Lewis ClarkeA new road to help with congestion on the M4 is back in the spotlight for the Senedd electionFor more than 30 years, a new motorway south of Newport has been on and off the political agenda.
First proposed in 1991, a relief road to deal with the daily problem of too many cars trying to get through tunnels that are too small was last ditched by former first minister Mark Drakeford in 2019.
But the congestion remains - and in this Senedd election the issue has returned, courtesy of some of the parties battling to win the 7 May election.
Reform UK and the Welsh Conservatives say they will build the relief road Drakeford axed, while Plaid Cymru says it will come up with a plan for a new project, claiming that older schemes are now out of date.
But concerns about the environmental impact persist and the feeling that a new road will solve the problems of the M4 is not shared by the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Wales Green Party and Welsh Labour, who are all opposed.
A government finance expert warned that while it might not be unfeasible to build the project it might require "difficult trade-offs" - such as cuts.
And the former Labour first minister Mark Drakeford who ditched the scheme six years ago warned that the costs today would be "entirely prohibitive".
UK government figures from 2024 say an average of 81,578 vehicles passed eastbound every day between the two junctions flanking the Brynglas Tunnels.
That is lower than estimates from 2019 of 85,379, but higher than 2005, when a manual count estimated 72,540 went through the tunnels.
It can be easy to find people in Newport who have opinions about the M4 and have experienced the hold ups on the road.
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Liz Thorne, 67, said she uses the M4 at least five times a week, and is in favour of a relief road to help workers who are stuck "in that traffic every single night".
She says there is always a "big long queue" once you reach the Newport part of the motorway.
"It hits 50mph and everything grinds to a halt," she said.
"It takes you a good half an hour or so just to get to the next junction."
Liz Thorne says it can take half an hour to get between junctionsAndrew Lightbown, a priest who said he uses the M4 "very frequently", agreed that "there are traffic jams quite a lot of the time".
But the 59-year-old thought the relief road was a "cheap electoral promise".
"I think that, unfortunately, we live in an area where smooth traffic flow along the M4 and through [it] is probably logistically almost impossible, and we probably ought to just accept that," he said.
"It's been explored to death. It can't be done."
Andrew Lightbown thinks a relief road was a "cheap electoral promise"The two parties of the right - Reform and the Tories - have both said they would build the relief road if they got into power.
How they might do it differs.
Reform's leader Nigel Farage talked about private funding and a possible toll road.
The party's manifesto also says that funding could come from a "Reform-instituted British Sovereign Wealth Fund" - which would require the party to win a UK Parliament election.
PA MediaDan Thomas (centre) said that many of the train stations the Welsh government wants to build were not needed and the money could be spent on roadsAt a Channel 4 election debate, Reform leader Dan Thomas suggested that money could be diverted from the railways to roads, citing the £14bn Labour says the UK government will spend.
He said most of the seven train stations the UK government has said it would fund were not "needed or wanted".
"We could easily divert money from that scheme," he said.
Railway spending is mostly controlled by the UK government, while motorways are handled by the Welsh government - meaning it comes from different pots of money.
Labour's £14bn figure was itself criticised, with only £445m in spending actually having been announced.
The Tories' manifesto does not say how they would pay for a relief road, but a party spokesperson said the cost would be shared with "a future UK government". They oppose making motorists pay a toll.
Motorists travelling along the M4 near Newport have complained of long traffic queues for yearsPlaid Cymru's leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was in favour of a "road answer" to congestion on the M4 when he appeared in a Walesonline election debate.
Ap Iorwerth said a Plaid government would put a "plan together, starting to build the case".
He did not commit to a specific version of a new road - the version that had been endorsed previously by the Welsh government was known as the "black" route and had been opposed by Plaid at the time it was ditched.
Plaid had supported the "blue route" - upgrading an existing trunk road.
A spokesperson for Plaid said that previous plans are "now out of date" with environmental protections in the Gwent Levels strengthened.
"We will consider feasibility, affordability, sustainability and the environmental impact, then decide on the best way forward," the spokesperson said.
IWA/CILTOld proposals for a relief road included colour-coded black, blue, red and purple routes, with the yellow line marking the railwayAlthough a public inquiry had found that the case for the road was "compelling", former first minister Drakeford axed the scheme in 2019 because of its cost and the impact on the environment.
At least £114m was spent on the road before the plans were cancelled.
Since the Welsh government ended its support for the relief road, its strategy to tackle congestion has largely focused on traffic flow improvements and public transport.
It won funding for a set of five railway stations between Cardiff and the River Severn - among the seven recently backed by the UK government.
Drakeford told BBC Wales that his decision at the time was made because the merits of the plan outweighed "the demerits".
He had been concerned at the proposal's cost and the impact it would have on the ability of the government to invest in other priorities.
"I haven't changed my assessment", he said, "and I am very sure that the costs today would be entirely prohibitive."
Huw Fairclough/Getty ImagesThe twin-bored Brynglas Tunnels on the M4 motorway in Newport opened in 1967There are different prices estimated for how much the project might cost in 2026.
Tory Senedd leader Millar told the WalesOnline debate that the cost for a relief road is currently £1.8bn, while Reform's Thomas estimated at the same event that it was between £1.5bn to £2bn.
David Phillips at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that while it would not be "infeasible" to build the road, it would "require difficult trade-offs" - with the £3bn capital budget already stretched given commitments on social housing, schools, hospitals, rail and other road schemes.
He speculated that Reform's proposals could involve something like the "mutual investment model" - where the private sector borrows up front and the Welsh government pays back over time.
He said the capital budget could be cut back to fund the road, or you could use the investment model, "but that is expensive once the payments have to be made".
"A third option would be to fund it from an increase in taxation," Phillips said.
"A penny on income tax rates would raise around £400 million a year, on average, over the Senedd term."
But he was not sure "if people in north Wales would favour such a deal, unless there was a substantial programme of investment in roads in the north too".
Neither Labour, nor the Greens or the Lib Dems have backed a relief road in this election campaign.
The Greens say in their manifesto that maintaining roads we already have "must come before building new ones".
Jane Dodds, Welsh Lib Dem leader, has said she wanted to see investment in infrastructure "across the whole of Wales".
Welsh Labour said it stood by its decision "not to build an M4 relief road and to explore other options to relieve pressure on the route" including sustainable public transport and active travel interventions.
Getty ImagesWater voles are among the species found in the Gwent Levels where previous proposed routes could have impactedEnvironmentalists had opposed the relief road - objecting to the impact on nature sites along the Gwent Levels.
Friends of the Earth Cymru's Haf Elgar claimed that new roads "lead to more cars on the road, more carbon emissions, more air pollution, and distract from the much-needed public transport improvements that would help people travel safely and affordably".
Catherine Linstrum, a former Green candidate who was involved in the campaign against the road but has now moved away from Wales, said: "The Gwent Levels is made up of a large number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).
"Anything that eats into those SSSIs is going to have a knock-on effect for the whole area.
"If there was a new motorway going across the Gwent you could kind of say goodbye to the levels as they are. They are a unique landscape within Wales."
She expected that a renewed project would again face opposition: "It's such a tired old thing.
"This is what everybody did in the 1960s and the 1970s thinking it would ease traffic, and it hasn't."
Additional reporting by Elis Sandford.
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