We live next to wasteland earmarked for £9bn UK tunnel - here’s why it’ll never get built

The Government volition determine connected whether the £9bn Lower Thames Crossing volition spell up this week (Image: HIGHWAYS ENGLAND)

The Labour Government volition determine successful the adjacent week whether the £9bn Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) volition spell up oregon not.

One run radical has urged the authorities to scrap the "nonsensical" project, peculiarly astatine a clip erstwhile Chancellor Rachel Reeves is trying to tackle the £22bn fiscal “black hole”.

The Transport Action Network (TAN) has slammed the plans for the crossing arsenic "outdated and wasteful".

The LTC is the largest strategy near down from the Conservatives’ roads programme. First projected successful the precocious 2000s, the roadworthy would nexus Gravesend and Essex with a passageway beneath the Thames.

The LTC would relieve unit connected the congested Dartford Crossing, which remains the lone fixed roadworthy crossing of the Thames eastbound of Greater London. It would besides link the M25 motorway and A13 northbound of the River Thames to the M2 motorway southbound of the river.

Transport Secterary Louise Haigh is acceptable to regularisation connected a Development Consent Order (DCO) for the 14.3-mile way this week.

An autarkic study from TAN, sent to Ms Haigh, issued a damning appraisal of the project.

Its author, transport advisor Dr Colin Black, called the task “a dinosaur strategy from different epoch that truly should beryllium extinct”.

The study projected that the existing Dartford Crossing would beryllium backmost astatine its contiguous level of congestion conscionable 5 years aft the LTC opened, defeating the intent of the costly caller crossing.

It besides claimed that the LTC was much costly per kilometre than HS2, different roadworthy task that was cancelled partially owed to its ballooning costs.

The TAN study suggested that the clime outgo of the roadworthy would beryllium catastrophic.

Highways England initially refused to merchandise emissions figures erstwhile it planned the project. However, the caller study claims that the roadworthy passageway would make much than six cardinal tonnes of c dioxide during construction.

Similarly, the Woodland Trust claims that the c emissions of the roadworthy strategy are expected to beryllium amongst the highest of immoderate large roadworthy strategy presently developed by National Highways

TAN laminitis Chris Todd: “We impulse Louise Haigh to heed Colin Black’s warnings, cancel LTC and debar a costly mistake for UK taxpayers. Investment should alternatively beryllium focused connected nationalist transport and progressive question schemes which genuinely enactment the government’s 5 missions."

The LTC is the largest strategy near down from the Conservatives’ roads programme (Image: HIGHWAYS ENGLAND)

Rebecca Lush, TAN's roads and clime campaigner, told Kent Online: “Some of the backing saved by cancelling the worst schemes should beryllium enactment to enactment enacting the Labour government’s imaginativeness for obstruction freight arsenic good arsenic nationalist transport and progressive travel. It would marque trains, buses, trams, cycling and walking acold much charismatic propositions and bring some biology and wellness benefits. This would beryllium acold amended worth than blowing billions connected destructive roadworthy building.”

Michael Solomon Williams, from different anti-LTC run group, the Campaign for Better Transport group, said: "Spending £9 cardinal connected a roadworthy that can’t adjacent transportation a autobus is utterly nonsensical and if approved by the Transport Secretary would wholly undermine the government’s net-zero commitments.

"Building caller roads doesn’t chopped congestion, it does the opposite. Investing successful nationalist transport and obstruction freight is the champion mode to chopped congestion, escaped up roadworthy abstraction and turn the system for lone a fraction of the cost."

Transport Secterary Louise Haigh is acceptable to regularisation connected a Development Consent Order (DCO) (Image: Getty)

The LTC would relieve unit connected the congested Dartford Crossing (Image: Getty)

Labour MP Lauren Sullivan, who represents Gravesham, added her absorption to the project, saying: “I stay opposed to the Lower Thames Crossing, arsenic I person from time one. I person concerns implicit the biology impact, sound disturbances and wellness concerns for those surviving closest to the passageway portal and the attack successful Gravesend."

The task has won supporters among Kent’s concern community, which believes it volition heighten transport links with the remainder of the country.

Nick Fenton, caput of the county’s inward concern agency, Locate successful Kent, said: “The Lower Thames Crossing is simply a task that promises to beryllium a game-changer for the county.

“It is captious to keeping UK freight passing done the Channel ports and supporting accrued lodging and aboriginal economical maturation for the region.”