13 December 2002
The local government-led package includes around £2bn for schemes to widen major trunk roads and motorways, and rail improvements worth £1.6bn.
The biggest road-widening programme in the past 20 years covers expansion of the infamous bottlenecks on the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester, as well as improvements to the M1, M4, M5 and the A303, next to the World Heritage site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire.
Darling said: 'The time has come to face up to the fact that some of our roads are 30-40 years old, especially some of the strategic corridors.'
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