M6 Widening £1000 per Inch

An extra lane on the M6 motorway is set to become the most expensive piece of Tarmac ever laid at a cost of more than £1,000 per inch.

Planners are widening a 51-mile stretch of the motorway between Birmingham and Manchester.

According to the Highways Agency's own figures, the cost is set to end up at a staggering £2.9 billion, and take almost three years to complete.

Yesterday road builders tried to explain how widening a road by just one lane could cost twice as much money as Britain gives to Africa in a year.

"It is a very difficult way to build a road," said Roger Bailey, of engineering consultancy Faber Maunsell. "In a greenfield site you are in control of your construction planning. But on a live road you have to work round more traffic." The M6 widening, he said, will involve fitting the work around traffic, night shifts and widening dozens of bridges and culverts.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said major project construction costs are now being driven up even further by the Olympics and other major schemes in Europe. "There's a lot of road building going on. The price of construction is going up because there is a lot of work around. Road building is an international market. In the last 10 years costs have gone up 7-9% a year," said a spokesman.