databases giving the name and locations of bus stops, and where they did they were in a locally developer format. Bus operators were required register their schedules with VOSA which they did on paper at timing point level together with a prose description of the route. An additional problem was that a single bus stop could be served by multiple bus operators who would typically use different names for the same bus stop. The Bus wars in the early period of deregulation added to the confusion and printer timetables at bus stops largely disappeared as bus companies cut costs. In 1986 during the conservative government the M25 motorway was opened by Margaret Thatcher and then in 1989 a white paper titled "Roads for Prosperity" was published which was heralded as 'the biggest road building program since the Romans'. Within a few years however, the M25 was carrying far more traffic than was predicted and plans were drawn up to widen the entire motorway. Other road schemes, including the M3 motorway at Twyford Down, the M11 link road, the Newbury bypass etc. were met with unprecedented levels of opposition which led to a review of transport policy starting in the mid-1990s. Stephen Norris, later to become a strong advocate of cycling and public transport, was appointed as Under-Secretary of State for Transport in 1992 and in 1994 a new revised edition of Planning Policy Guidance 13 acknowledged officially for the first time that new roads lead to additional traffic making new roads much harder to justify; in July the Secretary of State for Transport Brian Mawhinney launched what he termed a 'Great Debate' over about the future direction for transport in the UK; and then in October a major Royal Commission report, Transport and the Environment was published which highlighted the serious environmental consequences of UK's car-based transport system. By the end of 1995 many road schemes had been canceled and the incoming Labour government following the 1997 general election canceled many of the remaining schemes. Under New Labour, John Prescott, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions wanted to an increased role for public transport; Labour's first transport white paper "A New Deal for Transport: Better for everyone" was published in 1998 which included a commitment to create a national multi-modal transport information system by the end of 2000. A subsequent White Paper, the 'Transport Ten