Transport Action Network 'strongly objects' to Transport for the South East's plans for Arundel Bypass

The draft SIP outlines the transport spending priorities for the region for the next 30 years.

TAN was critical of the plan because it ‘hides its true carbon impact and will increase, not decrease, traffic’ and ‘fails to do much to help tackle climate change.’

TAN called for the draft SIP to be rewritten to make it compliant with the Paris Agreement and the need to reduce emissions by 68 per cent by 2030.

Chris Todd, director of TAN said: “This draft plan will be highly damaging for the South East and beyond. It will undermine the economy and waste public funds, while increasing traffic and failing to reduce carbon emissions fast enough.

"It’s like a slow-motion car crash, where the resulting destruction is inevitable.

“You cannot support a plan that contains 90 new roads, over 50 of which are to be built before 2030 and pretend everything will be alright.

"The irony is that it accepts that the plan fails to reduce emissions quickly enough but then does little about it. Unless TfSE is prepared to look at these issues again, there is little point in its existence."

Emma Tristram of ‘Stop the Arundel Bypass’ said: “To add to the good points made by TAN, I’d like to point out that Transport for the South East has given wrong information in an attempt to justify the Arundel Bypass. It says that a majority of the traffic at Arundel is ‘long-distance’.

“This is untrue, since National Highways’ own figures show 75 percent is going under 15 miles. As well as ignoring climate change, they are giving false data to promote an extremely damaging road scheme.”

In 2020, National Highways announced the preferred route for the A27 Arundel bypass. This will replace the existing single carriageway road with a dual carriageway bypass, linking together the two existing dual carriageway sections of the road.

The new bypass will feature approximately eight kilometres of dual two-lane carriageway to the south of the existing A27.

Starting at Crossbush, the route will reconnect with the existing A27 in the west near the A27/A29 Fontwell (east) roundabout.