The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media
National Highways’ regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, has told me that it still expects the new Road Investment Strategy (RIS) to be published in March, despite some loose wording in a newsletter referring to publication “the start of April”.
Separately, the roads minister has confirmed that the RIS will break down National Highways’ spending across “key categories” such as operations, maintenance, renewals and enhancements, but will not include forecast costs for specific enhancements.
The Sunday Times story about National Highways chief executive Nick Harris being “effectively forced to quit after losing the confidence of board members” is an interesting one, not just in its own right, but in terms of where it leaves the ongoing suppression of smart motorway evaluation reports.
It is said that Harris’ relationship with the National Highways board broke down over his handling of the speed camera debacle and the paper infers and implies a causal relationship.
But it doesn’t seem too sure, saying that “sources have claimed” that was Harris pushed out “after” rather than because of losing board members’ confidence.
The speed camera debacle is of course all about how reliable National Highways’ smart motorway technology really is and the further debacle over the 30-hour closure of one of the tunnels at the Dartford Crossing hasn’t helped.
The BBC reports:
(more…)It is something that should not happen – an oversized vehicle entering and damaging a tunnel at one of Britain’s busiest river crossings.
“Baffling” and “unfathomable” were just two words used to describe experts’ confusion over how multiple safety systems failed to prevent the incident at the Dartford Crossing on 23 January.
The driver caused extensive damage along the entire length of the tunnel to multiple pieces of safety equipment, causing it to close for 30 hours.
National Highways says an investigation is under way, but MPs say motorists and residents are owed an apology as well.
National Highways chief executive Nick Harris has announced what is said to be his decision to step down, but the obvious question is, did he jump, or was he pushed?
The government owned company’s official announcement pointed out that he had held the role for five years, which is a decent stint, and he is reported to have just turned 60.
But the suddenness of his departure does not exactly suggest proper succession planning. National Highways said he will stay in post “during a short transition period while the Board confirms interim leadership arrangements”, with recruitment for a permanent successor beginning in the spring.
Harris said the start of the next five-year Road Investment Strategy (RIS) in April
is the right moment for me to hand over to new leadership who will guide the organisation into its next chapter
But the next couple of months, during which the new £24bn RIS will be finalised, are hardly an ideal time to be disrupting the organisation, and not the “smooth transition” promised.
And although Harris has been in the job for the equivalent of a RIS period, the current interim period between RIS 2 and RIS 3 means his departure is very different from what happened when his predecessor, Jim O’Sullivan, announced his departure in August 2020.
In this guest post, Jo Bradley of Stormwater Shepherds looks at National Highways’ plans to address toxic road runoff it the context of the legal and regulatory framework that should be protecting our watercourses.
Pollution from highway runoff is finally getting the recognition that it deserves, and being discussed in high places. The pollution is acknowledged, albeit very briefly, in the recent Water Sector White Paper, and there is a nod to it in last year’s Environmental Improvement Plan. But this is not enough; this is one of the largest sources of river pollution, so passing mentions in policies and plans are inadequate.
There are no highway outfalls identified in the River Basin Management Plans as sources of pollution, and the Environment Agency still refuses to regulate the outfalls using the appropriate regulations. We are eating this elephant one bite at a time but it simply isn’t fast enough; we need to put it through the mincer and find a way to eat it more quickly than ever before.
(more…)The Express and Star reports that:
The Midlands Metro tramline will open for passengers in Dudley at the end of August – more than two years late.
At a meeting of Dudley Council’s Communities and Growth Scrutiny Committee, council leaders faced questions on what help was available for traders affected by the delayed works.
The Metro had been earmarked for a 2024 opening and later for a launch in the autumn of 2025. It was later announced the opening would be delayed until the start of this year.
The extension to Dudley is the first phase of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill extension, which is being built by the Midland Metro Alliance (MMA) on behalf of Transport for West Midlands (TfWM).
Last October MMA said:
Work on the first phase of the route, between Wednesbury and Dudley town centre, is nearing completion ahead of opening next year
TfWM has now confirmed in a statement to journalist Peter Plisner:
I’ve been looking at one of the so-called “compact agreements” on how central government and northern mayors “will collaborate to deliver the next stage of Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR)” and wondering if it is less of an agreement and more of a collective whistling to keep their spirits up.
For a start, the agreements in fact cover several future stages of NPR and that’s really the point as ministers have chosen to chop the project into chunks to be delivered consecutively.
An then the agreement between transport secretary Heid Alexander, chancellor Rachel Reeves, communities secretary Steve Reed, and – last but not least – West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin opines:
We welcome the £1.1bn funding allocated for NPR development in this Spending Review period, allowing development work for the first two phases to proceed without delay, and the certainty implied by the funding cap of £45bn for the overall NPR scheme, which will guide development and future delivery.
So three cabinet ministers and one mayor, who is definitely not in a hostage situation, applaud a relatively small amount of development cash allocated by central government and a promise not to spend more than a specified amount, in place of substantive funding.
The agreement goes on to explain:
The Times story on the Lower Thames Crossing raises further doubts that the £11bn project will be privately financed, even beyond the £3bn that the taxpayer is due to put in before anything happens.
The taxpayer is set to lose net income of at least £120 million a year as a result of the financial arrangements for a new road tunnel under the Thames, The Times can reveal.
Government plans for the Lower Thames Crossing are built on handing the revenues from the existing tolls on the Dartford Crossing to a new private operator, which will be allowed to keep them in perpetuity.
My take on this is that if you are diverting £120m of revenue annually and for ever to pay for a project, you are at least partially funding that project (again, beyond the £3bn) and no amount of smoke and mirrors can disguise that.
The Times reports that:
Under the Transport Act 2000, these revenues go directly to the DfT, not into the Treasury’s coffers, and must be used for improving transport. The DfT did not respond to TAN’s question as to whether this income would be “included in DfT’s future budgets as a loss” or if it had been factored into the cost-benefit analysis for the Lower Thames project. The DfT also declined to answer similar questions from The Times.
This is clear obfuscation from the DfT but, whether the money is a hit to the transport budget or will be refunded by the Treasury, it’s taxpayers’ money.
Elsewhere in the paper, the piece’s author, Alistair Osborne, comments
…you’d think that before ministers committed £3.1 billion of taxpayer’s money and started early construction works, they might have bothered to produce a full business case for the link, instead of opting to wait until 2028. Or explained why it’s still a zippy scheme, despite it seeming to fail the DfT’s own “value for money” test. Or actually come clean about the implications of its “preferred financing option”, which would see both the crossing and existing taxpayer income transfer to a private sector owner in perpetuity.
I made similar observations here last month.
Having said that, the current revelations on the funding represent great work by TAN (Transport Action Network) and the journalist.
With no real sign of the Department for Transport (DfT) allowing National Highways to release the 14 suppressed evaluation reports on smart motorways, the Guardian has picked up on the story:
Road campaigners and motoring organisations have urged ministers to immediately release a series of “withheld” safety assessments on Britain’s smart motorways – some dating as far back as 2022
With suggestions that the reports could be released at (last) Christmas having come to nothing, the DfT is still claiming there is nothing to see:
The Department for Transport has said that the reports, known as Popes (post-opening project evaluations), will be published imminently, and do not undermine the broad case for smart motorways as statistically the safest roads.
That last bit about a “broad case” is perhaps the key part of the whole article, suggesting that some POPEs may show that individual stretches of motorway have become less safe since the hard shoulder was removed, particularly as they have once again filled up with traffic.
The article quotes Claire Mercer of Smart Motorways Kill, who has campaigned with me for the POPEs to be released, as saying that:
If [the reports] showed good news, they’d release them.
And links to this blog, in which I made a similar point:
Ames was told that a total of 14 reports would eventually be released before Christmas last year “subject to the DfT agreeing the communications handling plan”. He said the continuing delay suggested the contents “must be really, really bad”.
Jack Cousens, the head of roads policy at the AA, said: “These safety reports on so-called ‘smart’ motorways have been withheld for far too long, and we urgently need to see them published.”
He said the reports needed to “show the outcomes of these schemes regardless of their failures or successes”.
National Highways is spending more than £2m a year on what have been described as “swanky” new offices in Birmingham, a freedom of information request has disclosed.
It was reported in August 2024 that the government-owned company had agreed a lease on 58,697 sq ft at Three Snowhill, to replace its current HQ at The Cube and other offices at Colmore Square.
The “anchor tenant” at the building is BT.
National Highways said at the time that the move would
bring our Birmingham-based teams together under one roof at a convenient location in the centre of the city enabling better collaborative working and building on the community workplace feel that we have developed.
This was said to be part of its
workplace and location strategy to create better, greener and smaller workplaces.
Indeed, the Cube alone was 5,196.9 sq m, which translates as 55,936 sq ft.
Asked for:
a breakdown of the rental / purchase costs of National Highways head office at Snow Hill Queensway in Birmingham in 2024-2025, and how much has been spent so far per month in 2025-26
The company replied:
(more…)The Department for Transport (DfT) has asked a member of its own board to carry out the “independent” review of the snafu that led to thousands of drivers on smart motorways being wrongly prosecuted, with no guarantee that the outcome will be published.
It has also admitted that National Highways is still working with the police to implement “a Home Office-approved solution to this issue”.
The “anomaly” identified was that, while there should be a delay between a variable speed shown on a motorway gantry changing and HADECs cameras detecting vehicles over the new limit, this has not always happened.
The DfT has claimed that National Highways has identified approximately 2,650 total erroneous activations since 2021, but the terms of reference for the review go back to 2019, when the upgrade of cameras began, “to ensure that everyone who has been impacted is identified”.
In a written ministerial statement on 16 December, roads minister Simon Lightwood, who has made a career of covering things up since arriving at the DfT, promised ‘an independent investigation into how this technical anomaly came about, to ensure that lessons can be learnt’.
Transport Heidi Alexander has now appointed
Tracey Westall OBE, Non-Executive Director of DfT, to be the lead reviewer for this independent review.
I’m sceptical of any government appointed review being described as “independent” but appointing a member of the DfT board to lead an independent review invites ridicule.
The terms of reference include who knew what, when?
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