Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • Labour stalls on pavement parking

    A minister has told us all not to hold our breath waiting for the government to follow up on the issue of pavement parking outside London, following a consultation that closed five years ago.

    LibDem Helen Maguire, who happens to be my MP, put down a parliamentary question:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what her planned timeline is for publishing the new research on the extent and impact of pavement parking.

    Minister for local transport Simon Lightwood once again said that it is still thinking about the issue, fourteen months after coming to power:

    The Department has been considering all the views expressed in response to the 2020 pavement parking consultation and is currently working through the policy options and the appropriate means of delivering them. We will announce the next steps and publish our formal response as soon as possible. The new research announced last week will not delay this; my officials are finalising its terms now. The Department will aim to publish within 12 weeks of agreeing final outputs, per Government Social Research protocols. Local authorities can make use of existing powers to manage pavement parking.

    The last sentence is the key one for me, seeking to play down the importance of any new policy options, but “as soon as possible” is clearly untrue as they are undoubtedly stalling.

    I’ve noted before that the previous roads minister, Lilian Greenwood, promised twice to do something about the issue “very soon” and may have been moved because she appeared to keen to do so.

    The image is from the Tories’ 2020 consultation, which very definitely put forward policy proposals, rather than just asking people what they think in general about the issue.

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  • Renewable energy fiddle backfires for National Highways

    National Highways’ corporate carbon emissions increased by nearly a fifth over the last year, while emissions from construction and maintenance fell and road user emissions did not fall anything like fast enough to achieve a target of a 55% cut by 2030.

    The company has published an annual update to its Net zero highways 2030 / 2040 / 2050 plan, which sets those three dates as targets for net zero corporate emissions, construction and maintenance emissions and road user emissions respectively.

    Under the plan, progress towards the corporate emissions target gets a large boost from move to “certified renewable electricity”, which means that such electricity does not count towards the company’s target consumption. This is expected to reduce the company’s own emissions by 51% against a 2017-18 baseline but it is not allowed to use this method for its corporate reporting of its emissions, i.e. its annual report, or its KPI target for RIS 2, which it missed.

    Unfortunately, during 2024-25 corporate emissions rose by 18% from 38,388 tCO2e to 45,241 tCO2e. The company said this was largely due to two factors: one motorway service operator ceasing to claim renewable energy certificates, and a data improvement exercise linked to a recalculation of corporate carbon emissions to achieve Science Based Targets Initiative verification.

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  • Labour demonstrates four wheel drift on road safety

    Meanwhile, in the absence of a roads minister, the minister for local transport has ducked a question about when the government will publish its road safety strategy.

    In response to a parliamentary question from fellow Labour MP Darren Paffey:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what options her Department is considering to reduce fatalities involving young drivers through the Road Safety Strategy; and when that strategy will be published.

    Lightwood seems to have got mixed up with the difference between “when will the next road safety strategy be published?” and “when was the last road safety strategy published?”.

    Basically, they are thinking about it:

    The Government treats road safety seriously and is committed to reducing the numbers of those killed and injured on our roads. The Road Safety Strategy is under development and will include a broad range of policies. More details will be set out in due course.

    We absolutely recognise that young people are disproportionately victims of tragic incidents on our roads and continue to tackle this through our THINK! campaign. We are considering measures to address this and protect young drivers, as part of our upcoming strategy for road safety – the first in over a decade.

    Labour takes road safety so seriously, it doesn’t have a roads minister.

  • Dft all at sea as Mather gets maritime gig

    The new transport minister, Keir Mather, appears to have been given the maritime brief, leaving the role of roads minister pretty vacant.

    To mark London International Shipping Week, the Department for Transport has issued a press release with the title More than £1.1 billion investment to boost growth, jobs and skills in UK’s coastal towns and cities.

    And the claim that:

    Funding will help businesses and academia develop real-life technology that reduces carbon emissions from shipping.

    It follows the government’s recent policy of badging decarbonisation spending as aimed at growth, presumably because they are worried what fascist Farage will say and scared of upsetting the even more fascist Trump.

    The press release issued in the name of The Rt Hon Heidi Alexander MP and Keir Mather MP but Mather’s linked profile still does not give him a portfolio.

    Apparently:

    To launch the week, Local Transport Minister, Simon Lightwood, will ring the bell at the London Stock Exchange. The Transport Secretary and Maritime Minister will attend several key events during the week where they will champion UK shipping on the international stage and showcase the UK as a global hub for growth, investment, skills and jobs.

    Mather is not named here as the maritime minister, but a press release from the Transport Select Committee announces that:

    The Transport Committee will question the new Minister for Maritime, Keir Mather MP, as it concludes it inquiry into the Government’s draft revised National Policy Statement for Ports. 

    Let’s hope someone has told Mather what his job is.

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  • ORR reported fake overspend to MPs

    National Highways’ regulator falsely told Parliament that the company had a projected overspend of nearly a quarter of a billion pounds, but the fictional deficit was almost entirely the result of collusion within government to pretend that a shelved road scheme was still going ahead.

    The revelation raises further concerns about whether the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) sees its role as holding National Highways to account or keeping the company’s secrets from Parliament and the public.

    It is the latest revelation in the scandal that saw both organisations falsely claim in reports presented to Parliament that the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme, which was shelved in February 2022, would go ahead in the 2022-23 financial year.

    Not only did the ORR’s annual assessment of National Highways for 2021-22 falsely claim that work on the scheme would start in 2022-23, but it reported that the scheme had a huge overspend (£216m) resulting from “forecasting spend of £255m against a RP2 baseline of £39m”.

    However, this forecast spend was fictitious and the regulator knew it. It knew very well that the funding for the scheme had been withdrawn (apart from sunk development costs) and that National Highways was delaying formally pausing the scheme in order that it could hide from MPs the fact that it had been shelved.

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  • MPs slam Labour over cowardice on utilities’ roadworks

    The chair of the Transport Select Committee has hit back at ministers over their response to its recent report on street works, which saw ministers largely reject the committee’s recommendations for fear of upsetting utility companies.

    Committee chair Ruth Cadbury MP did not hold back in her disdain for ministers’ response: 

    The Government’s rejection of all the major recommendations in our report risks making itself simply look unwilling to stand up to utility companies, on behalf of frustrated road users who have to endure unreasonable and often repeated street works delays. 

    Among other recommendations, the committee said the Department for Transport (DfT) should support more local authorities to set up lane rental schemes by allowing them to do so without needing approval from ministers.

    Ministers rejected this call to give up one of their powers, despite the DfT agreeing that the schemes have been effective where used.

    The department suggested that there would be a risk of authorities introducing “poorly targeted schemes” that would increase costs for utility companies. 

    The committee also recommended extending the period for which utility companies are responsible for the road surfaces they have reinstated, from two years after completion to five years, similar to the six years period operating in Scotland. But ministers said they want to see how the Scottish approach plays out. 

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  • Alexander unconvinced by National Highways funding “bid”

    Campaigners have declared a partial victory over National Highways’ M60/M62/M66 Simister Island scheme, despite the award of a development consent order (DCO) by the transport secretary.

    Transport Action Network (TAN) said it is “very pleased to see that [Heidi Alexander] agreed with us that National Highways must improve the Haweswater Underpass as part of the M60 Simister Island scheme”.

    The underpass featured in a National Highways Watch piece that I wrote for TAN about the company’s use of “designated funds” on roadbuilding schemes. National Highways claimed that improving the underpass as an active travel route under the motorway was not part of its scheme, but TAN argued that it should be.

    The decision letter on the scheme does not resolve this dispute but does say clearly that Alexander considers that a proposed addition to the DCO  of a “requirement” for the company to deliver the scheme of improvements to the Haweswater Underpass “is necessary and proportionate to impact from the Proposed Development”.

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  • Road deaths continue as Starmer plays musical chairs

    As the BBC reports on the “relentless” toll of deaths on Essex’s roads in 2025, we wait to see what impact the latest game of musical chairs at the Department for Transport (DfT) may have on Labour’s long-promised road safety strategy.

    BBC News, Essex reports that crashes have killed 48 people in the county since the turn of the year, almost matching the 50 total for 2024.

    It’s the beginning of September so we are just over two-thirds of the way into the year.

    Adam Pipe, head of roads policing at Essex Police, cited drug-driving, speed and carelessness as the biggest problems seen on the county’s highways.

    “It is relentless,” Mr Pipe added.

    Twenty-five of the 48 deaths on Essex’s roads in 2025 have been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider charging drivers.

    “These are not, in most cases, an accident – there is a behaviour behind it,” Mr Pipe continued.

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  • New moves to stop buses being held up in Scotland

    The Scottish Government has got at least one good headline from a press release today about a £20m spend from its new Bus Infrastructure Fund in the current financial year – a fund that is falling well short of the £500m promised by its ill-fated and probably fictitious predecessor.

    The Scotsman reports:

    Pioneering Glasgow City Council AI technology to cut bus journey times by up to 50 per cent

    Pioneering AI technology that could cut bus journey times by up to half is to be trialled in Glasgow thanks to £490,000 in Scottish Government Funding.

    I can’t read the story as it is behind a paywall but I note that a 2022 report from Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) states that:

    Since 2019, SPT has provided £490,000 of funding to the Council to support the roll-out of Traffic Light Priority (TLP) systems. This technology offers greater journey time reliability for buses by allocating additional ‘green phase’ signal time for approaching services.

    It could be a coincidence or that someone has got the wrong end of a stick.

    But of course what is new and sexy about today’s story is the addition of AI.

    It comes as Transport Scotland – an arm of the Scottish Government – announces that:

    The Scottish Government has now allocated £20 million through the new Bus Infrastructure Fund in 2025-26.

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  • Exclusive: DfT, NH, ORR caught in Weekend at Bernie’s scam

    I have obtained another document about the secret shelving of the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme that amounts to something of a smoking gun, showing that both National Highways and its regulator deliberately hid from Parliament that fact that the scheme had been “paused” as well as defunded.

    To recap, the Treasury secretly defunded and deprioritised the scheme in the (late) 2021 Spending Review and told the government-owned company and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) this in February 2022.

    Despite this, both organisations said in reports presented to Parliament in July 2022 that the scheme would go ahead in the financial year 2022-23.

    The new document is a Department for Transport (DfT)/ National Highways “change control” form on the subject of a funding change for the 2020-25 Roads Period (RP2) to formalise the outcome of the Spending Review, which overall saw the company’s budget cut from £27.4bn to £24bn.

    The document makes clear that the A1 scheme was “paused” which is obviously incompatible with the claim in National Highways’ 2022-23 Delivery Plan that works would start that year. The ORR repeated this lie in its annual assessment 2021-22.

    The document also makes clear that the scheme had been “deprioritised with no further development funds”. It further states:

    The SR21 settlement includes pausing the development of two schemes with poof VfM. These will be dealt with as separate change control submissions, the timing and communication of which will have to be carefully timed with any broader announcements in response to TSC or Union Connectivity reports and any DCO process considerations.

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