The city that decided to stop building roads

The vote was 23 to 21, taken at ten past eleven at night, and almost nobody noticed. The local paper ran it on page nine, under a photograph of a different meeting entirely.

What the council had agreed, in the flat language of municipal budgeting, was that no further capital would be allocated to the widening, extension or construction of roads within the city boundary. Maintenance would continue. Everything else would not.

The first five years were miserable

Traffic did not evaporate. It compressed. The ring road, already at capacity, became a byword for a certain kind of afternoon, and three successive transport chiefs resigned rather than defend a policy they had inherited.

What actually changed

The honest answer is: less than the campaigners hoped and more than the sceptics will admit. Journey times are broadly what they were. The difference is where the space went.