§ Mr. Wigleyasked the Secretary of State for Wales what major road improvement schemes on the trunk roads of Wales are scheduled for the financial year 1976–77; what is their individual cost; and what length of roads are involved in each instance.
§ Mr. Barry JonesThis information will be available following publication of the348W Supply Estimates which will be presented to Parliament in due course.
§ Mr. Stephen Rossasked the Secretary of State for Wales (1) how much money he estimates would be saved in the next 10 years by adopting the accepted English design standards for road construction in Wales;
(2) why a single carriageway 7.3 metre road in Wales has an assumed maximum peak hour capacity for design purposes of under 800 vehicles per hour when the same road in England has an assumed peak hour capacity of between 1,200 and 1,600 vehicles per hour; and why a dual carriageway 7.3 metre road has an assumed peak hour capacity in one direction of about 1,750 vehicles per hour in Wales, when the same road in England has an assumed capacity of between 2,025 and 3,000 vehicles per hour.
§ Mr. John MorrisI am working generally in Wales to the design capacities which were laid down in "Layout of Roads in Rural Areas" published in 1968 by HMSO. These are the standards to which most of the new roads in Great Britain have been built in recent years. In practice the standards to be adopted in any individual case must depend on the circumstances of the particular scheme. For this reason it is not possible to make meaningful estimates of the cost of adopting different standards, but in general it would be possible on only a limited scale to substitute single for dual carriageways.
§ Mr. Stephen Rossasked the Secretary of State for Wales (1) how much money he estimates could be saved in the forthcoming decade by devising a road building programme for Wales based on the same projected increase in traffic as that projected for England;
(2) if road building in Wales is to proceed for a greater forecast increase in traffic than that forecast for England or Scotland; and, if so, how this is justified.
§ Mr. John MorrisRoad building in Wales is an intrinsic part of our regional policy of encouraging economic growth and I consider the forecast increase to be justified. It is not possible to indicate how much, if anything, might be saved by building roads to a standard lower than is needed.