❌ Claim: No detail on exact cost. 💰
✅ Fact: July 2025 ORR data shows a £417m cost increase. NH's own market notice values the contract at £600m+.
Read our full statement (ignored by the DT) here:
www.a38derbychaos.org/news/governm... 🔗
5/5
❌ Claim: Destroy thousands of trees at Markeaton Park. 🌳
✅ Fact: There aren't thousands of trees at Markeaton. The DT has been told this via press complaints but refuses to correct it. Official docs confirm 11.8 hectares of woodland loss across ALL 3 junctions. 🪚
4/5
❌ Claim: The DT quoted Govt spin without NH docs that counter their claims.
✅ Full info: NH's 2017 report found road expansions often worsen congestion via induced demand. This project increases traffic for 43k+ homes, causing higher emissions & local road congestion. 🚗💨
3/5
❌ Claim: “Given the full go-ahead”
✅ Fact: It’s not a full go-ahead. RIS3 lists it as "committed," but there's no Full Business Case (due June 2026). No Treasury "Value for Money" assessment exists, despite costs exceeding the £500m mandatory threshold. No contractor signed. 📄
2/5
It’s not the first time the Derby Telegraph has misrepresented information or made incorrect claims about the A38 Expansion. 🚩
We’re setting the record straight on the latest "announcement." ⬇️
1/5
"The A38 is not a victim of vexatious legal challenges. It is a project repeatedly exposed for weak appraisal, unlawful approval and economic obsolescence, problems of the Government’s own making both under Conservatives and Labour."
£600M A38 Derby Junctions “upgrade” hides spiralling costs, governance failures, authorities ignoring warnings and secrecy. No full business case, outdated scheme, collapsing BCR and hidden economic assessments. Read the full analysis: www.a38derbychaos.org/news/a38-der...
Have your say on transport in the East Midlands 🚍
Mayor’s Transport Plan consultation is open until 8 Feb 2026.
A key chance to oppose destructive, wasteful road schemes and support public transport and active travel.
👉 Please complete the survey (10 mins):
eu.surveymonkey.com/r/EMCCA-indi...
Still time to respond to the East Midland Mayor's transport consultation and ask for public transport not more roads eu.surveymonkey.com/r/EMCCA-indi...
'This is no longer a risk, it is an emergency,' explain climate experts to more than a thousand British MPs and civil society leaders.
theecologist.org/2025/dec/01/...
A pair of aerial maps labelled “Before” and “After” showing the impacts of expanding the A38 at Kingsway Junction. The before image shows dense woodland, Bramble Brook, Mackworth Park and a Local Wildlife Site. The after image shows large brown areas of vegetation clearance, a widened road layout, land removed from the park, damage to Bramble Brook, loss of the wildlife site, access road closures, thousands of trees felled, and increased pollution risks.
Before/after visual of the A38 expansion at Kingsway roundabout. It would fell thousands of trees, cut into Mackworth Park, damage Bramble Brook, destroy a local wildlife site, and worsen noise, light & air pollution. More: www.a38derbychaos.org
Over 5,450 letters sent demanding Govt stop throwing £100s of millions at destructive road schemes & invest in rail electrification instead.
✅ Cleaner & less harmful
✅ Improves train services
✅ Shifts freight off roads
✅ More jobs than roadbuilding
Write today:
actionnetwork.org/letters/take...
Almost 46C in Cadiz
Only a matter of time before 50C mark is smashed for the first time in Europe
And the heat won't stop there....
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
At 23:50 in this transport podcast, our campaign is mentioned: calling for the electrification of the Midlands Mainline to be funded by scrapping the now £646 million+ A38 expansion.
Take action now using our letter tool: actionnetwork.org/letters/take...
The next episode of CaS is about to arrive!
In S3E19 our hosts @christianwolmar.bsky.social and @markwalker59.bsky.social discuss #TheGreatestGathering and Mark’s trip on #TheBelmondBritishPullman, plus Christian interviews Darren Caplan of RIA
Catch it here: markwalkerg.podbean.com
You can read about National Highways' KPIs including on road safety in our latest post transportactionnetwork.org.uk/national-hig...
Strange that there is nothing in the ORR's blog post about how National Highways failed to achieve one third of its key performance indicators (KPI) over the RIS2 period, and is likely to fail on its road safety KPI when the figures are published next year www.orr.gov.uk/search-news/...
Imagine this invested in buses and public transport. Look around you and imagine every 30 cars was a bus, and imagine how quick your journey would be...
"This is the definition of bad governance: approving a project you know is outdated, overpriced, pointless and destructive, just because it’s already in the pipeline".
Take action now using our updated letter tool to contact politicians and demand better rail investment instead:
✉️ actionnetwork.org/letters/take...
The A38 Derby Junctions road scheme is now set to cost £646 million – above the £500m threshold that saw the A1 dualling scrapped. Authorities refused to reveal the true costs before approval. Read more www.a38derbychaos.org/news/a38-der...
Fantastic to see Sam Carling MP pushing for average speed cameras and better infrastructure for cyclists to improve road safety.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Is the Office for Rail and Road (ORR) the right regulator to hold National Highways to account and to ensure public money is well spent delivering across all government priorities? transportactionnetwork.org.uk/national-hig...
National Highways was on course to fail to meet its target of no net loss on biodiversity. Somehow it has turned that around...
--> How reliable are these figures?
--> Can we can trust the ORR to really be on top of this? transportactionnetwork.org.uk/national-hig...
Spinning your wheels Sir, R.L. Vickers ("Freight of history", Letters, Eye 1654) asserts that "public transport eats taxes, private transport provides tax revenues.” In fact, the hidden costs of motoring's many downsides far outweigh the tax receipts. These socialised costs - gridlock, air and noise pollution, emergency services costs, road damage, public health impacts from sedentary lifestyles and deaths from road crashes - are met only partially by motorists. Motoring taxation raises about £40bn per year, while a recent report from the Royal College of Physicians estimates that the annual cost of air pollution alone is as much as £50bn. If drivers had to pay the full and true costs of motoring the only people who could afford to drive would be multi-millionaires. CARLTON REID, Motoring journalist and author of "Roads Were Not Built for Cars", Newcastle on Tyne.
“If drivers had to pay the full and true costs of motoring the only people who could afford to drive would be multi-millionaires.”
My letter about the hidden costs of motoring is in the latest @privateeyenews.bsky.social
It would be a good investment to act on climate even if it were financially burdensome. Given that doing so can deliver $21 for every $1 invested, it is pure folly not to press ahead.
Unless you're a petrostate or a fossil fuel company. In which case, populist politicians are your last bastion.
Write today to demand funds from polluting road schemes like the A38 are diverted to electrifying the midlands mainline: actionnetwork.org/letters/take...
www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/campa...
So backwards! Such a huge mistake to ever privatise buses.
4 and X38 - and the fewer services there are, the fewer people will use them - just like the more roads you build the more cars congest them. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
So true, and yet here we are :(
It's great to hear @stopa38expansion.bsky.social enjoyed lots of supportive conversations when handing out leaflets in Derby on Friday and Saturday.