A green campaigner argues that the millions set to be spent on improving a key Northumberland road would be better used encouraging people away from their cars.
The fight to dual the length of the A1 through the county has raged on for years, and is set to make a significant move forward this year.
Highways teams have said work to upgrade the busy road between Morpeth and Ellingham is on track to start this summer - despite a delay to planning approval.
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Among the issues slowing the Department for Transport down is the request for an assessment of the greenhouse gas impact of the scheme.
And Alnwick resident Ryan Hogg believes such an assessment should lead to the scrapping of the plan altogether.
He's launched an online campaign, 'No A1 dualling Northumberland', which calls for road expansion money to be ploughed into making public transport more accessible, along with measures to improve safety on the single carriageway roads.
For Ryan, recent instances of extreme weather, which are likely to become more frequent as climate change intensifies, solidified his concerns about global heating - and convinced him that sacrifices are needed to prevent climate catastrophe.
He said: "It just seems to me that when we're trying to reach net-zero carbon emissions, when Northumberland is trying to de-carbonise, that dualling the A1 is the complete opposite approach.
"Direct air pollution from tailpipe emissions is an obvious problem, but as engines generally get cleaner and the move towards electric vehicles accelerates, it still leaves tyre emissions as a significant source, this is a leading source of microplastic pollution in the world's oceans."
He argued easier access to the road would encourage more people to drive, bringing more cars to popular tourist destinations along the Northumberland coast which are already struggling with parking.
The Alnwick 31-year-old acknowledged that many Northumberland communities are in desperate need of better transport links, but he said better public transport as opposed to improved roads would be both more environmentally-friendly and help more locals.
The £290m set to be devoted to the entirety of scheme up to Alnwick could be better used for creating such connections, he argued.
He said: "I'm not calling for cars to be banned or anything like that, it's just about thinking about transport in a more sustainable way.
"At the moment if you want to commute by bus it will take three times as long and cost more than driving, which means we have a lot of car journeys with just one person in each car. At the moment there doesn't seem to be any concerted effort to improve public transport between major towns."
He argued faster and more regular buses making fewer stops between Northumberland's big towns and Newcastle would encourage more commuting on buses, while services covering smaller towns and villages could also be increased.
Whilst the planned reopening of the Northumberland Line will bring rail services to South East Northumberland, more train journeys are needed across the route to make train travel a realistic possibility. Offering more local train routes, whilst allowing trains to the likes of London and Edinburgh to make fewer stops, would benefit all train users, he said, while a switch to electric trains would make an increase in services more sustainable.
"For example, if you want to go from Pegswood to Morpeth you should be able to go the three minutes down the line to Morpeth Station, but because of all the demands on the line there are only a couple of services a day," the campaigner said.
And while some argue that fully dualling the A1 is vital for economic growth in more remote Northumberland communities, Ryan argued improved public transport could bring similar benefits but ensure they were accessible to everyone.
He said: "It's not about putting a block on economic development. The converse of improving the roads is that not everyone can drive: if you've got a teenager who can't drive wanting to get to work, how would that help them? There's plenty of people who can't afford a car, and for them it's a chicken and egg thing, you can't get to a job without a car but you can't get a car without a job. There are plenty of people who can't drive because of sight issues, or older people who can't drive.
"We are leaving people behind who can't drive."
And whilst safety is also put forward as a motivation for dualling the road, the campaigner argued that cheaper interventions like average speed limit cameras could also be effective in making the road less dangerous.
Ryan added: "There's a whole host of things that could be done: it's not to say we should make the A1 as it is any worse, it's about whether we could put that investment elsewhere."
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