Road Protest in The United Kingdom - Motivation

Motivation

Motivations have changed over time. Early actions, such as the response to the 1970s London urban motorway proposals, tended to be based on local environmental and social issues. Routing was contentious, while alternative schemes involving tunneling were generally not available because of the difficulty of planning an unobstructed route or on cost grounds. Surface level urban motorways and junctions required large areas of land take, while visually intrusive elevated sections depressed house prices or introduced urban blight to wide areas. Socially, communities could be flattened or split in two with little access between them. Environmental considerations were not just focused on visual impact, but also noise and pollution – vehicle's emissions were not restricted at that time. Some of the local 'NIMBY' issues could be mitigated through the scheme proposer making concessions to access and small changes to routing, while increasing the levels of compensation would sometimes quieten objections and smooth the passage of a public enquiry.

At that time more consideration was given to economic issues and how the effect on the community and the built environment could be mitigated – with schemes sometimes going so far as to relocate historic buildings affected by road schemes. Since the 1980s much wider social and environmental concerns have been called into question; policy changed to allow environmentalists to be increasingly involved over the loss of wildlife and its habitat. Since the 1990s there has been more research and awareness around induced demand and climate change, which are often now central to the arguments put up by some groups of protesters.

Early attempts to incorporate wider considerations have resulted in lengthy enquiries, with the result that circumstances change while costs escalate. By being much more general in nature, these latter issues can sometimes contrast with the specific local issues raised in a scheme. Because of their less specific nature, at times it has been difficult to address these broad issues within the scope of a public enquiry, which have frequently been restrained by public policy and attempts to speed up or 'simplify' the process. Thus for many years environmental impact was not given as much weighting as the economic benefits quantified within a cost benefit analysis, while questions aimed at national economic models and traffic forecasts could not be addressed within the normal planning process.

Thus, while a road scheme may take a decade or two to work through the planning system, there would still be sections of society who would feel disenfranchised from the process. While protests were often seen at public enquiries in the 1970s and 80s, some of the more recent protests have been characterised by civil disobedience at the construction site after the enquiry concluded.