REMEMBER those strident anti-motorway protesters who prophesied the M65's extension would mean an environmental nightmare for East Lancashire?

Where are they now - when, just as this newspaper and the M65's backers said, it is proved the new motorway has improved the environment for thousands of people?

For a survey by children at a Blackburn school shows how much traffic has been reduced at Brownhill - once our region's most notorious congestion blackspot.

They found a dramatic drop over a year in the number of lorries using the roads to and from the Brownhill junction and that the overall traffic on them was down by as much as 50 per cent.

But that just does not mean that tens of thousands of vehicles are, precisely as was forecast, using the M65 instead.

It also means that life for householders and road-users around Brownhill and for miles beyond is better and safer.

Despite what the invading anti-motorway eco-warriors and their supporters here in East Lancashire claimed, the M65 is turning out to be both the green motorway - and the economic lifeline - we always believed it would be.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.