Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • Another Schrödinger’s road scheme

    Confusion abounds over which local road upgrades are potentially going ahead with Department for Transport (DfT) funding, something that seems to originate with the department not being straightforward about the status of schemes that were culled in a recent review.

    In the context of the government’s statement that it will cut the DfT’s capital investment budget by £700m to help pay for the Defence Investment Plan, the BBC reports:

    Council chiefs fear a planned new motorway junction could be “sacrificed” in the government’s proposal to reallocate funds to defence.
    …
    County councillor Julian Tooke, who leads on infrastructure on the council, said: “We are very concerned that Gloucestershire’s need for improvements to junction 9 of the M5 and the A46 may get sacrificed.”

    The Department for Transport (DfT) said it will not comment on funding prospects for junction 9 at this stage

    The penny does not seem to have dropped that the scheme was effectively shelved when it was not among the 16 Major Road Network and Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) schemes that it was announced in March would

    continue following the 2025 MRN review

    That was a reference to this announcement last July, when the DfT gave a list of 42 schemes “under consideration” – i.e. being reviewed. The M5 scheme was among them, albeit that it had only been listed for outline business case development costs.

    By implication, it is not “continuing”. I don’t know why the DfT cannot just say that.

    In April, Transport Action Network wrote to the DfT to ask for clarification of the 26 schemes that were in the original list of (42) schemes under consideration and not part of the “continuing” 16.

    (more…)

  • Schrödinger’s road scheme, Schrödinger’s business case

    A new report from the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) has shown how the Department for Transport is playing fast and loose with public money over the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) – and basically lying to avoid releasing the mega-project’s business case.

    Highways magazine reports that, in terms of NISTA’s Delivery Confidence Assessment in its Annual Report 2025/2026:

    None of the Department for Transport’s (DfT) highways projects were rated red; however, the £10bn Lower Thames Crossing and the £1.5bn A66 Northern Trans-Pennine scheme did slip into amber.

    But, as Highways notes, the LTC’s Senior Responsible Owner (the DfT’s Kate Cohen) decided that the project should be bumped up to a green rating.

    Her commentary on its DCA states:

    Compared to financial year 24/25 Q4, the SRO Delivery Confidence Assessment (DCA) rating at 25/26 Q4 improved from Amber to Green.
    […]
    The NISTA DCA rating for 25/26 Q4 is Amber, whilst we recognise that there are still risks to delivery, the SRO is content that sufficient mitigations were in place as of March-26 and therefore rated the DCA as Green. The project DCA is reviewed monthly. The Outline Business Case was updated and approved by the DfT Investment Committee in October 2025. This marks the transition from full public sector funding to a future private sector RAB model, with the private sector to deliver the remainder of the scheme and take on Dartford Crossing operations in 2028.

    The statement that the private sector operator will take on Dartford Crossing operations – and revenue – in 2028, as it starts construction, is the first time that this has been stated explicitly.

    It means that the state will be putting in (even more) public funding from the outset, again giving the lie to the claim that this is privately financed.

    And this also (again) gives the lie to the DfT’s claim that outline business case that it has refused to release is in “draft form”.

    (more…)

  • National Highways gets its way on (not) cutting carbon

    National Highways’ Annual Report and Accounts, published this week, shows why the company no longer has a target for reducing corporate carbon emissions in the new Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3): it keeps missing its targets, despite constant fiddling.

    For the interim year between road investment strategies (2025-26), National Highways was required to:

    Achieve a 75% reduction in corporate emissions against the 2019-20 baseline in 2025-26, using the Science Based Targets initiative methodology.

    It missed this but achieved a 73% cut to 41,727 thousand tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e), which implies a baseline of 154,000 tCO2e.

    That looks like a big cut, but it has mainly been achieved by discounting electricity from renewable electricity.

    Although it was not allowed to do this for its RIS 2 (2020-25) KPI, in its 2021 Annual Report and Accounts, it said:

    In April 2020, we invested in a green energy procurement contract to supply the majority of our network with certified green electricity. This has reduced our carbon emissions by approximately 45,000 tonnes annually.

    National Highways’ Net Zero Highways 2030 / 2040 / 2050 plan explicitly states that the company will achieve half of the reduction needed to get to net zero corporate emissions by 2030 by using “certified renewable electricity”.

    And its 2025 update included a cut in electricity emissions from 85,664 tCO₂e to just 18 tCO₂e.

    It effectively wrote off all the electricity it used as zero carbon.

    The company appears to have used the same methodology for 2025-26, i.e. to move away from the methodology that went so badly wrong for it during the second roads period (RP2)

    According to the Office of Rail and Road’s 2025 annual assessment of National Highways:

    (more…)

  • NAO slow to wake up to Thames tunnel risks

    I very much agree with ‪Transport Action Network‬’s (TAN) good news, bad news take on the National Audit Office saying that it will be taking a look at the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC)…eventually.

    On Bluesky, TAN says:

    Good news- We’ve received a response from the NAO and they will be auditing the Lower Thames Crossing project!

    Bad news- we do not have a start date! Meanwhile public money is being thrown at this damaging road scheme.

    If you look at the latest letter from the Comptroller and Auditor General, Gareth Davies, he only says the NAO will look into the scheme at some point in the future, and not because it sees any particular issue with it:

    The Lower Thames Crossing is a significant programme and is of high parliamentary and public interest. I anticipate that I will examine and report on the Lower Thames Crossing. My teams are tracking activity on the programme. This will inform my decision on the right timing for audit work.

    But there are big problems. The main one, as TAN points out, is that the government has committed £3.1bn of public money to a scheme that has no business case.

    Not only is the full business case not due until 2028, but the Department for Transport (DfT) is claiming that the outline business case is only in draft form. The NAO has said that decisions to commit public money were based on this document.

    And the DfT is planning to give the developer of the allegedly privately-funded project an additional income stream with the revenue from the existing Dartford Crossings.

    In the circumstances, the NAO looks very complacent. Let’s hope they don’t regret it or – perhaps worse – box themselves into a space where they have to pretend it’s all fine because to admit that it is a shitshow will be to point the finger at themselves.

    Leave a comment

  • National Highways does repairs to prevent maintenance

    The current fashion for renewals and preventative maintenance on our road networks has inevitably led to highway authorities labelling repairs, which are by definition reactive, as “proactive”.

    Take for example, this BBC story about repairs to structures on the A3 at Guildford:

    Crumbling dual carriageway ‘needs fixing now’

    A crumbling dual carriageway in Surrey must be repaired immediately or will be unusable in “three to four” years, National Highways says.

    The Dennis Interchange bridges in Guildford are undergoing major repairs, as water and salt from the road has rusted metalwork inside the supporting pillars below.

    Pretty clear then that the structures have got to the point where they need to be repaired – and are being repaired – right now. Traffic is being diverted through the city centre during two full weekend closures.

    But wait:

    Nick Axford, project manager at National Highways, said “We’re doing a proactive repair now to bring everything up to full strength and make it last for years to come.”

    Funnily enough, in April:

    (more…)

  • Greenwood takes “careful now” approach to cutting speeds

    With the government accidentally signalling how little it is doing to improve “the infrastructure that makes up our roads” as part of its road safety strategy, another part of the safe system approach – speed – is coming under the spotlight.

    Next Wednesday, the Transport Committee “will focus on speed”, questioning a five-strong expert panel in the third evidence session of its inquiry into the strategy.

    In a press release, the committee notes:

    Local authorities and National Highways play the lead role in ensuring safe speed limits are set on England’s roads, and the strategy commits to updating guidance on setting local speed limits.

    Wednesday’s evidence session will see witnesses discuss whether the strategy’s commitments on speed are sufficient to support its casualty reduction targets.

    I’m going to stick my neck out and say that if your commitment is that you will update guidance, it may not be sufficient.

    Meanwhile, road safety minister Lilian Greenwood has given further indication of how little the government is prepared to do to slow people down and make the roads safer.

    In response to two questions from Labour MP Fleur Anderson, first:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has asked police forces to provide data on repeat speeding offenders to inform future road safety policy.

    And then:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has analysed international examples of requiring intervening Intelligent Speed Assistance technology for high-risk and repeat speeding offenders.

    Greenwood gave the same answer:

    (more…)

  • Two cheers for small beer

    There’s a bit more from road safety minister Lilian Greenwood about this week’s announcement of £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund, with an acknowledgement that the cash only takes road safety “a little further forward”.

    Posting on LinkedIn, Greenwood referred to awards to existing schemes at the House of Lords event on Tuesday and directly named the four new schemes, but not the individual amounts awarded:

    There’s a lot more work still to do. But we’ve moved that work a little further forward as I announced a further £5 million to support four new Safer Roads Fund schemes across the country:

    • The A188 through Newcastle and North Tyneside
    • The A1074 from Longwater to Norwich City
    • The A611 Hucknall Road in Nottingham
    • The A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford

    People in the western half of England might wonder whether “across the country” is a bit of an exaggeration for just four schemes in the North East, the East Midlands, East Anglia and the South East.

    Meanwhile the scheme in Nottingham (which Greenwood represents) has had some press coverage, but there is still no sign of an announcement from Norfolk and the Department for Transport doesn’t seem to think the cash warrants a press release.

    (more…)

  • Just £5m for new road safety schemes

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has allocated around £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund (SRF) but the small scale of the funding serves to show the paucity of the government’s ambition on road safety.

    At an event in the House of Lords yesterday, Road safety minister Lilian Greenwood was said to have “committed to further investment in Safer Roads Fund schemes”.

    The DfT has said there is cash for four schemes, which are in Surrey, Norfolk, Newcastle and Nottingham.

    Some of these allocations have already been made public. Surrey Live reported:

    Minister Lilian Greenwood is set to confirm that the road connecting the A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford will receive £1.3m in government money, in a speech on Tuesday

    The Newcastle Chronicle reported:

    Key road through North Tyneside and Newcastle to receive £1.6m of road safety funding

    It looks as if some of these were the announcement of construction funding for schemes that received design funding in earlier rounds of the SRF.

    The DfT says the cash is “part of Round 4 of funding under the Safer Roads Fund”, with no decisions made on whether there will be further funding rounds.

    The logic of that is that the new cash is not just part of Round 4 but the whole of Round 4.

    Originally (in 2016) the SRF was £175m, but only £100m was allocated in the first round, followed by £95m in a two-tranche second round. The DfT seems to be counting all this as three rounds.

    Whether the £5m is a new allocation or reallocation of unused cash from the last round, it takes the total to somewhere around £200m.

    (more…)

  • A long time in politics

    The fallout over the shelving of two road schemes in the East Midlands to pay for “defence” continues, with a piece in the Times from regional mayor Claire Ward, in which she points out with some justification that the decision has simultaneously trashed the concepts of a road investment strategy (RIS) and devolution.

    It’s a good opening, albeit one that starts with a version of a cliché:

    A day is a long time in politics. But it shouldn’t be. Last Monday, Andy Burnham set out his vision for government, which put devolution at the heart of an empowered Britain. Less than 24 hours later, while Sir Keir Starmer delivered his speech on defence, I was on the phone with his office, being informed that the East Midlands would be losing nearly £1 billion of investment across two major road schemes.

    While the RIS is a national strategy and regional mayors do not have to be consulted, it is the logic of devolution that mayors will have increasing say (and possibly control) over spending decisions in their area.

    Ward also says:

    To start putting that right — including by granting the funding for our two road schemes — only to cancel them three months later, says to regions like mine: “You do not matter.”

    Something has got garbled in the editing here but the gist of it – that it’s grossly undermining to change your mind three months after publishing a strategy that literally plans “investment” in roads – is bang on.

    I think some of Ward’s other arguments about how these two road schemes are essential to defence manufacturing are quite weak but she’s entitled to feel let down by the government that represents the same party as her and talks a good game on devolution.

    Leave a comment

  • Who needs the Structures Fund?

    The trouble with “confirming” funding for a road scheme prematurely is that you look silly when you announce the funding a year later – and the trouble with announcing a “Structures Fund” is that you look silly when you announce cash to protect a structure from an existing fund.

    And you look even sillier, as the Department for Transport (DfT)does today, when you issue a press release with a photo of the wrong location.

    The DfT says:

    King’s Road, on Brighton’s seafront, is supported by a series of Victorian-era arches that are in urgent need of replacement to avoid the crucial road from being closed.

    That’s why the government will invest £22 million to replace dozens of these arches, avoiding the risk of collapse and making sure the road is safe for the next century.

    The road with one of the best views along the south coast connects people to Brighton Pier, Brighton Beach and the i360 observation tower, attracting tourists from across the world.

    The photo they have used is clearly looking across Volk’s Electric Railway (a massive clue) and Madeira Drive towards Marine Parade.

    And, although the press release doesn’t say it, the scheme is under the Major Road Network (MRN) and was one of the MRN schemes the DfT claimed to have given a “green light” last year, with “funding confirmed”.

    In fact, the scheme was awaiting a full business case, which has now been approved, which means it will go ahead.

    And, as I have written, the “Structures Fund” that the DfT also announced last year is not a discrete fund at all, but a decision to share £1bn between the MRN and structures on local authority roads.

    Once again, giving MRN funding to a scheme to reconstruct key structures shows that you don’t need a separate structures fund at all.

    Which is just as well, because they haven’t got one.

    Leave a comment

Subscribe

Subscribe to get our the latest stories in your inbox.