She also published the Command Paper 'Roads - Delivering Choice and Reliability' setting out more detail on her plans to tackle congestion, both on strategic routes and in our towns and cities.

Today's announcement includes:

- Up to £6bn in funding for improvements to strategic national roads in the period up to 2014 to cut congestion, support economic growth and improve road safety.

- Further details of how the hard shoulder could be used to provide extra space on the motorway network. We are looking in particular at sections of the motorway network previously planned for widening, and at some new locations including the M3 and M4 approaches to London, the M4 and M5 around Bristol and the M3 and M27 around Southampton. We are also considering how to make best use of the extra capacity, including looking at successful examples of dedicated or tolled lane use in America and hard-shoulder running in Europe.

- Revised cost estimates for the Highways Agency Major Roads Programme, including regional priorities.

- Pump priming funding for Cambridgeshire, Reading and Leeds through the up to £200m a year Transport Innovation Fund to allow them to investigate how they can manage congestion in innovative ways.

- The first tranche of performance-based funding from the £60m Urban Congestion Performance Fund. The first performance payments, totalling £6 million, will be shared between Bristol, Greater Manchester, Leicester, London, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and the West Midlands.

- An additional £8m to help local authorities manage their transport assets more effectively.