Chapter 3 - Roads: smarter travel CM 6234

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Our goal is a road network that provides a more reliable and freer-flowing system for motorists, other road users and businesses, where travellers can make informed choices about how and when they travel, and so minimise the adverse impact of road traffic on the environment and other people.

The challenge

3.1 For most people, most of the time, the road network functions well. So car ownership remains an attractive personal choice, giving us access to employment, shops and leisure facilities. Our roads also provide the backbone for bus services, which carry 65 per cent of all public transport passengers. And they are central to our freight industry, carrying 81 per cent of goods moved by weight.

3.2 There are many places, especially in peak hours, where road capacity and the pattern of road use results in slow and unreliable journeys. The road network experiences different pressures at different times. For example the chart opposite illustrates how school travel patterns can affect journey times and speeds on the A14.

A14 average weekday speeds and journey times

3.3 These factors have a significant impact on:

individuals, through frustration and the consequences of unreliable journey times;
businesses, through the cost of lost time as their employees or goods are caught in traffic; and
the environment, with traffic caught in congestion causing more air pollution and CO₂ emissions.

3.4 And, in spite of our excellent safety record, every year some 3,500 people still die in road accidents.

Where we want to be

3.5 Looking ahead 30 years we need to be in a position where:

we continue to improve safety;
we identify, fund, and deliver promptly additional road capacity where this is justified - balancing the needs of motorists and other road users with wider concerns about the impact on the environment, including the landscape;
we get ever greater performance out of the road network through improved management;
we facilitate smarter individual choices about the trips we need to make, giving people alternatives to using their car, particularly for short journeys; and
and promote these choices by ensuring that new ways of paying for road use are developed so they become practical options.

What we have achieved

Safety

3.6 Britain's roads are among the safest in the world. Total deaths and serious injuries on the road network were down by 22 per cent in 2003 compared to the average for 1994-98. The number of children killed or seriously injured is down by 40 per cent over the same period. Further details are in Chapter 11.

Capacity

3.7 We are adding capacity to the road network, largely by widening roads which already exist (see box). Decisions on capacity have reflected our environmental objectives. For example, proposals submitted by Suffolk County Council for a western bypass of Sudbury demonstrated transport benefits and provided relief to Sudbury by removing through traffic from the town, but the benefits were outweighed by the adverse environmental impacts of the scheme. We therefore rejected the proposal and advised the local authority to consider alternatives. And in the West Midlands, we rejected proposals for bypasses around Stourbridge and Wolverhampton in July 2003. These new roads would have run through open countryside and would have had a significant adverse effect on the landscape.

3.8 We are also speeding up delivery of the roads programme. The Highways Agency has undertaken a series of major changes in the way major road schemes are developed. These are focused on:

improving the design, costing and practicality of road schemes by appointing the contractors when the preferred route is announced;
faster, quality-driven, procurement practices;
better and earlier engagement with the public and other stakeholders; and
improved team-working within the Agency and faster responses to public inquiries.

3.9 These measures have already improved the Agency's capacity to cut substantially the time needed to deliver individual improvements, as well as improving design, reducing construction problems, and increasing certainty about costs. The Highways Agency will be sharing its experience of delivering major road schemes with local highway authorities, to improve the delivery of local road schemes.

Investing in the road network

Over the past six years we have made real progress in developing a programme which will deliver significant improvements to both the strategic and local road networks. The Highways Agency has a programme of major projects(1) which include:

widening of the M25 - six schemes;
widening and improvement of the M1 - four schemes; and
the A14 connecting the East Coast ports with the Midlands - three schemes.

The Highways Agency has completed 20 major schemes since 2002, plus the M6 Toll, which is now producing improved traffic flows on the strategic road network around Birmingham.The Highways Agency is also taking forward a programme of smaller schemes which will help to make best use of the strategic road network by tackling local bottlenecks, improving junctions and addressing safety issues.

In all its work the Highways Agency pursues designs which respect the environment using both proven approaches and new innovation, such as grassed drainage channels to help make road drainage more sustainable.

We have also developed a programme of improvements to the local road network delivered by local highway authorities. Since 2000, we have given provisional or full acceptance to 79 schemes including 28 bypasses, of which 27 have been completed and opened to traffic. Fifteen schemes are currently under construction.

3.10 We do not want to lose the benefits of this extra capacity, so we have started to consider how best to implement demand management policies - see Managing Our Roads(2).The results of the Feasibility Study on Road Pricing established at that time are summarised later in this chapter, together with plans for taking this further forward.

Strategic roads in England

This map has been produced by DfT's GIS Unit. This map is based upon Ordnance Survey material with permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office © Crown copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Department for Transport 100020237 2004 gisu040510yrp10

Network management

3.11 We have also made progress in improving the day by day, hour by hour management of the road network. For our strategic roads the Highways Agency has:

begun to deploy traffic officers to work alongside the police to get traffic moving again as soon as it is safe to do so after incidents. Seven regional control centres, jointly staffed by the Highways Agency and the police, will support this work;
improved its response to winter weather conditions, with further improvements being readied for next winter;
improved management of traffic where there are roadworks; and
invested in new systems to collect and process data on traffic flows, turning it into useful information for motorists - before they begin a journey, and during a journey to warn of conditions ahead.

3.12 In parallel we have brought forward a series of initiatives to improve the way local highways authorities manage their road networks. The Traffic Management Bill:

places a network management duty on local authorities with each authority required to appoint a traffic manager;
gives local authorities greater control over when and where utility companies carry out street works, including a new regime of permits, to minimise disruption;
gives local authorities outside London more scope to take over enforcement of driving and parking offences from the police; and
gives Transport for London a stronger strategic role in London.

Smarter choices

3.13 School travel plans, workplace travel plans and personalised journey planning have helped prompt people to consider, and take up, alternatives to the routine use of their own car, especially for journeys at peak hours.

3.14 New research has been published in parallel with this White Paper(3). The findings illustrate the significant impact these measures can have on traffic.

Workplace travel plans - produced by employers and aimed at reducing car use for travel to work and travel for business.	Workplace travel plans can reduce commuter car driving by between 10 per cent and 30 per cent at a cost to the local authority of £2 to £4 per head.
School travel plans - a series of practical steps to improve the safety of children and therefore make walking, cycling or public transport a more attractive option.	Reduced school run traffic by between 8 to 15 per cent, with some high-performing schools achieving reductions over 20 per cent.
Individualised marketing - which applies private sector marketing techniques to encourage people to use alternatives to cars.	Pilots delivered reductions in car use of between 7 and 15 per cent in urban areas and 2 to 6 per cent in rural and smaller urban areas. Costs for large-scale implementation likely to be less than £20 per head.
Public transport information and marketing - raising the profile of buses and other public transport in local communities.	Budgets for such work of £60,000 to £300,000 a year have helped deliver city-wide increases in bus use of between 1.5 per cent and 5 per cent, when combined with other improvements

3.15 Compared to the cost of investing in new infrastructure, such schemes also offer significant value for money for the taxpayer. As a result, we will continue to promote this approach by:

ensuring that every school in England has a travel plan by 2010;
providing free consultancy advice for organisations creating workplace travel plans until at least 2006. We will focus this advice on workplace, tourism and leisure sites where our research tells us it is most effective;
making sure that the public sector leads by example. All Government departments have been set a target of reducing car commuting to their workplaces by 5 per cent by 2006; and
supporting local authorities in building schemes like these into their Local Transport Plans.

3.16 We have already started working with the largest authorities to develop targets for the spread of schemes to promote smarter choices and for their impact on the use of cars, buses, cycling and walking for local journeys (see Chapter 6 for more details on walking and cycling). New guidance will also require local authorities to assess the potential complementary impact of such measures as part of making an economic case for any major transport scheme.

3.17 Other measures can also help to support smarter choices. For instance carpool (or High Vehicle Occupancy) lanes can help encourage people to share a car by creating dedicated lanes which will be reserved for vehicles carrying two or more people. We will announce the site selected for a pilot scheme later this year. And we want to encourage local authorities to review priorities and reallocate space in town centres to encourage walking, improve access and the pedestrian environment in town centres.

Technology

3.18 We are making good use of developments in technology to support our objectives to inform road users of choices before they travel, to keep them informed while they travel, and to target the efforts of traffic managers. The motoring industry is also improving engines, increasing energy efficiency and reducing emissions.

Cleaner cars

New cars today are far cleaner than they were a decade ago. They emit less carbon and fewer pollutants. They are also far more energy efficient - this benefits the motorist and the environment.

There is a wide range of prospective new technologies and fuels including hydrogen fuel cell technology and also hybrid (internal combustion and electric) technology which could be a stepping stone to fuel cell transportation. More details on this, and other ways that cars will be cleaner in the future, are in Chapter 10.

We want to continue to encourage the development, introduction and take-up of new vehicle technologies and fuels and ensure that UK industry takes full advantage of the opportunities this offers, making this country a world leader in this field.

3.19 We have also embarked on a radical modernisation programme of registration and inspection services for road users, to make them more customer-focused, accessible and efficient. All of this will be backed up by enforcement that ensures that only those who meet the required standards, and who register, insure and tax their vehicles, are permitted on the roads.

Services for road users

For more and more of us, the web is a key way to access information and services of all kinds. On-line vehicle tax renewal is a new service, already available to some motorists, and available at any time. Instead of putting the onus on the vehicle owner to prove that the car is insured and MOT'd, the system will itself check with insurance and MOT databases. And instead of payment by cash or cheque only, it will become possible to pay by card or by direct debit. The new service started to roll out in February 2004 and, over the next couple of years, it will be extended to more and more motorists.

We will also improve the integration between the different services we offer motorists. This will allow us to offer new, more innovative, services. For instance, it should be possible to tell us once about a change of address rather than telling each agency separately. It should be possible to give vehicle owners greater advance notice - perhaps by text message or e-mail - of forthcoming due dates for vehicle tests, insurance or tax.

Not only will such changes improve services to customers, they will also ensure that the information which underpins a wide range of broader services - from traffic enforcement on the roads, to bus-lane management, local congestion charging and action to tackle abandoned vehicles - is accurate and can be used effectively.

Driving licences can be made far more secure and less easily forged than at present. The Government is currently exploring proposals to include the driving licence as part of a far more secure 'family' of identity cards, helping to tackle the serious problems of impersonation and identity theft.

Ensuring road-users meet their obligations to others

All drivers and vehicle owners must meet their legal obligations to tax and insure their vehicle. The minority who don't comply impose extra costs on law-abiding road users, through higher premiums and taxes.

In the past it has been too easy for a minority to evade their responsibilities. Little data was available to the police and other enforcement bodies. And action could usually only be taken if offenders happened to be spotted on the road. The Government - working with the police and others - has started to tackle this long-standing problem in new ways.

For vehicle owners - commercial and private - one of the annual obligations is to have their lorry, bus, van, car or bike tested under the MOT scheme or its equivalent for large commercial vehicles. This involves a significant investment of time and money - especially for commercial operators. We will explore ways of maintaining and improving standards while minimising the impact on vehicle owners.

A central MOT database - due to be rolled out from 2004-05 - will help us be more pro-active in identifying and following up vehicles which have not been tested.

Greater use of the insurance industry's Motorists Insurance Database will help us be tougher on insurance evasion, helping us to identify and crack down on insurance cheats.

The essence of a new approach will be greater use of intelligence to assess risk, then focusing inspection and enforcement work on the areas where the risk is greatest. This is already happening with road-side checks of heavy goods vehicles.

New technology also offers the opportunity to identify vehicles more effectively, helping enforce current licensing and taxation obligations. Potentially, these technologies could eventually change the very nature of vehicle testing, reducing - or even eliminating - the need for physical checks.

What we are going to do next

3.20 Policies to promote smarter choices and better network management, together with well-targeted additional capacity, will make a difference. But looking further ahead, they will not be enough on their own to prevent congestion spreading to longer periods each day, and to more roads, increasing the suffering of road-users, business and our wider society. The chart overleaf illustrates how total traffic, and therefore pressure on the road network, would continue to grow.

Increase in traffic from 2000 levels (all roads, England)(4)

3.21 The projected increase is unacceptable. No-one gains from increasing levels of congestion. As well as being frustrating for those caught in queues, it is exacting a growing economic cost. Time spent in jams is not available for other activities and adds problems to business of unpredicatability and increased duration to journeys.

3.22 If we are to make a step change in the quality of service provided to road users, we need - in addition to the policies already in place - to revisit the way we pay for using the road network. We are already used to paying for using telephones in ways which reflect the demand on the telephone network - more when it is busy, less at other times. And with that principle established, companies are able to offer a variety of packages to suit individuals' patterns of use. Looking ahead, the key strategic choice for road users is between:

service levels which continually deteriorate (since we cannot build our way out of congestion);
new ways of paying for road use, which incentivise smarter individual choices about when and how we travel. We know there are acceptable alternatives for some people from the research described in paragraph 3.14, and just relatively few people changing behaviour in response to pricing makes a substantial difference to congestion.

3.23 There is a need for a mature discussion as to which approach we take. The Government view is that the costs of inaction or unrestricted road-building are too high for society. The time has come seriously to consider the role that could be played by some form of road pricing policy.

3.24 At its simplest, this could involve making new capacity available only in return for a charge. This is an approach taken in many other European countries. And the M6 Toll road has shown that many motorists here are also willing to pay extra for more reliable journeys. Although this approach could not be applied widely, there is some scope for new tolled roads:

we recently announced our intention to assess whether this would be an alternative to widening the M6 north of Birmingham. Instead of adding lanes to the current motorway, an alternative would be to construct a parallel road, and toll its access. This could give drivers more choice; and
additional tolled capacity in urban areas is far more difficult, given the pressures on land. But there are examples elsewhere in the world, such as the tunnels at Versailles, where tolled new capacity has been introduced successfully in an urban environment.

3.25 But we will not address the long term risk of higher congestion just by adding new capacity, even if it is tolled. And it will not resolve the problems on our current road network. We need to consider seriously the case for a different way of paying for our current road network.

Charging for current capacity

3.26 As a first step, we established a study of the practical feasibility of road pricing, involving key stakeholders including road user and environmental groups. The report is published in parallel with this strategy (5). It recognises that a different form of road pricing could play an important part - alongside complementary policies - in addressing the challenges that we face over the next 30 years. It considered what a national road pricing scheme might look like and whether or not it would work.

3.27 The study concluded that local government would have to be involved in any national scheme which also aims to tackle congestion. On this basis, the study looked at the practicalities involved in implementing a scheme in which:

central government designed and operated a national distance charge, based on systems fitted in all cars, following international negotiation on standards, with a common back office and a consequential reduction in other current motoring taxes; and
there was the facility for local variation in the distance charge - up and down - to reflect congested and uncongested conditions and other external costs.

3.28 The option to vary the charge would not apply to all roads. Typically it would apply in larger urban areas (but potentially in other places where traffic volume is a problem, such as national parks). As such, it would be important for the relevant local authority or authorities to be fully involved in the decisions on when and on which roads the distance charge should be varied, and on the adequacy and political acceptability of the alternative arrangements for those encouraged out of their cars. Decisions would also be needed for relevant stretches of the strategic network, but since much congestion here is, in practice, related to nearby urban areas, there may be ways to link these decisions with related urban pricing.

3.29 Having defined a national scheme in this way, the report assessed its feasibility. The report concludes that such a national pricing scheme:

is becoming technically feasible, and certainly will be in the medium term (10 to 15 years). This is based on the market-led development of in-vehicle satellite navigation equipment and the development of standards at the EU level. In practice there may be other technical options;
would cost a lot to run, but the net revenue stream could be used in a number of ways. For example, to reduce existing motoring taxes, to reduce other taxes, to fund additional spending on road capacity, public transport and other public spending or for a combination of these;
would lock in the benefits of other measures to tackle congestion;
subject to further work, could meet the objectives that the Government set when commissioning the study (6);
needs a sufficient level of public acceptability. Trust and confidence in the viability and delivery of any national road pricing scheme, including the use made of the revenue, are central;
needs a greater knowledge at the local level of road use and road users;
would be a massive and complex task requiring concerted action and co-operation at all levels of government over a number of years; and
in the meantime, a number of congestion charging schemes at the more local level would amount to a trajectory towards a national road pricing system, leaving open choices to be made along the way.

3.30 The report made a series of recommendations to the Government on the back of this analysis (see box).

Recommendations from pricing study

The conclusions of the Road Pricing Feasibility Study note that the decision on whether road pricing should be pursued is one for central government, and recommend that if it wished to proceed, there would be key actions for central government to take.

Inform and lead a national debate developing better understanding of what the change would mean and how it might be achieved in practice, with research into how it would affect people and businesses.
As part of this work, to develop proposals on how receipts from road users would be governed, managed and accounted for, and how motoring taxes would be dealt with on the introduction of any road user charging system.
Engage with other tiers of government and incentivise more practical research and experiments, building on from the M6 Toll road and the London congestion charge, to turn the discussion on road pricing from the abstract to the practical.
Engage actively in the development of vehicle technology standards at an international level.

3.31 We welcome this report. In response to the recommendations we commit to:

inform the public - beginning with this White Paper - about what road pricing is and how it might work, and undertake the further research recommended, so that people can engage with a clear proposition, not just an abstract concept;
lead a debate on what would make such pricing acceptable to motorists;
seek to build a public consensus around the objectives of road pricing, and how to use the revenues;
work alongside forward looking authorities and areas, to help them put in place packages of measures which tackle local congestion problems. Resources from the new Transport Innovation Fund will be available to support packages which combine road pricing, modal shift, and better bus services (see Chapter 5); and
begin a process which would lead to international standards for in-car equipment, taking account of current, market-led developments.

3.32 We will publish a full response to the feasibility study, with further details on how we intend to take these actions forward in due course.

Measuring progress

3.33 There was a number of shortcomings to the way we previously measured congestion, since the national target based on time lost per vehicle kilometre did not reflect motorists' experience of driving. We have been developing an improved set of indicators to reflect what road users say they want from the road network. These include measures of delay, severity (time spent below a threshold speed), and reliability of journey times. We are developing congestion ratings for key routes, reflecting their performance against these indicators. We will publish baseline data over the next six months and will set targets for individual routes in consultation with regional and local stakeholders, as described in Chapter 9. We will publish new targets by July 2005.

Conclusion

3.34 Building on the achievements to date, this is a strategy that can and will deliver a road network that provides a reliable, intelligent, interactive and freer-flowing system for motorists and business which has less impact on people and the environment.

(1) Those costing more than £5 million each. Known as the Targeted Programme of Improvements.
(2) Managing our Roads, Department for Transport, July 2003.
(3) Smarter choices: changing the way we travel - Department of Transport, July 2004. Available for download at www.dft.gov.uk
(4) These projections are based on the policy measures and spending plans set out in the original 10 Year Plan for transport.
(5) Feasibility Study of Road Pricing in the UK: a report to the Secretary of State, Department for Transport, July 2004. The report can be downloaded at www.dft.gov.uk/roads/roadpricing
(6) The objectives of the study were to deliver a more efficient approach to the structure of transport pricing; to be fair, respect privacy, and promote social inclusion and accessibility; to deliver higher economic growth and productivity for all regions of the UK; and to deliver environmental benefits.