Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • No winners in smart motorway death crash case

    Barry O’Sullivan has been found guilty of causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon by careless driving on a smart motorway section of the M4 in 2022 but the verdict in no way lets National Highways off the hook and it is unarguable that the crash would not have happened if the “smart” technology had done its job.

    A jury sat through the trial and heard the evidence – plus the judge’s summing up – and decided that O’Sullivan was guilty so I won’t argue with them.

    But in this case it has always been possible to argue both that O’Sullivan was culpable despite National Highways’ shocking failings and that National Highways failed abysmally despite O’Sullivan’s culpability.

    I first wrote about the crash soon after it happened and was told by a senior National Highways official that the stopped vehicle detection (SVD) technology had worked as far as possible, except that a fault with the wider system meant that alerts were not posted on gantries.

    The M4 [incident] was a particular issue with some of our back office systems that were offline at the time – we’ve now corrected the system so that can’t happen. The scheme was still in operational acceptance so, as tragic as it was, this was a shortcoming of a system that [hadn’t yet] been handed into business as usual.

    What I didn’t know then was that this was the fifth day of this fault and that National Highways had failed to effect what turned out to be quite a quick fix because the fault was wrongly categorised.

    (more…)

  • “£110 million was allocated for the project in November 2020”

    Labour ministers have stepped in to take the credit (again) for a £218m local road scheme that they falsely claimed last year to have green-lit and which the last Conservative government allocated £110m six years ago.

    According to the Department for Transport (DfT):

    Tens of thousands of people across Lincoln and Lincolnshire are set to benefit from faster journeys, after the government confirmed funding for the North Hykeham Relief Road today (18 February 2026).

    Roads minister Simon Lightwood, who never knowingly tells the truth, said:

    We’re putting our money where our mouth is, with a £110 million investment that will mean faster journeys and less congestion. 

    It is not Labour’s money but taxpayers’ money and in fact, the road was funded from a much earlier Major Road Network/Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) budget.

    To be fair, the DfT press release does note that:

    First proposed in the mid-2000s, the relief road has long been anticipated

    If I had a pound for every time the government (Tory or Labour) has tried to make political capital out of the same £110m, I could build my own relief road.

    In 2020, I noted (in a complicated story about vehicle excise duty hypothecation) that the road was cited in the National Infrastructure Strategy and had been awarded £110m and entry to the LLM programme.

    To this day, Lincolnshire County Council’s own webpage for the scheme states:

    (more…)

  • Mather looking increasingly foolish over secrecy claims

    It has been pointed out to me that there is some history behind the refusal of the various authorities to publish the “peer review” into West Yorkshire’s mass transit plans on the grounds that participants should expect confidentiality, with the Information Commissioner rejecting these arguments in a similar case.

    The Commissioner has also made it absolutely clear that authorities cannot withhold whole reports on the grounds that some of its contents need to remain secret.

    Both the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) and the Department for Transport have refused to publish the entire review by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) on various grounds, including a statement from transport minister Keir Mather that:

    All major project reviews undertaken by NISTA are treated as confidential, in the interests of ensuring that everyone involved is able to share their honest feedback. This has been standard practice across successive governments.

    Although NISTA is not a simple continuation of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), campaigners previously obtained a ruling from the Information Commissioner that the Cabinet Office was wrong to withhold a November 2021 IPA “stage gate assessment” review and June 2022 follow-up IPA independent peer review on the Lower Thames Crossing.

    That case was judged under the Environmental Information Regulations and involved some discussion of whether emails between National Highways and government departments are “internal” (they aren’t) but also hinged on whether disclosure would “the interests of the person who provided the information”.

    (more…)

  • Smart motorway death crash fault “assigned 7-day priority”

    As the trial of Barry O’Sullivan for allegedly causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon by careless driving approaches its conclusion, the story gets worse for National Highways, whatever the verdict.

    ITV news reports that:

    An unresolved technical failure on the M4 smart motorway network meant alerts for broken-down vehicles were not properly communicated in the days leading up to a fatal collision, a court has heard.

    The technical malfunction on March 2 2022 was flagged by the system and automatically generated tickets, but they were assigned to the wrong National Highways team and with an incorrect priority level of “7-day resolution”, the court was further told.

    This meant the alert system had been malfunctioning for five days when Barry O’Sullivan, 45, crashed his grey Ford Transit Connect into the back of a Nissan Micra that had come to a halt in the fast lane of the motorway on March 7 2022.

    (more…)

  • A disgraceful use of safety statistics

    The release of POPE evaluation reports on smart motorways has triggered a debate in the House of Lords, with a government spokesperson quoting a statistic about the high level of danger on A roads to suggest that smart motorways are safer by comparison.

    The debate began with Lord Harries of Pentregarth asking the government:

    what assessment they have made of the post opening project evaluations of smart motorways in relation to (1) safety, and (2) value for money.

    The initial answer from Baroness (Judith) Blake of Leeds, previously leader of Leeds City Council, appeared to be that the government had made no assessment in relation to value for money:

    While National Highways reports show that smart motorways are meeting or exceeding safety objectives in all but one upgrade, we know that people need to feel safe as well as be safe. That is why National Highways invested some £900 million to improve safety and educate drivers. The reports show that these upgrades have added vital capacity to some of the country’s busiest roads and are largely on course to meet their environmental goals.

    Given that most smart motorways were literally a way of adding capacity to motorways by using the hard shoulder as a running lane, it’s a bit desperate to say the POPE reports show that they had done this.

    But Lord Harries tried again on the value for money point:

    (more…)

  • Ministers addicted to secrecy – and fabrication

    Transport ministers have again resorted to lying to justify their obsessive secrecy – this time over the secret “peer review” of the West Yorkshire Mass Transit programme.

    As I have written, the peer review was carried out by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), despite the project not being a part of the government’s major projects portfolio, and resulted in the project being “resequenced” and delayed by years.

    Both the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) and the Department for Transport (DfT) have refused to publish the review, amid claims that the public presentation of its findings has been “dishonest”.

    Now very junior transport minister Keir Mather has made up a tradition for NISTA reviews going back through “successive governments”, despite the body only having been created (by Labour) last April.

    Asked by Tory David Simmonds if the government will place the review into the public domain, Mather said:

    All major project reviews undertaken by NISTA are treated as confidential, in the interests of ensuring that everyone involved is able to share their honest feedback. This has been standard practice across successive governments.

    Not only is the claim that NISTA reviews have always been confidential a fabrication – and indeed the phrase has no meaning in this context – but the excuse for not publishing the West Yorkshire one is a departure from what the DfT has previously said, which is that the project is subject to “live” policy discussions.

    Mather’s lie follows fellow transport minister Simon Lightwood falsely claiming the smart motorway “POPE” evaluation reports whose publication the DfT delayed for years were subject to an “assurance” process.

  • Ministers fail to back “Structures Fund” with actual cash

    Eight months after ministers announced a fund to repair and “futureproof” local authority road structures, the Department for Transport (DfT) is unable to say how much money will be in the fund or how it might operate.

    The DfT has only just launched a targeted “stakeholder consultation” for its so-called “Structures Fund” just as the latest closure of a local authority road bridge was announced.

    In June ministers announced £1bn “to enhance and repair run down transport infrastructure and futureproof England’s road network” to be split between the structures fund and local road upgrades under what was called the Major Road Network/Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) programme.

    But, despite claiming in a press release that it would “set out more detail about how funding will be allocated shortly”, the DfT has yet to finalise the budget for the fund, which means that funding for local authority road upgrades remains uncertain.

    This paralysis explains why the DfT refused last year to tell me how much the MRN/LLM budget was.

    I would argue that as the Structures Fund does not have dedicated funding, it cannot legitimately be called a fund.

    (more…)

  • Hostage to fortune released with POPEs

    The latest issue of Local Transport Today (LTT) also has my take on the departure (or defenestration) of National Highways chief executive Nick Harris.

    There has been a lot of speculation about why Harris supposedly chose this moment to depart, including the variable speed cameras fiasco.

    At the time that LTT went to press last week, the Department for Transport was still preventing National Highways publishing what turned out to be 16 Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports on smart motorways.

    Aware that it was a bit of a hostage to fortune if the reports turned out to be a damp squib, I wrote:

    (more…)

  • DfT again burying bad news

    I have (jointly) written the lead story in the latest issue of Local Transport Today (LTT) looking at the escalating row over the “independent peer review” that put the proposed £2.5bn West Yorkshire mass transit project back by years.

    The refusal by all concerned to publish the publicly funded review was controversial enough, but a senior councillor who sits on the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) has alleged that was is being said about the review’s findings publicly does not reflect is contents, to the point of dishonesty.

    Cllr Alan Lamb, leader of the Conservative Group on Leeds City Council, told a meeting of the WYCA last month:

    I think people need to see and understand what is in this paper and what the implications are because mass transit is in peril.

    Cllr Lamb told me that he also strongly disputes the reasons given by the authority for not publishing the review by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA).

    Having read the [review report], I do not believe there is anything commercially sensitive and I remain of the view that it is strongly in the public interest for the report to be publicly available.

    He added:

    I have asked to see the legal advice and have been told my request is being considered under access to information rules. I will use every legitimate means available to me to try and get the report released from its exempt status.

    The WYCA insists that the report is exempt from publication under paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972, but appears to have mixed up issues of commercial confidentiality with the need for a a “safe space” for officials to think through policy options.

    The problem for both the authority and the Department for Transport, which insists that live policy discussions are ongoing, is that this contradicts the official story that the decision to “resequence” the mass transit project has been taken and the government remains committed to it.

    It’s almost as if the Labour Government and a Labour regional mayor are colluding to put a brave face on a project that has gone badly wrong.

    Leave a comment

  • DfT budget shrinks without getting smaller

    It looks to me as if reported cut to the Department for Transport’s (DfT) budget merely reflects accounting changes that take into account increased business rate retention by Transport for London (TfL).

    New Civil Engineer reported what appeared to be a discrepancy between the DfT’s Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL), including HS2, as set out in the Spending Review against the same totals in the Autumn Budget.

    Across the five financial years from 2024-25 to 2028-29, this amounted to £2.4bn, the magazine said.

    Spending totals for all five years were set out as “plans”, rather than outturn, with totals only given three years ahead because, while the Spending Review set capital spending for 2029-30, it only set resource spending to 2028-29.

    The discrepancy in the DfT’s total Budget over the next three years is only £1.5bn, with the Budget figures actually showing an increase of £600m in 2027-28, compared against the Spending Review.

    The DfT has reportedly attributed the discrepancy to “accounting changes”, without explaining further.

    However, a reply from roads minister Simon Lightwood to a written parliamentary question from fellow Labour MP and Transport Committee member Alex Mayer may explain these accounting changes.

    Mayer asked what assessment and estimate ministers had made of the difference in the DfT’s capital DEL budget between the two documents across the five-year period.

    While Lightwood replied in terms the government’s capital DEL as a whole from 2025-26 to 2029-30, a footnote in his answer noted that the figures he quoted were “adjusted for TfL Business Rates Retention (£1.2bn p.a. from 2026-27)”.

    This change would see some of TfL’s capital spending being funded from retained business rates, rather than going through the DfT’s budget.

Subscribe

Subscribe to get our the latest stories in your inbox.