Transport Insights

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

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Chris Ames

  • Speed camera go-slow continues

    The shitshow that is the smart motorway speed camera “anomaly” continues, with ministers unable to say – more than a year on – when the problem will be fixed and speeding drivers escaping prosecution.

    It emerged last year that a technical problem with the way that speed cameras respond to changes in variable speed limits meant that evidence that they produced was unreliable.

    It’s worth quoting from transport minister Lord Hendy’s written statement last December to nail down the timing.

    On 10 September, National Highways informed the Department for Transport of an anomaly on the M5 following a challenge to a speeding offence. Ministers were informed of the anomaly and that National Highways was expanding its analysis to additional sites. On 13 October, Ministers were informed that National Highways had identified this was a national issue, whereby a technical anomaly with the way some variable speed cameras interact with signs was affecting some enforcement on parts of England’s Strategic Road Network.

    It’s 13 October today. Roads minister Justin Madders has just responded to a parliamentary question from Tory MP Alison Griffiths asking

    how many speed cameras on (a) motorways and (b) A-roads remain affected by the technical anomaly; and what proportion of affected cameras have had the Home Office-approved solution implemented.

    Madders did his best to obscure the fact that the fix is still not in place yet and that the problem affects the whole smart motorway network:

    The anomaly impacts 154 cameras on 10% (440 miles) of the Strategic Road Network (4500 miles), which accounts for ~0.2% of the whole road network in England. A solution to the technical anomaly has been developed and is undergoing thorough testing. The police continue to enforce speed offences on the network via a range of tactics.

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  • “We’ve ruled it out because we’ve ruled it out”

    It’s not often that you get a politician admitting to his own stupidity but the Welsh Government’s transport minister has now claimed that using tolls to reduce congestion on the M4 at Newport is “not something that’s even come up in conversations”.

    ITV news points out that:

    In social media posts in 2019 before he was a Senedd member, Mark Hooper MS suggested charging drivers for using the M4 in peak times and reducing the number of junctions around Newport in order to discourage short journeys and car use in general.

    I wrote last week that the report that the Plaid Cymru government has used to justify its inability to solve the congestion was entirely circular when it came to tolls, ruling them out on the basis that they were

    not currently being pursued by the Welsh Government

    Now Hooper has backed this circular reasoning, while justifying kicking the can down the road with an 18-month review:

    For too long this has been a problem that has been kicked down the road, but I’m not doing that.

    So there’s no plans to introduce tolls. That’s not something that’s even come up in conversations with ministers or anyone else.

    But what we’ve got to do is have the solutions in place that work.

    The ITV News report notes that:

    The Welsh Government plans to review ‘roads-based solutions’ to relieve congestion, including possible junction closures and widening the Brynglas tunnels.

    And that:

    The report released this week by the Welsh Government revives the idea of a ‘Blue Route’, which was discussed a decade ago.

    None of this would be enough by itself but any or all of it would be far more complicated and possibly less effective than the solution that Hooper is happy to say he didn’t even consider.

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  • Exclusive: DfT finally kills off all zombie schemes

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed that all the local road schemes that were not listed in March as continuing following a review launched last year have now been officially pulled.

    It has told me that it is progressing only the 16 major road network/large local major (MRN/LLM) schemes confirmed in March and that local authorities with schemes that are not among the 16 have been informed.

    Until this point, reporting has only been ad hoc and sporadic. Following my reporting last Friday, I have now seen several more local and specialist media reports of MPs and/or local authorities being told that their MRN/LLM schemes, which were apparently still under review, are no more.

    For example, the Gazette and Herald has confirmed the demise of the A350 Melksham Bypass.

    In a letter to local LibDem MP Brian Mathew, roads minister Justin Madders blamed the Tories for not funding the scheme, and the DfT told me that MRN/LLM programme launched by the previous government was “not properly funded”.

    But the current government boasted last July that it had found “over £92 billion from the Spending Review settlement” to deliver

    the biggest boost to England’s transport infrastructure in a generation

    Out of this £92bn, the government chose to allocate just £1bn for local roads, to be shared between the so-called structures fund and the MRN/LLM.

    Madders made no mention of climate change but Mathew wrote on Facebook:

    I will keep pushing for other ways to ease transport worries, particularly better public transport and improved rail and bus services to get more people out of their cars.

    Meanwhile, Highways magazine reported that:

    Cheshire East Council is ‘deeply disappointed’ that the Department for Transport (DfT) has removed the planned improvements to the A500 from the Government’s Major Road Network Programme

    And the BBC has reported (separately) that the Blyth Relief Road, the A509 Isham bypass and the M5 Junction 9 scheme have all been canned.

    Essex Live has reported:

    Major A127 improvement work plans completely scrapped in ‘extremely disappointing’ move

    Notts CC leader Mick Barton with East Midlands mayor Claire Ward

    I have also worked out why the DfT has referred to 25 schemes remaining under review following the March announcement that 16 of 42 schemes put under review in July 2025 would continue.

    (more…)

  • Zombie schemes finally being put out of their misery

    It looks like ministers have begun the task of officially putting the 26 zombie local road schemes out of their misery, more than six months after it became clear to anyone who was paying attention that they were all but dead.

    As I reported in LTT/TransportXtra in July:

    Confusion surrounds a raft of local road upgrades after a Government review announced last summer, with many councils still awaiting decisions on their bids amid huge funding pressures.

    The DfT said in March that of 42 schemes major road network (MRN) or large local major (LLM) schemes placed under review as part of the 2025 Spending Review, just 16 “will continue”.

    This left 26 schemes in limbo…

    There were supposed to be formal decisions on these “later in the summer”, but it never happened.

    Now, a couple of schemes have been officially killed off.

    The Alton Herald reports:

    The Government has scrapped plans for major improvements to the A31 through Farnham, according to the town’s MP.

    Gregory Stafford, the Conservative MP for Farnham and Bordon, has called the decision a “betrayal” and accused the Government of failing his constituents.

    Mr Stafford said Roads Minister Justin Madders telephoned him on Thursday evening (October 8) to confirm the scheme would not proceed.

    Given that it has been obvious for a while that the scheme was canned and that the minister phoned him personally, Stafford throwing his toys out of his pram seems a bit ungrateful.

    people standing in a field looking at a map

    Meanwhile, the Derbyshire Times reports:

    (more…)

  • Ames proves the DfT wrong…again

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has finally issued the review of its decision to bury the outline business case (OBC) for the Lower Thames Crossing, with its claim that the document is “in draft” collapsing but the document still being buried.

    And I would know, because the information tribunal case that provides the definitive authority that proves the DfT has got it wrong has my name on it, literally.

    By way of a reminder, Rebecca Lush of Transport Action Network asked for the OBC after learning that it was used as the basis for a decision last year to take funding for the scheme beyond £3bn.

    Despite this, the DfT claimed that the document was “draft” and “has not been finalised”, thereby falling under the Exception at Regulation 12(4)(d) of the Environmental Information Regulations.

    Lush asked for a review in June and the DfT strung the case out for three months.

    Despite upholding the original decision (to release none of the document), the DfT reviewer made clear that:

    Having viewed the OBC I can see that it is dated 3rd October 2025 and is marked final version. It is therefore not an unfinished document.

    So the original claims were wholly bogus. But the DfT took another tack. In a section of the review letter that does not make grammatical sense, it stated:

    (more…)

  • In search of the least best solution

    The new but very old-fashioned Welsh Government is still scratching around for a solution to congestion on the M4 at Newport – after ruling out demand management measures before its latest review had even started.

    The BBC reports:

    Junctions on the M4 in Newport could close, and a new bridge built across the Menai Strait, as part of Welsh government plans for two notorious transport bottlenecks.

    It will also begin an 18-month project looking at a range of “roads-based” options for the M4, that could include a new motorway or expanding the Brynglas Tunnels.

    In a feat of extraordinary chutzpah, deputy minister for transport Mark Hooper announced the 18-month discussion with the words:

    People want action, not endless discussion.

    According to the Welsh government, the review carried out by Arup

    (more…)

  • Charity takes £10m hit from shambolic road scheme

    National Highways has given the RHS a paltry £2.3m by way of compensation for the damage to business at Wisley Gardens from its shambolic M25 Junction 10 scheme, which the RHS estimates to have cost it £13m.

    It’s a story I have covered extensively over the last few years and it’s clear that the government-owned company deliberately underestimated the impact of the scheme on traffic from the outset, with completely unrealistic forecasts that were contrived to make it look better value for money.

    Now, the BBC reports:

    The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has said compensation for disruption caused by a major road building project is “far short” of the amount it lost.

    The £2.3m secured in a settlement from National Highways was not sufficient, the RHS said, to compensate for the disruption at its Wisley site, which it says caused £13m losses and led to 350,000 fewer visitors annually.

    So the RHS – a charity – takes a £10m hit from a scheme that will encourage traffic and National Highways says “tough”, or rather:

    that it was not legally required to compensate any loses from traffic congestion.

    Of course the scheme affected way more people than Wisley visitors. In February 2024, I reported for Highways magazine:

    (more…)

  • The wrong end of the stick?

    West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin has hailed a special “taskforce” to speed up the region’s flagging mass transit ambitions, but what exactly is happening and how it might help is far from clear.

    The Yorkshire Post reports:

    A special taskforce has been set up at Andy Burnham’s No10 North to try and speed up delivery of West Yorkshire’s mass transit project.

    But you have to go a long way down the story to (try to) make sense of it:

    She joined a meeting of his National Economic Council from No10 North in Manchester, and gave the tram as one of her three priorities.

    Ms Brabin said Mr Burnham’s deputy chief of staff Caroline Simpson immediately set up a special taskforce to speed up delivery.

    This is “going to look at what can we do to ensure greater speed, whilst also keeping the oversight of a project of this scale”, she said.

    That word “oversight” looks pretty significant here. Looks like central government is still in the driving seat.

    Rather confusingly, the next couple of lines in the story seem to refer back to the meeting rather than the “taskforce”:

    This included representatives from No10 North, the Department for Transport and the Treasury including Minister for Growth Dan Tomlinson.

    “Everybody that you would imagine was there that needed to be there, and we were really problem solving live in the moment,” Ms Brain (sic) said.

    And then:

    Ms Brabin revealed that West Yorkshire Combined Authority would be targeting officials with experience around mass transit as part of the civil service secondment scheme.

    Trying to make sense of it all, it looks like Brabin attended the first meeting of the revived National Economic Council at No10 North in July,

    (more…)

  • Exclusive: National Highways bins smart motorway camera upgrade

    National Highways has no plans to upgrade CCTV on its smart motorway network, despite an express statement in the Road investment Strategy (RIS3) that the government expects it to do so.

    The government-owned company has been forced to disclose its planned spending on smart motorway technology and on maintenance of its network, ahead of possible cuts to fund increased defence spending.

    The disclosure follows a Freedom of Information Act request by smart motorway campaigner Claire Mercer, who successfully challenged the company’s claim that it did not hold the information that she requested because the government was consulting on proposals to reduce capital funding by £428m over the first four years of the current RIS.

    Mercer pointed out that the company had already allocated spending, even if it might subsequently be cut.

    The company conceded in a review that its original response “was not compliant with the Freedom of Information Act”.

    It then disclosed that, while it had no plans to add new or retrofitted technology to smart motorways during RIS3, it was planning to spend an estimated £309m on roadside technology renewals for smart motorways, with £46m being spent on CCTV renewals.

    It explained that this was to replace existing technology such as CCTV, message signs, signals and emergency telephones “where needed due to their age or obsolescence”, but would not cover any increased capability, other than what might be covered in the latest specification “e.g. CCTV renewals may result in better picture quality”.

    This means that the company’s plans are directly in contraction to a statement in the RIS document that:

    we expect National Highways to continue to invest in the technology needed to help increase public confidence when driving on smart motorways,
    like upgrading CCTV cameras to detect incidents that could have an impact on the safety of users or their journey times.

    The refusal to upgrade CCTV means that the company does not plan to increase coverage, leaving operators dependent in many areas on tilt, pan and zoom cameras that need to be manually aimed and may well be pointing the wrong way when an incident occurs.

    With stopped vehicle detection aiming to spot only four in five stopped vehicles, National Highways did trial an AI-based alternative that would use CCTV imagery. While such a system was found to be a possibility it was limited by poor CCTV coverage and was not taken forward.

    The company also disclosed that its estimated maintenance budget in 2026/27 for the strategic road network (SRN) as a whole was “around £300m”. This figure for a financial year that is now halfway through, is from resource spending and not subject to cuts to capital.

    (more…)

  • HVO is not zero emission

    The spin over “the greenest road ever built in the UK” continues: National Highways has gained headlines by claiming to be using zero-emission construction machinery on the project, but this is mainly HVO, which is definitely not zero-emission at any point.

    The project’s latest piece of propaganda, based on its 2025–26 Sustainability Report, claims:

    Lower Thames Crossing begins one of world’s largest deployments of zero-emissions construction machinery

    Work began in early 2026 and is being carried out only using electric, HVO and hydrogen powered equipment and machinery

    HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) can be used as a drop‑in replacement for diesel in most diesel engines without modification.

    But these engines do still emit greenhouse gases and therefore cannot be described as zero emission.

    As the graphic below suggests, HVO/biofuel is expected to be 70% of the fuel used in 2026.

    To add to the spin, the report itself says:

    We have started replacing around 60 million litres of diesel with alternative fuels of electricity, green hydrogen, hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and biofuel.

    No, you aren’t replacing anything. If you didn’t build the scheme, you wouldn’t need 63.5 million litres of diesel or a “replacement”.

    In any case, the tosh about “the greenest road ever built in the UK” ignores the huge carbon emissions from actually using it.

    And is anyone else wondering why so much work is being done on a project that isn’t due to have a full business case until 2028 and whose outline business case is allegedly “in draft”?

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