So what is the problem with the A2/M2 link road?

Well besides the fact that it would plough straight through some of the most beautiful countryside in Kent, ripping apart several villages along the way. You might want to consider the following points: -

• Swale Borough Council as has been looking for a reason to build this road for 20 years. Plainly then, the motivation for this road comes, not from any strategic transport initiative, but is fuelled by the desire of Swale councillors who think it’s a good idea. And for 20 years they have never found any good reason to build it, that is, until the Kent Science Park came along.
  
  
• Swale Council leader Cllr Andrew Bowles, believes the link is needed to cope with predicted extra traffic generated by the Northern Relief Road (NRR). So Swales’ previous multi-million pound transport policy for relieving the town’s congestion has either been a complete failure before it has even been implemented or the surrounding land will be so over developed that it negates the very purpose for which it was conceived.
  
  
• Building another relief road (A2/M2 link) as a solution to the congestion created by the first one (Northern Relief Road) sums it up really. Do you want to rely on a Borough Council with this kind of track record to provide future transport policy.
  
  
• The Northern Relief Road, if you can still call it that, still has no funding to complete it, and will rely entire on a generous donation from Government for funding.
  
  
• The previous stretch of the Northern Relief Road to gain funding was only one of four projects in the entire UK to do so. Yet Swale, believe they will be able to not only pull this mighty feat off once more, but twice more, as that’s also the plan for the new A2/M2 link.
  
  
• The first feasibility study which cost the tax payer £300,000 proved that the A2/M2 Link road was not viable, but a year later and that outcome, seems to have been conveniently overlooked.
  
  
• Swale Borough Council says that further feasibility and development scenarios need to be developed, although it gives no detail for the basis on which they may be conducted. It also says, on how this might take place, “Work being undertaken by the Kent Science Park”, although to best of Cllr Andrew Bowles’ knowledge the Kent Science Park will not be funding this study.
  
  
• Without the details of a fully quantified expansion plan for the Kent Science Park, any feasibility study conducted now won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.
  
  
• If housing is introduced at a later date as part of a funding initiative, the feasibility of the road will have to be re-evaluated. If this had taken place for the Northern Relief Road perhaps that wouldn’t have been built either.