From another forum:
The Telegraph, 02/07/2003
The Tories promised yesterday to raise the motorway speed limit from 70 to 80mph as part of a "fair deal for drivers".
Tim Collins, the shadow transport secretary, said this was part of a set of reforms to be unveiled later this month.
They will include the removal of the bus and taxi lane on the M4 between Heathrow and London and speed cameras that trap motorists "unfairly".
Unnecessary road humps and road tolls will be abolished. Some speed limits, through villages, for example, may be tightened.
Mr Collins said the M4 bus lane introduced in June 1999 was a piece of "nonsense, generating congestion".
He added: "We will stop raising money from cameras for police to buy more cameras that encourage unsafe slow-down-speed-up driving and increase pollution."
The Tory leader, encouraged by recent polls showing a slump in Labour support, believes that the public is prepared to listen to what the Tories are saying on policy after years of indifference.
Mr Collins said: "We believe it is important to stand up for the rights of motorists.
"There is no shortage of parties prepared to be nasty to motorists. There is a vacancy for a party that is prepared to stand up for them."
Edmund King, the executive director of the RAC Foundation, welcomed the speed limit proposals.
"Our policy is an 80mph speed limit on motorways in good weather but with the proviso that it is enforced and not seen as a limit that means 90mph," he said.
"We have said that speed cameras should be placed at accident blackspots and traffic lights where people regularly jump them.
"That would be much more effective than putting cameras on dual carriageways and motorways, which are the safest roads."
The AA was more cautious. It said: "If the speed limit were increased to 80mph, it is likely that the Government would have to offer something back to the road safety campaigners, such as more speed cameras on motorways.
"On speed humps, quite a lot of councils are removing them already after the residents who campaigned for them discovered that the cure was worse than the disease."
Government transport policy also comes under fire from the Confederation of British Industry, which gives warning today of "another decade of misery" unless Labour produces some credible proposals for road and rail improvements.
The employers' organisation says it is "deeply disappointed" with ministers' existing 10-year plan, which it predicts will fail to reduce congestion or relieve rail delays and overcrowding.
It is particularly critical of the failure to press ahead with motorway and trunk road improvements at congestion blackspots and the deferral or downgrading of vital rail improvements.
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