This is a tale of three major roads, combined cost about £7 billion.

In the late 2010s it seemed likely that they would all be built.

Yet by 2024 all three of them, the M4 bypass at Newport in Wales, the A303 tunnel under Stonehenge, and the Oxford to Cambridge ‘Expressway’, had been cancelled.

The 14 mile M4 bypass, recommended by an independent inspector, and enjoying widespread support, was the first to fall, in 2019. In Wales major road building is devolved to the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, in Cardiff. And it was First Minister Mark Drakeford, using his ultimate decision-making authority, who cancelled the project, designed to relieve a heavily congested section, citing cost and ‘severe environmental impact’.

Building work would probably be well under way, too, on the Stonehenge tunnel and its associated A303 upgrade – approved in 2021 – had not the scheme to burrow under a world heritage site been challenged and delayed in the courts. The incoming Labour government axed it in 2024 on grounds of cost.

Expressway

The third road, the £3.5 billion Oxford to Cambridge ‘Expressway’, was enthusiastically promoted by the Conservative government around the 2019 General Election, and was only cancelled, in 2022, when it became clear that the benefits were outweighed by its costs.

So we have three major roads, keenly promoted at the time by politicians and business, and then cancelled. But what happened next was very different.

When the Welsh Labour government scrapped the M4 relief project in 2019, it immediately examined fresh courses of action, based around public transport. It set up the Burns Commission, led by economist Terry Burns, former Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury. The commission reported back promptly, proposing a comprehensive package of railway station building on the line that runs parallel to the M4 in the Cardiff and Newport corridor. Six years on and construction work is underway, albeit more slowly than politicians and local people would have hoped.

Many people in Wales still want the road to be built, and it seemed, briefly, that the new Plaid Cymru-led government in the Senedd was prepared to give it new life, when the party’s leader appeared to support it in a debate before the 2026 election.

Demise

But the road’s demise was reconfirmed this summer, when Deputy Transport Minister Mark Hooper formally ruled out building it. He announced that the (Welsh) government is evaluating alternative traffic management options. He also promised a comprehensive package of road, rail, and bus solutions, in addition to the Burns recommendations, to be published this autumn.

Compare this with the muddle and drift that followed the axing of those two major roads in England. Cancelling the Oxford to Cambridge link, the government promised to ‘investigate the need for more targeted road interventions in the area’. Four years on, and transit between the two cities remains arduous and complicated, punctuated by many roundabouts.

Ministers talked up, as an alternative to a road, the ‘transformational’ East West Rail (Oxford to Cambridge) scheme, which would be ‘central to providing critical infrastructure within the Oxford-Cambridge Arc’. The government committed £760m of funding to deliver the next phase, reinstating rail services between Bicester and Bletchley, a link closed in 1968.  (This was not actually a new project; it had already received planning go-ahead, two years earlier in February 2020.)

This 21 miles rail link, which will enable trains to run between Oxford and Milton Keynes, was completed in 2024. It remains unopened to passenger services. The operator, Chiltern Railways, and rail union RMT have been locked in dispute over manning levels on trains for a year. There is no indication as to when services will start. And as for the rest of the proposed line, between Bedford and Cambridge, its route has still not been decided, after seemingly endless public consultation.

Stonehenge tunnel

And what of the the Stonehenge road scheme, relieving the busy A303? In addition to the 1.8 mile tunnel, it would have included 6.2 miles of dual carriageway, and, inside the World Heritage Site, two new junctions.

When the project was scrapped in 2024, the only reason given was cost. Nothing about impact on the environment and on a world-renowned cultural site. And, unlike the response in Wales, there was no follow-up strategy to provide alternatives. There has been no government proposal to improve the existing railway link between London Waterloo and Exeter, via Salisbury, which runs close to the A303. For large sections this is a single-track line served by aging diesel trains. There is not even a direct express coach service down the A303 to the West Country.

Into this policy blank space seep the frequently-repeated grievances of villages in the area, where residents complain of log-jammed streets from traffic diverting whenever the A303 around Stonehenge is congested. Local politicians, including the liberal Democrat-led Wiltshire County Council, call for action, which by implication, and for want of firm alternatives, would mean reviving the Stonehenge Tunnel.

No plan?

So while Wales has a plan, England seems beset with drift and indecision. The Welsh government, much closer to its big M4 problem – between 75,000 and 81,500 vehicles pass through the motorway’s (four lane) Brynglas tunnels every day – is already working to a plan, and is working to update it.

To the Westminster government, by contrast, anything outside the M25 belongs to a big picture of competing priorities. There is no regional government which might give closer attention to both these major schemes, propose alternatives, and lobby central government to act. Instead there is inertia. No plan at all at Stonehenge, and a completed railway they cannot even open in the Oxford Cambridge Arc.

And there is a bigger question. Should we now be moving on from the idea of road building as the default answer to our transport problems? The government’s own independent advisor, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) set up under the Climate Change Act 2008 to advise the UK on cutting greenhouse gases, recommends pausing major road schemes unless ‘exceptional circumstances’ apply. And any road building should bring no net increase in emissions.  The CCC notes that adding road capacity draws in additional traffic, leading to more Co2 (the main greenhouse gas) emissions, by the theory of induced demand.

Increased emissions

The Sightline Institute, an independent research organisation and think tank based in Seattle, estimates that every extra lane-mile built will increase emissions of Co2 by more than 100,000 tons over 50 years.

It’s hard to see how the Oxford Cambridge Expressway could ever be revived, such was the strength of local opposition and with the East West rail link certain to be completed, if not until the 2030s. But campaigners against the Stonehenge tunnel can never be entirely sure that the scheme is, literally, buried until a coherent and convincing alternative transport strategy is worked up and put into effect.

However there are clear signs that the Labour government is moving away from road building, if not for the reasons the CCC proposes. In June (26) the Starmer government announced that it wanted to scrap two major road improvement schemes in Derby and Nottinghamshire, having only approved them last year, to free up cash for increased defence spending. In August (’26) PM Andy Burnham gave no indication he was minded to think again, on a visit to the area.

Few, if any, mayors or council leaders are likely to argue against a new road in their area which enough local people think is ‘urgently needed’, whatever the CCC warn about the climate implications and campaigners argue about environmental or cultural damage. But it’s clear the tide has turned against the powerful road lobby. In the 2020 Budget, chancellor Rishi Sunak extolled RIS2, the second Road Investment Strategy, committing a record-breaking £27.4 billion to upgrade and maintain England’s strategic road network of motorways and major A-roads.

Since then, with the loss of schemes such as the tunnel under Stonehenge, and the Oxford to Cambridge ‘Expressway’, the strategy has been pared right back. The war in Ukraine and conflict in the Gulf have changed the world picture enormously. What an irony if Putin and Trump between them, and not the climate crisis, hasten the end of major road building in the UK.