M74 extension jobs boost 'not credible'

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Apr 21, 2002 | by Stephen Naysmith

THE "jobs boost" for Scotland which would result from the controversial M74 extension has undergone a 15-fold increase from 2900 to 44,000 in just eight years, the Sunday Herald has learned.

According to sustainable transport pressure group Transform Scotland, the figures demonstrate how desperate planners and the Scottish Executive are to win over the public to the (pounds) 245 million scheme.

David Spaven, chair of Transform, said such wildly varying predictions were nearly worthless. "This shows the increasingly desperate lengths which proponents of the M74 extension are having to go to justify the project," he added.

At a conference in Edinburgh tomorrow Spaven will point out that an independent report referenced in The Herald in 1994 claimed the motorway extension would generate "between 2900 and 4000 jobs". But by 1998, a Scottish Enterprise study was quoting a figure of 6000- 6700.

In 2001, Glasgow City Council leaders argued the scheme would bring 12,000 new jobs to the city, sparking massive regeneration. That was followed up with a credulous report in The Scotsman - just a month later - which suggested completing the link would create 28,000 jobs and safeguard 14,000 more.

The most recent figure, says Spaven, is a claim from Glasgow Chamber of Commerce last September that "it has been calculated there is the opportunity to secure or safeguard 44,000 jobs as a result of the new road".

"Over eight years we have seen increasingly wild claims," Spaven said. "This shows there has been a real lack of robust analysis of the actual effect of this major piece of transport infrastructure. Instead we have a number of figures bandied about by specialist interests with a terrible lack of intellectual integrity."

Spaven will make a keynote speech at the conference run by Transform Scotland, which aims to examine the links between transport and the economy.

Speakers at the conference will challenge the conventional view that economic growth inevitably leads to more traffic and that alternatives to road-building can damage business.

Spaven said: "The M74 extension has been backed by ministers and is almost a fait accomplit, but there has been no analysis of alternatives to a five-lane motorway. That is ludicrous in this day and age."