two decades while we're not building at all. It's taken us a decade just to build 250 miles.
It's absolutely shambolic," another said.
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