|
The M11 link road protest was a major anti-road protest in Leytonstone, London, United Kingdom, in the early to mid-1990s opposing the construction of the "A12 Hackney to M11 link road", also known as the M11 Link Road, which was part of a significant local road scheme to connect traffic from the East Cross Route to the M11, avoiding urban streets. The road had been proposed since the 1960s, as part of the London Ringways, and was an important link between central London and the Docklands to East Anglia. Over the years, though, road protests elsewhere had become increasingly visible, and urban road building had fallen out of favour with the public. Local Member of Parliament Harry Cohen had been a particular vocal opponent of this scheme. The protests reached a new level of visibility during 1993 as part of a grassroots campaign where protesters came from outside the area to support the local opposition of the road. The initial focus was on the removal of a tree on George Green, east of Wanstead, that attracted the attention of local, then national media. The activity peaked in 1994 with several high-profile protesters setting up micronations on property scheduled for demolition, most notably on Claremont Road in Leyton. The final stage of the protest was a single building on Fillebrook Road in Leytonstone, which, due to a security blunder, became occupied by squatters. The road was eventually built as planned, and opened to traffic in 1999, but the increased costs involved in management and policing of protesters raised the profile of such campaigns in the United Kingdom, and contributed to several road schemes being cancelled or reviewed later on in the decade. Those involved in the protest moved on to oppose other schemes in the country, while opinions of the road as built have since been mixed. By 2014, the road had become the ninth most congested in the entire country. ==Background== The origin of the link road stems from what were two major arterial roads out of London (the A11 to Newmarket and Norwich, and the A12 to Colchester, Ipswich and Great Yarmouth) and subsequent improvements. The first of these was the Eastern Avenue improvement, that opened on 9 June 1924, which provided a bypass of the old road through Ilford and Romford. Proposals for the route first arose in the 1960s as part of the London Ringways plan, which would have seen four concentric circular motorways built in the city, together with radial routes, with the M11 motorway ending on Ringway 1, the innermost Ringway, at Hackney Marsh. A section of Ringway 1 known as the East Cross Route was built to motorway standards in the late 1960s and early 1970s and designated as the A102(M). A section of the M11 connecting Ringway 2 (now part of the North Circular Road) and Eastern Avenue to Harlow was completed in the late 1970s,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Motorway Archive )〕 opening to traffic in 1977. The Ringways scheme met considerable opposition; there were protests when the Westway, an urban motorway elevated over the streets of Paddington, was opened in 1970, with local MP John Wheeler later describing the road's presence within 15 metres of properties as "completely unacceptable environmentally," and the Archway Road public inquiry was repeatedly abandoned during the 1970s as a result of protests. The first Link Road Action Group to resist the M11 link road was formed in 1976, and for the next fifteen years activists fought government plans through a series of public inquiries. Their alternative was to build a road tunnel, leaving the houses untouched, but this was rejected on grounds of cost. By 1974, the Greater London Council announced it would not be completing Ringway 1. Drivers travelling in the areas where the new roads would have been built had to continue using long stretches of urban single-carriageway roads. In particular, the suburbs of Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead suffered serious traffic congestion. The Roads for Prosperity white paper published in 1989 detailed a major expansion of the road building programme and included plans for the M12 motorway between London and Chelmsford, as well as many other road schemes. Although Harry Cohen, MP for Leyton and Wanstead suggested in May 1989 that the government should scrap the scheme, a public enquiry was held for the scheme in November. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「M11 link road protest」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|