Work began this week on the first dedicated car sharing lane on a UK motorway, with the government predicting the new High Occupancy Vehicle (HoV) lane near Leeds will be fully operational by spring next year.

The 1.7-mile lane will link the southbound M606 near Bradford to the eastbound M62 towards Leeds, allowing vehicles heading towards Leeds with more than one occupant to bypass traffic at the busy Chain Bar junction.

According to government research, currently over 80 per cent of vehicles using the junction have only one occupant, but once the £3.95m pilot project is open it is estimated those cars carrying a passenger will be able to cut peak journey times by around eight minutes.

Transport minister Tom Harris said the scheme will give drivers an opportunity to reduce their journey time and limit their impact on the environment. "Car sharing is good for drivers and good for the environment," he said. "This trial in West Yorkshire is just one of a series of innovative and imaginative measures being used on the motorway network to tackle congestion and make the best possible use of our available road space."

The move will increase pressure on businesses in the area to provide car sharing schemes for employees and comes just a week after the Department for Transport released new travel planning guidelines for employers. These aim to encourage firms to promote car pooling and other low carbon transport measures capable of cutting the number of commuters travelling to work by car by 15 per cent.

The news completes a mixed week for the government's green transport strategy after reports emerged that plans to introduce a national road-pricing scheme have been "back-burnered".

According to a Daily Telegraph report, the u-turn is expected to be confirmed in the Department for Transport's response to a parliamentary committee's report on the draft local transport bill, which is seen as a key legislative component of any national scheme.

The newspaper quotes a section of the department's statement claiming that " it is not the department's intention, at this stage, to take the separate powers needed to price the national road network".

The government has insisted, however, that there has been no change in policy and that it is still committed to initially developing local road pricing schemes such as Manchester's proposed congestion charge initiative.