Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • Greenwood says Dartford charge failure justifies Thames Crossing

    The announcement in the name of roads minister Lilian Greenwood of a 40% increase in the cost of taking a car across the Thames at Dartford contains perhaps the most mindless statement a politician could make in a climate emergency.

    The need to increase the charges to manage traffic highlights the need for the additional capacity that [Lower Thames Crossing], for which the government confirmed new funding yesterday, will provide.

    Translation: we have failed to manage traffic demand so we are building a new road to accommodate it.

    What makes the statement worse is that Greenwood explains in great detail the purpose of the charge and its recent history.

    To manage demand and protect the crossing’s role as a vital component of the nation’s economic infrastructure, a user charge has been collected at the crossing since 2003. In 2014, the tollbooths were removed to help make journeys smoother and the charge was increased to help manage increased demand. This was the last time that charges were increased for all vehicles.

    In the 11 years since, demand at the crossing has grown 7.5%, with the crossing now used by an average of over 150,000 vehicles every day and up to 180,000 vehicles on the busiest days. These traffic levels are well in excess of the crossing’s design capacity, causing delays for drivers using the crossing, congestion and journey disruption to drivers on the M25 and a range of knock-on impacts for local communities.

    And then the killer:

    The new charges will be significantly lower than if they had increased in line with inflation since the tariff was last fully revised in 2014.

    So not only is the government (implicitly) admitting that failing to increase charges at least in line with inflation over the past 11 years means traffic levels “well in excess of the crossing’s design capacity”, but the charges are still not keeping up with inflation.

    Leave a comment

  • Grim reading

    Transport Action Network has published another piece in its National Highways Watch strand, which describes the government-owned company’s record on road safety as a “car crash”.

    National Highways routinely claims that safety is its “top priority” but this spin is not borne out by its spending decisions or its poor record of reducing serious casualties on its network.

    It’s a well-researched and well written piece, which I say having researched and written most of it on a freelance basis.

  • Is Network North still a thing?

    I’ve had a go at comparing the “Local Transport Grant” set out in last week’s Spending Review with what English councils outside city region settlements – particularly North and Midlands councils – would have got under the Tories’ Local Transport Fund (LTF), which promised local transport authorities in those two regions £4.7bn over seven years from 2025.

    In January, I revealed that the new government had effectively ditched the LTF, which was part of the Tories’ widely ridiculed Network North plan for the cash saved by curtailing HS2.

    (more…)

  • Bridges cash will be over four years

    Yesterday I looked at the announcement of a £1bn structures fund, with £590m going towards the Lower Thames Crossing and the rest for “broken bridges, ruined roads and tired tunnels” on England’s local road network.

    There wasn’t much detail then but there is a bit more now.

    The new cash will be over the period covered by the Spending Review, which is 2026-27 to 2029-30 for capital funding.

    That is obviously around £100m a year.

    What we don’t yet have is how it fits in with the £24bn capital funding for strategic and local roads in England over the same period.

    (more…)

  • Detail to follow

    The Treasury has now published its press release on a £1 billion Structures Fund that it says “will inject cash into repairing run down bridges, decaying flyovers and worn out tunnels across Britain, and ensure other transport infrastructure is both more resilient to extreme weather events and to the demands of modern transport”.

    Most of this £1bn – £590m – will go on the Lower Thames Crossing.

    The cash is part of the forthcoming 10-year infrastructure strategy but the press release said the cash “today” will “address these immediate risks over the next five years”.

    It added:

    “We will set out more detail about how funding will be allocated shortly. This funding is additional to the funding local authorities will receive for highways maintenance, which will be set out in due course.”

    This is an entirely meaningless statement, beyond the “shortly” and “in due course”. It appears to imply that the cash will be allocated to English highway authorities, but how can it be additional to funding that hasn’t been announced yet? It literally is funding for highways maintenance.

    (more…)

  • Throwing good money after bad?

    At the time or writing, the media are carrying reports that chancellor Rachel Reeves has “awarded” the Lower Thames Crossing another £590m but no announcement has been published by the Treasury, the Department for Transport or National Highways.

    This is the way the government manipulates the media these days, sending out press releases to favoured outlets with quotes that no-one actually said and no detail, very much discouraging questions about how it will work in practice.

    The BBC reports that: “It came as part of a £1bn package to improve transport infrastructure across England, announced on Monday.”:

    Except that no £1bn package has been announced. If it has, where is the detail?

    (more…)

  • Labour backpedals on public chargepoint target

    Labour appears to have dropped the Tory target of 300,000 public chargepoints for EVs by 2030, as well as its own pledge to set new “binding targets”.

    That’s reading between the lines of a Department for Transport (DfT) press release, which says the government is “set to” roll out 100,000 chargepoints in England, “in the coming years” and makes no mention of the 300,000 target.

    In fact, the DfT now says “tens of thousands of chargepoints” will be installed by 2030.

    The 300,000 by 2030 target, which applies to the UK as a whole, was in the Tories’ March 2022  electric vehicle infrastructure strategy, which has not been withdrawn.

    In its 2023 Plan for the Automotive Sector, Labour said the Tory government was “on course to miss its aim of having 300,000 public chargers available by 2030 by a decade”, which it said “will leave drivers fighting over available chargepoints.”

    (more…)

  • Has capital funding for English roads really increased?

    There was very little detail about capital funding for roads in England in Wednesday’s Spending Review, which covers the four-years from 2026-27 to 2029-30 as far as capital is concerned:

    Providing £24 billion of capital funding between 2026‑27 and 2029‑30 to maintain and improve motorways and local roads across the country. This funding increase will allow National Highways and local authorities to invest in significantly improving the long-term condition of England’s road network, delivering faster, safer and more reliable journeys;

    National Highways’ interim settlement for 2025-26 is £4.8bn of which £3.4bn is capital, while capital funding for local road maintenance in England is “nearly £1.6 billion”, according to the Department for Transport, which includes £500m of additional funding announced in the October Budget.

    So, the £6bn annual average announced yesterday is on the face of it higher than the current approximately £5bn, but might get eaten away by inflation.

    And then there is the vague phrase “to…improve…local roads”. There are various other capital funding streams for local road enhancements, including what was called the Major Roads Fund – large local majors and the major road network.

    (more…)

  • National Highways cuts delays…on publishing its plans

    National Highways’ delivery plan and a separate “safety action plan” for the current financial year will be published “this summer”, the government-owned company has said, following a delay to last year’s delivery plan and the outright suppression of an “enhanced safety plan” for the year.

    However, National Highways, the Department for Transport (DfT) and regulator the Office of Rail and have Road (ORR) all refused freedom of information (FOI) requests to release the safety action plan until the company can put its spin on it in the delivery plan, which is always a glossy promotional document produced at public expense to boost the company’s public image.

    (more…)

  • Welcome to Transport Insights

    This new blog from freelance journalist Chris Ames will bring you all the news that’s unfit to print from UK and transport sectors, covering the stories behind the stories you may see elsewhere and calling out some of the spin and misrepresentation, as well as bringing exclusives from my own investigations.

    The commercial interests of advertisers and sponsors (there aren’t any) and exhibition participants will not be taken into account.

Subscribe

Subscribe to get our the latest stories in your inbox.