Transport Insights

The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media

Author

Chris Ames

  • Pothole half full

    Although the media have gone with the obvious bad news angle on the RAC’s survey showing that pothole compensation claims submitted to councils in England, Scotland and Wales jumped by 91% in three years, things actually seem to be improving.

    While the comparison to 2021 is concerning, the number of claims has thankfully come down slightly year-on-year. The local authorities that responded to the RAC’s request for data received a total of 56,655 claims in 2023, meaning compensation requests have dropped by six per cent to 2024’s number (53,015).

    There is a lot of discussion in the RAC’s press release and in the reporting about preventative maintenance instead of putting resources into repairs but the downside of this is that until it pays off, vehicles will continue to be damaged.

    The RAC press release ends on a positive note (or is it wishful thinking?) with its head of policy Simon Williams saying:

    We’re now hopeful the dial will really begin to shift as highways authorities in England were this year given a record £1.6bn by the Government for road maintenance. And for the first time they’ve been required to show how much vital preventative maintenance they’ll be carrying out to stop potholes forming in the first place.

    On top of this, the Government has now announced multi-year settlements which will give councils the certainty they need to plan and deliver better maintenance programmes. This can only be a good thing.

    So, while the figures we’ve analysed are a cause for concern, we hope pothole compensation claims will begin to decline as local authorities increase the amount of preventative surface dressing work on their roads.

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  • Ministers fail to publish road safety strategy

    The Government appears to have missed its own target of publishing its new and widely trailed road safety strategy “this year”.

    I have written extensively on this blog about the varying commitment to publish the strategy, as well as the boast from ministers that it will be “the first for ten years”.

    As early as 11 December – less than two weeks ago – asked directly by Tory MP Andrew Griffith when the strategy would be published, transport minister Lilian Greenwood said:

    The Government intends to publish the Road Safety Strategy this year.

    But, with Parliament sitting and just a day before Christmas, there has been a wobble, with Greenwood telling Green Party MP Ellie Chowns this week:

    My Department is developing our road safety strategy and we will set out more details in due course.

    As I have noted in relation to smart motorway evaluation reports, ministers sometimes say they are working on things when they have simply chosen not to publish them, but the idea that officials are still putting the strategy together – or ministers are arguing over the content with No 10 – is mind blowing.

    Greenwood also told Labour MP Juliet Campbell:

    We are considering a range of policies under the new Road Safety Strategy; the first for ten years. Details on this will be published shortly.

    I think that you can safely say that if ministers say they intend to do something and then don’t do it, you have failed.

  • No time for trams

    The press release from West Yorkshire Combined Authority announcing ministers’ decision to put the region’s mass transit system on the not yet list, along with Northern Powerhouse Rail, is a classic of its kind, and trips over its own contradictions.

    Announcements that a scheme will be later than promised never come out and say that up front but begin with an assurance that everything is going swimmingly:

    West Yorkshire Combined Authority has been working with the Government to consider the plans for successfully delivering this game-changing scheme for the region. 

    This has included undertaking an independent review, which is part of the usual process for projects of this size and scale.  As a result, a robust, sequential timeline has been developed, which aims to reduce risks and ensure that the project is put firmly on the path for successful delivery.

    And then the kicker:

    The revised plan has been welcomed by West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin and Transport Minister Lord Peter Hendy, despite the changes meaning services will now start running later than planned, from the mid-2030s to the late 2030s.  

    I’m sure West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin thought she was being helpful when she said:

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  • Did Lightwood exaggerate speed camera fix?

    The Daily Mail has reported that National Highways is some way off identifying and implementing a permanent solution to the issue that led to thousands of drivers being wrongly clocked for speeding on smart motorways.

    The paper picks up on yesterday’s statement from roads minister Simon Lightwood and in particular the revelation that the problem was fully identified in October and prosecutions halted, adding that “speed camera enforcement on smart motorways was secretly switched off two months ago”.

    Lightwood also said:

    A Home Office-approved solution to this issue has now been agreed. National Highways will be working with the police to allow them to implement this solution as a priority.

    However, the Mail reports:

    But it has emerged that National Highways still does not fully understand how the fault occurred and a permanent solution won’t be found until next year. 

    In the meantime, when the camera enforcement system is switched back on, National Highways will have to provide daily updates to police on the times when they believe the camera system is not functioning properly.

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  • Lightwood makes light of speed camera snafu

    Roads minister Simon Lightwood has claimed that drivers who break the law “can expect to be punished”, despite confirming that tens of thousands of drivers have got away with speeding offences because of National Highways’ latest technology failure on smart motorways.

    In written parliamentary statement, Lightwood confirmed, but sought to play down, the fact that an “anomaly” over the settings on variable speed limit enforcement cameras occurred approximately 2,650 times over four years, leading to a similar number of wrongful prosecutions.

    But that’s only half the story. As Lightwood told MPs:

    Independently, the National Police Chiefs’ Council took action to instruct all affected police forces to cancel wider prosecutions related to infringements in progress, regardless of whether they were impacted by this issue. As a result, tens of thousands of people’s speed awareness courses are being cancelled, and thousands of historic fixed penalty notices and criminal justice prosecutions are being discontinued.

    Lightwood also explained why his department had covered the problem up for around three months, without explicitly stating that it had done so:

    Throughout this process, I have been clear with all partners that we must ensure our road network remains safe. We therefore took the decision, following a safety assessment from National Highways, not to undermine public confidence in enforcement and risk impacting driver behaviour before we had a solution to this issue approved and ready to roll out.

    He ended his statement with an assertion that the facts have proven to be wholly untrue.

    Compliance with the law is being enforced in a variety of ways across our roads, as has always been the case. If you break the law, you can expect to be punished.

    As I commented yesterday, if tens of thousands of drivers breaking the law cannot be prosecuted because smart motorway technology is, once again, not up to the job, that is a major safety issue.

  • Facts won’t be fixed on Thames tunnel till 2028

    Transport Action Network (TAN) has seized upon the confirmation that the Lower Thames Crossing will not open until 2034, but even this date is said not to be realistic and the mega-project is not even due to have a full business case (FBC) until 2028.

    The delay to the FBC means that Labour will continue to throw money (£3bn) at the project before working out whether it is worth doing and the rest of us will be kept in the dark.

    TAN has pointed to the appointment letter naming Kate Cohen as the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the project:

    You are required to undertake this role until the end of the project planned for 2034, or until the responsibility is transferred. 

    In fact, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s annual report 2024-25 states:

    Compared to financial year 23/24-Q4, the project’s end-date at 24/25-Q4 remained at 20/04/2034.

    […]

    This baseline is no longer viable after a second Written Ministerial Statement was issued on the 4 October 2024 extending the Development Consent Order Decision date until 23 May 2025 in order to allow more time for the application to be considered further, including as part of the spending review [Development Consent Order Consent granted 25 March 2025]. The project is currently working on the impact to the Open for Traffic following the second Written Ministerial Statement.

    No-one seems to have told Matt Palmer, executive director of the Lower Thames Crossing, about 2034. In this recent press release about a non-existent piece of tunnelling kit, he said:

    The search for our giant tunnel boring machine is now on, putting us on track to open the Lower Thames Crossing in the early 2030s. 

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  • National Highways races to play down speed camera cock-up

    The revelation that thousands of drivers have been wrongly prosecuted because speed cameras on smart motorways and elsewhere had the wrong settings is a major embarrassment for National Highways, which is why it is, typically, trying to play it down.

    I’m not sure it will boost confidence that the issue has only been admitted by the government-owned company and the Department for Transport (DfT) after a so-called fix has been put in place, but here is the headline on the National Highways press release:

    Fix being rolled out after variable speed camera anomaly

    As the Daily Mail points out:

    The scandal will yet again raise concerns about the safety of smart motorways, which are stretches of road where variable speed camera technology is used to manage traffic flow and reduce congestion.

    It’s fair enough to point out that too rigid enforcement doesn’t put anyone at risk but the story feeds into the general problem that, as the draft of the third Road Investment Strategy put it:

    National Highways should not be over-reliant on technology, for example drawing on insights from the use of cameras and stopped vehicle detection when considering driver safety and welfare.

    This is code for saying that the technology on smart motorways isn’t up to the job.

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  • DfT adds insult to death and injury on smart motorways

    There’s a good write-up in the (Sheffield) Star of the current situation over the release of the 14 evaluation reports on smart motorways that ministers are sitting on, with the Department for Transport’s (DfT) excuses not fooling anyone.

    It features Claire Mercer’s reaction to the DfT being unable to say that there is anything other than a  made-up “assurance” process to justify the ongoing suppression of the Post Opening Project Evaluations (POPEs).

    The reality, as National Highways told me, is that ministers have to agree a “comms handling plan” before telling us how (un)safe the projects are.

    Speaking to The Star, Claire – founder of the Smart Motorways Kill Campaign – scolded the DfT and said she believes the “only reason” for the delays can be that roads minister Simon Lightwood is “merely preparing to spin what are likely to be very negative findings.”

    The Star does include Mercer’s allegation that Lightwood lied to her by falsely claiming that an assurance process is “ongoing”:

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  • Look over there, Greenwood says as active travel funding falls

    With Labour cutting funding for active travel and being coy about whether its forthcoming cycling and walking investment strategy (CWIS3) will include meaningful targets, transport minister Lilian Greenwood has gone in for the diversionary tactic of reheating the culture wars.

    On Sunday The Guardian reported pressure from campaigners for CWIS3 to include targets beyond the feeble – and clearly unmeasurable – aspiration to make walking, wheeling and cycling “easy, safe, and accessible for everyone” by 2035.

    On Wednesday, Greenwood answered – or rather failed to answer – a question from shadow transport secretary Richard Holden on:

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  • Richmond Council doubles down on disregard for law

    Clearly aware that it does not have a leg to stand on after wrongly asserting that a resident had broken the law by pouring a small amount of coffee down a road gully, Richmond Council has now thrown away all pretence that it abides by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

    To recap, the council fined Burcu Yesilyurt for an alleged offence under Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and then rescinded the fine on the grounds that the offence she had committed was “a minor contravention which the recipient agreed not to repeat”.

    But, as I and others have pointed out, the offence of disposing of waste in a way likely to pollute land or water would depend on where the gully leads to and – if a sewer that discharges into the environment – the amount of coffee relative to the toxic road runoff that the gully is designed to deal with.

    Thames Water told me that the gully does go into a surface water only sewer – rather hand a combined sewer – which means that Richmond Council is itself seriously polluting the waterway (the Thames) that it claims to be protecting.

    I asked the council under FOIA:

    where does the gully into which the coffee was poured discharge? (i.e. into a combined sewer system or the Thames)

    what mitigation is in place to protect Richmond’s waterways from the [toxic] runoff via gullies on the street in question?

    what assessment has it made of the relative scale and composition of the coffee tipped into the gully relative to day to day runoff to satisfy itself that such a contravention occurred?

    The answers to these questions would show whether the Council was (ever) entitled to allege that Ms Yesilyurt had committed an offence and whether it has been entirely hypocritical because it is itself a major polluter, which we already know.

    But the council made no attempt to state whether it had the information requested, let alone provide it; instead it sent me a narrative response that looks very much like a PR statement:

    (more…)

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