Traffic & Transport
Investment or waste? How the M4 relief road plan for Newport sums up Wales’s economic quandary | Infrastructure
It is afternoon rush hour on the M4 and drivers are yet again making slow progress around the city of Newport, often seen as the gateway to south Wales given its location between Cardiff and Bristol.
Cars and lorries are stuck in gridlocked traffic in both directions on the approach to the Brynglas tunnels, where the road narrows to two lanes in each direction, while flashing lights warn motorists in Welsh and English of a ciw (queue).
Traffic jams may be an everyday reality for commuters and businesses trying to move goods around, but they have also become a hotly debated topic before the Senedd elections on 7 May, in a vote predicted to bring sweeping political change to the principality, and send Labour into opposition for the first time since devolution in 1999.
Congestion on this part of the M4 – the main route linking south Wales with England – has been complained about by businesses and commuters for decades, while a relief road around Newport has been proposed for almost as long. Motorists say tailbacks cost time and money, and make the country less attractive to potential investors.
Poor public services, and frustration over long waiting times for NHS treatment, rank top of the concerns for Welsh voters before the election, along with disappointment with transport services and infrastructure like roads, rail and buses.
“If there is an accident on the motorway, the whole of Newport is gridlocked,” says Rosemary, 81, waiting at the city’s bus station. “We could have done with that new relief road, it would have been a big help.”
The retired shop worker is dependent on buses to visit the shops and her daughter in a nearby town. “It’s not a very reliable bus service, it’s become really poor since the pandemic,” she says.
The six main political parties are split over how to tackle the tailbacks, and the issue prompted fiery exchanges during a leaders’ debate.
Two people in the running to become the next first minister, the leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, and Reform UK Wales leader, Dan Thomas, both support a new road, along with the Conservatives. Meanwhile, Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats have declared themselves against.
After years of political indecision, soaring costs and opposition from environmental groups, the relief road project was finally scrapped by the Labour-led Welsh government in 2019, citing the projected £1.4bn cost, and the adverse impact on its planned location on the Gwent Levels nature reserve.
Opposition parties have criticised Labour for the £114m spend on the project before cancellation, although the party has pledged to improve public transport, cap adult bus fares and expand the “South Wales metro” rail electrification project. The network of tram-trains, able to run on rail and tram lines, is over budget, but scheduled to enter service shortly.
On a bright spring day, the sun glints off the river Usk that flows through Newport before reaching the Severn estuary and spanned by the transporter bridge, symbolising the city’s industrial heritage when huge quantities of Welsh coal and steel were loaded on to ships at its docks.
“The No 1 issue for my members is the M4, the congestion and uncertainty,” says Josh Fenton, senior policy manager at industry body Logistics UK. “The longer HGVs are sat in traffic, that’s adding to cost, making things more difficult, and potentially putting some businesses off setting up locally.”
Any new road would cost considerably more than the £1.4bn previously estimated, after recent construction cost increases and inflation.
The cost could be “potentially even up to £2.5bn and the Welsh government’s capital budget is about £3bn,” says David Philips, head of devolved and local government finance at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
“Even if they were to do this over two terms, you’re looking at some £300m a year, which is 10% of the Welsh government’s capital budget. Then there’s lots of ambition for other things, like social housing, railways and investment in school and health facilities,” adds Philips.
The two parties topping the polls, Plaid and Reform, agree on the need for a new road, yet hold differing views on how to pay. At the Newport launch of Reform’s manifesto for the Senedd elections, party leader Nigel Farage said he would build a “toll road”, while Plaid have not laid out how they would fund the scheme.
“It comes with some kind of cost,” says Philips. “Either you need to borrow in an expensive way, or you need to cut back some other areas, or you need to raise additional revenue.”
Putting 1p on all rates of income tax across Wales could raise £400m a year, Philips calculates, although he notes “you could say this is for an investment in transport, but people in north Wales wouldn’t be very happy about that”.
Plaid and Reform also offer vastly differing visions for the Welsh economy: Reform has previously proposed reviving Wales’ industrial past, including coal mining and steel making, while Plaid has promised to increase public procurement from Welsh businesses and create a new national development agency.
Whoever runs the next government in Cardiff will face a “Welsh budget under significant pressure”, according to the IFS, amid a slowdown in increases in UK government funding, and a growing demand for health and social care, prompting the thinktank to call on the main parties to be “more upfront about fiscal reality”.
Back in the 1970s, when Wales began to lose mining and heavy industry, it had some success in attracting foreign investment, partly thanks to transport links offered by the M4. However, much of this investment proved temporary, and many large multinationals have come and gone in the intervening years, including carmaker Ford, which closed its Bridgend engine plant in 2020, as well as South Korea’s LG and white goods manufacturer, Hotpoint.
Transport infrastructure could now deter other overseas investors from setting up in Wales, according to Gareth Jenkins, executive chair of manufacturer FSG Tool and Die, located a quick – or sometimes slow – 20 miles up the road from Newport in Llantrisant, which is also home to the Royal Mint, producer of the UK’s coins.
FSG employs about 100 people, mostly specialist engineers who make the tools that allow Starbucks to produce reusable cups, McDonald’s to make plastic sauce pots, and Tesla to make battery cases for its electric vehicles, for customers as far afield as the US and Bolivia.
Roads are “generally a nightmare”, says Jenkins. “I can’t prove it’s affecting inward investment, but, if I was an investor, I’d be thinking: ‘Can I get a good building cheaply? Where can I get my people from? Can I move my stuff?’” says the plain-speaking Welshman, who previously advised the Welsh government on the manufacturing sector after the financial crisis.
Manufacturing still accounts for about a sixth of Wales’s economic output, the highest share in the UK relative to the economy’s size, according to industry body, MakeUK. The sector employs 138,000 people in Wales, vital for a country with lower employment and higher economic inactivity than any other UK nation or region apart from Northern Ireland.
“For manufacturing in Wales, there’s two routes out, one in the north, one in the south. It’s not acceptable to say ‘We’ve got what we’ve got and we’re not going to spend any more money on the M4.’ You’ve got to move goods around and it isn’t going to go from Cardiff airport and is very unlikely to go from Port Talbot docks.”
The Welsh government recently won a case over its £205m decade-long subsidy package for state-owned Cardiff airport, brought by its rival in Bristol. Companies such as FSG are calling for an expansion in the airport’s cargo operations beyond several weekly freight flights to China, launched in 2024.
Public services and transport are the main concerns for Cheryl Tucker, and former colleagues Lisa Owen and Karen Jones, enjoying a coffee and a catch-up at a cafe around the corner from FSG.
Top priority would be more hospitals and improved medical care, Tucker says, adding “but you need a good road network to get to hospital or other places”.
Despite these frustrations, their disenchantment with politics means Tucker and her friends are not planning to vote in the Senedd election.
Traffic & Transport
Number of cloned number plates on UK roads at record high, data shows | Transport
The number of reported “cloned” vehicles involved in offences on UK roads has reached a record high, official data shows.
More than 11,400 drivers contacted the DVLA last year after being issued with fines for offences they said they did not recognise or accept responsibility for – most of which are believed to be down to cloning, where a number plate is copied fraudulently on similar vehicles to avoid enforcement cameras.
The number of complaints about misattribution was 9% higher than in 2024 and almost double the figure recorded in 2018, according to the RAC motoring organisation, which analysed data obtained under freedom of information requests.
The rising figures underscore concerns about the number of illegal number plates in use, allowing criminals to evade detection and dangerous drivers to avoid being caught.
Although drivers should provide number plate suppliers with the V5C vehicle logbook and proof of identity, an investigation last year uncovered more than 130 official suppliers in the UK willing to sell cloned versions, which allow drivers to dodge police and congestion charges.
Cloning vehicles has left many innocent car owners having to struggle to prove they were not responsible when enforcement camera images apparently caught their vehicle committing offences.
A parallel concern is the use of “ghost” plates which are designed to be unreadable by the UK’s 18,000 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, which enforce safety measures such as speed limits or lane closures on smart motorways.
The RAC said the UK needed to overhaul an outdated and poorly regulated number plate system. Its head of policy, Simon Williams, said: “If number plate suppliers were carrying out all the checks they’re supposed to, it would be much harder for dodgy drivers to buy cloned plates in the first place. It’s only when a fine arrives at a vehicle keeper’s home address that they realise someone else is driving around using their vehicle’s number plate illegally.”
He said that more also needed to be done to catch drivers with ghost plates, “whether that’s more police officers being equipped with handheld devices that can detect if plates are unreadable, updating ANPR cameras and introducing higher security standards for number plates and for those who produce them”.
The government last month said there would be a new nationwide crackdown on illegal number plates, with funding from the Department for Transport for a new roads policing team. A new National Roads Policing Coordination Centre would share intelligence as well as trialling new technology such as specialised goggles to detect number plates that have been designed to be unreadable by cameras.
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Drivers using an incorrectly displayed number plate can be fined up to £1,000.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We’re cracking down on illegal number plates with significant investment in a new roads policing team and innovative tech to stamp out the scourge of cloned numberplates.
“Illegal number plates help facilitate crime, and we are supporting the police to work with the DVLA to make it easier to report these crimes and support victims through a new digital tool.”
Traffic & Transport
‘A big responsibility’: Clifton Suspension Bridge master hails £7.6m renovation | Bristol
The job does not give the holder age-old perks such as the right to drive sheep across the great structure, but the title “bridge master” does have a certain ring to it.
“I don’t tend to say I’m the bridge master when I’m at a party,” said Tristan Ralph, the current holder of the title. “But people do seem to know and bring it up. It’s a job less ordinary, isn’t it? It’s a Victorian sounding title and people are really, really interested.”
There is, however, nothing ceremonial about the title. Ralph is in charge of maintaining and running the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a UK feat of engineering, without any public money.
“It does feel a big responsibility,” said Ralph. “When the chairman of the trustees rang to say we’d like you to do it, you suddenly feel the pressure. It’s so famous and people in Bristol, quite rightly, are proud and almost possessive of it. Bristolians think: ‘It’s our bridge.’”
The bridge master – and the not-for-profit charity the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust – have the task of maintaining the bridge “in perpetuity”. “I’m a temporary custodian,” Ralph said. “When I’m finished, I have to make sure it is handed on in just [as] good a condition or better than I inherited it.”
Ralph, a bridge engineer by profession, was speaking to mark the conclusion of a large refurbishment project that has taken two and a half years and involved hand-painting more than 4,000 original iron chain links and installing an energy-efficient lighting system. It has cost about £7.5m. “It’s been a big job,” he said. “But it’s come pretty much bang on budget, which is rare these days.”
That is important because, to many visitors’ surprise, the bridge does not receive public funding. “The upkeep of the bridge, the running of it, the salary costs and everything are all paid only by our toll money,” said Ralph. “People think that we might get something from local or central government. But, no, it’s just the toll money.”
Motorised vehicles – including motorcycles – pay £1 to cross the bridge. There is no charge for pedestrians, cyclists or horse riders. As well as being a beautiful structure, it is also a vital part of Bristol and North Somerset’s transport system.
Ralph said: “It draws the tourists in. We get visitors from hundreds of countries every year but primarily, it’s still a vital piece of local infrastructure. If the bridge wasn’t here, the difference it would make to Bristol traffic would be incredible. We average over 8,000 vehicles a day still. Maintaining it as a transport link is utterly vital.”
The end of the refurbishment does not mean Ralph can rest on his laurels and spend more time hobnobbing with members of the Bridge Owners Forum.
“In a few years, we’ll need to paint the underside of the bridge. The under-bridge gantry unit itself will be replaced over the coming years. So there’s always something. We need to keep on top of things. It’s like your house or your car. If you just ignore it, don’t do things for a couple of years, they start breaking down.”
As in most walks of life, the climate emergency is a challenge Ralph and the trust are having to face. “We were monitoring the bridge daily in the summer with the very hot weather. And maybe if the bridge was being designed today, there would be a little bit more robustness around wind.”
The prevailing south-west wind is not usually a problem and the bridge rarely has to close but if it blows directly through the Avon Gorge it can be more difficult. “We need to keep an eye at both the magnitude of any wind events but also their frequency,” Ralph said.
The engineer admires the bridge’s designers, including Isambard Kingdom Brunel. “It’s remarkably advanced for its time.”
And there is no sign that its days are numbered, largely because the Victorians did not skimp. Ralph said: “There are three layers of chains. The original Brunel design only had two, but because it went from a timber design to a cast-iron deck, they upped it to three.
“There’s a little bit of comfort in there. Today there might be pressure to say, well, can you keep it to two, but in Victorian times they did like to add a little bit of meat on the bones.
“It doesn’t have a finite life. There’s no end date in our plans. We all just keep it going in the highest standards as we can. It’s in really good condition as long as we keep doing what we need to do, keep our attention on it and don’t let things drift. Forever is a long time but there’s no reason why we have any need to worry at the moment.”
Uber has begun a trial of autonomous vehicles on the streets of Manchester as it looks to bring robotaxis to cities around the UK.
The first self-driving cars are operating, using the technology of its partner firms Pony and Verne, with whom Uber recently launched Europe’s first autonomous taxi service in the Croatian capital, Zagreb.
Uber said it was “excited to take this first step toward making this technology accessible to people across the UK”.
In social media posts, Verne said it had “started our autonomous vehicle testing in Manchester”, while Pony said there were “plans to bring robotaxis to the city” and that testing was under way.
The tests involve the company mapping the streets of the city in north-west England with a safety driver behind the wheel and no passengers.
Limited passenger services started last month in London, but with a safety driver in the front seat of cars supplied by Wayve under Transport for London’s licensing rules for private hire vehicles.
The next steps are unclear. Opposition from Uber drivers, their unions and the capital’s politicians to the rollout of robotaxis is mounting. The GMB and ADCU unions have both said thousands of drivers jobs will be lost and have called for help for those affected.
A critical report from London assembly’s transport committee this week called for the government to devolve authority over autonomous taxi services.
It said there was “considerable uncertainty about many of the claimed benefits of autonomous passenger vehicles”, and fears over the impact on public transport and congestion, as well as safeguarding and accessibility for disabled passengers.
There has been no official application to launch passenger services in Manchester so far, and the vehicles are operating under government licence via the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and the Department for Transport.
A spokesperson for Transport for Greater Manchester said it wanted the city’s taxis to be the safest in the country.
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“New technologies play an increasingly important role in the growth of our city region,” they said. “But they need to be introduced responsibly, safely and with real thought about what it means for our residents.
“Although no applications have been made to operate driverless taxis in the Greater Manchester, we’re aware of potential interest from companies to do so.
“Safety will always be our top priority, and we will need strong assurances that no vehicles will operate on our roads that pose any risk to residents.”
Uber said it expected to offering robotaxi trips in as many as 15 cities worldwide by the end of 2026, mainly in the US and the Middle East.
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