Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • National Highways races to play down speed camera cock-up

    The revelation that thousands of drivers have been wrongly prosecuted because speed cameras on smart motorways and elsewhere had the wrong settings is a major embarrassment for National Highways, which is why it is, typically, trying to play it down.

    I’m not sure it will boost confidence that the issue has only been admitted by the government-owned company and the Department for Transport (DfT) after a so-called fix has been put in place, but here is the headline on the National Highways press release:

    Fix being rolled out after variable speed camera anomaly

    As the Daily Mail points out:

    The scandal will yet again raise concerns about the safety of smart motorways, which are stretches of road where variable speed camera technology is used to manage traffic flow and reduce congestion.

    It’s fair enough to point out that too rigid enforcement doesn’t put anyone at risk but the story feeds into the general problem that, as the draft of the third Road Investment Strategy put it:

    National Highways should not be over-reliant on technology, for example drawing on insights from the use of cameras and stopped vehicle detection when considering driver safety and welfare.

    This is code for saying that the technology on smart motorways isn’t up to the job.

    (more…)

  • DfT adds insult to death and injury on smart motorways

    There’s a good write-up in the (Sheffield) Star of the current situation over the release of the 14 evaluation reports on smart motorways that ministers are sitting on, with the Department for Transport’s (DfT) excuses not fooling anyone.

    It features Claire Mercer’s reaction to the DfT being unable to say that there is anything other than a  made-up “assurance” process to justify the ongoing suppression of the Post Opening Project Evaluations (POPEs).

    The reality, as National Highways told me, is that ministers have to agree a “comms handling plan” before telling us how (un)safe the projects are.

    Speaking to The Star, Claire – founder of the Smart Motorways Kill Campaign – scolded the DfT and said she believes the “only reason” for the delays can be that roads minister Simon Lightwood is “merely preparing to spin what are likely to be very negative findings.”

    The Star does include Mercer’s allegation that Lightwood lied to her by falsely claiming that an assurance process is “ongoing”:

    (more…)

  • Look over there, Greenwood says as active travel funding falls

    With Labour cutting funding for active travel and being coy about whether its forthcoming cycling and walking investment strategy (CWIS3) will include meaningful targets, transport minister Lilian Greenwood has gone in for the diversionary tactic of reheating the culture wars.

    On Sunday The Guardian reported pressure from campaigners for CWIS3 to include targets beyond the feeble – and clearly unmeasurable – aspiration to make walking, wheeling and cycling “easy, safe, and accessible for everyone” by 2035.

    On Wednesday, Greenwood answered – or rather failed to answer – a question from shadow transport secretary Richard Holden on:

    (more…)

  • Richmond Council doubles down on disregard for law

    Clearly aware that it does not have a leg to stand on after wrongly asserting that a resident had broken the law by pouring a small amount of coffee down a road gully, Richmond Council has now thrown away all pretence that it abides by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

    To recap, the council fined Burcu Yesilyurt for an alleged offence under Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and then rescinded the fine on the grounds that the offence she had committed was “a minor contravention which the recipient agreed not to repeat”.

    But, as I and others have pointed out, the offence of disposing of waste in a way likely to pollute land or water would depend on where the gully leads to and – if a sewer that discharges into the environment – the amount of coffee relative to the toxic road runoff that the gully is designed to deal with.

    Thames Water told me that the gully does go into a surface water only sewer – rather hand a combined sewer – which means that Richmond Council is itself seriously polluting the waterway (the Thames) that it claims to be protecting.

    I asked the council under FOIA:

    where does the gully into which the coffee was poured discharge? (i.e. into a combined sewer system or the Thames)

    what mitigation is in place to protect Richmond’s waterways from the [toxic] runoff via gullies on the street in question?

    what assessment has it made of the relative scale and composition of the coffee tipped into the gully relative to day to day runoff to satisfy itself that such a contravention occurred?

    The answers to these questions would show whether the Council was (ever) entitled to allege that Ms Yesilyurt had committed an offence and whether it has been entirely hypocritical because it is itself a major polluter, which we already know.

    But the council made no attempt to state whether it had the information requested, let alone provide it; instead it sent me a narrative response that looks very much like a PR statement:

    (more…)

  • Potholes: who benefits?

    I have just caught up with Panorama’s programme on The Pothole Problem, which aired earlier this week and does very much dig beneath the surface of the issue, as you would hope.

    Having worked briefly with Richard Bilton and colleagues on last year’s programme about smart motorways, I am not surprised that this new programme went beyond the headlines, as well as making a technical issue accessible and relatable.

    While obviously highlighting the safety and other problems that potholes and poor road condition in general can cause, the programme correctly identified the obsession with filling them in as the main issue.

    (more…)

  • DfT looks to AMES for robust analysis

    The latest (December) issue of highways magazine includes my first piece for the publication as a freelance since I left in March – and it’s a good one

    The article features an interview with “two stalwarts of transport planning who recently told a prestigious European conference that the way we choose which transport projects to spend money on needs to change”.

    The two are John Elliott and Derek Turner CBE, who between them have 100 years working experience, including as leading lights of the Local Authority Technical Advisers Group.

    The conference was the European Transport Conference in Antwerp and their paper was titled: “Time for Transport Planning to Reflect Real Priorities based on Facts?”

    Anyone who knows either of them will know that the answer from their point of view is very much yes.

    Unfortunately, the edit of the article loses my very funny joke based on the fact that the Department for Transport’s forthcoming Appraisal, Modelling and Evaluation Strategy is called AMES for short.

    If you haven’t done it already, you can sign up for free access to the digital issue of the magazine.

  • Minister lied to me, smart motorway widow says

    Claire Mercer of Smart Motorways Kill has also concluded that the claim that the Department for Transport (DfT) is still “assuring” 14 smart motorway evaluation reports going back three years is a fiction – and that roads minister Simon Lightwood lied to her about this.

    Mercer, whose husband Jason was killed, along with Alexandru Murgeanu, on a smart motorway stretch of the M1 in 2019, co-organised the protest outside the DfT last month calling for the Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports to be released.

    Lightwood wrote to her at that time to defend the suppression of the reports, saying:

    …it is right that we take the time to fully assure findings. This process is ongoing

    As I wrote on Monday, when challenged over the “process” by Mercer’s MP, Sarah Champion, Lightwood resorted to claiming that a “wider assurance”, rather than the formal assurance for each scheme was happening. This is clearly a fiction.

    Mercer’s solicitors, Irwin Mitchell, also wrote to the DfT to challenge the process. It told them that the reports:

    are currently completing the final governance and approval stages

    adding:

    it is right that the department take the time to fully understand and assure findings prior to publication

    Again, the pretence that a formal assurance process is happening has evaporated.

    Mercer has seen through this and has not forgotten what Lightwood told her. She said:

    (more…)

  • MPs back backwater buses boost

    The Commons Transport Committee has welcomed the news that government funding to local authorities for bus services will take into account how rural an area is for the first time

    Although the committee described the news as an “announcement” by the Department for Transport, it was a little bit buried in a larger announcement last week of the consolidation of various existing bus funding streams into capital and revenue Local Authority Bus Grant (LABG) totalling nearly £3bn over four years.

    The webpage for LABG revenue allocations: 2026 to 2029 states:

    The individual revenue allocations were determined using a revised 2025 to 2026 formula that considered the needs of each local transport authority, taking into account population size, levels of deprivation, bus service provision and rurality. 

    The committee raised the issue of rural buses in its Buses connecting communities report, published in August.

    Chair Ruth Cadbury said: 

    (more…)

  • Road condition data: how bad can it be?

    I have got an explanation of sorts for the Department for Transport (DfT) postponing its latest road condition data because of an “issue”, but I have to admit that I am none the wiser.

    The department said last month that it was postponing publication of Road Conditions in England to March 2025, which was scheduled for 25 November 2025 but will now be published in January 2026.

    It explained:

    This is due to a data issue identified by a data provider which means some of the underlying data which informs these statistics needs to be reprocessed. It is essential this step is undertaken prior to publication to ensure the ongoing quality standards of these statistics. We are temporarily pausing the release of this publication whilst we work with the data provider to resolve this issue.

    This is taking place at a time when the DfT is seeking to move to a new model for councils to report on the condition of their A, B and C roads, although councils are still using the old methodology and did so last year.

    This involves using the Surface Condition Assessment for the National Network of Roads (SCANNER) system.

    I asked the DfT to clarify the issue with last year’s data. A spokesperson told me:

    Road Conditions in England are Official Statistics released by the Department for Transport and are held to the standards set in the Code of Practice for Statistics. One of the core pillars of the code is quality and as such producers must use suitable data sources and sound methods and assure the quality of the statistics across the production and release processes. Although an issue was identified in a small amount of data, this must addressed accordingly ensure the quality of our statistics and abide by the code.

    It all makes sense and it’s good to see officials taking this seriously but I would have liked to know what the “issue” was.

  • Minister fibs to keep smart motorway failings secret

    Roads minister Simon Lightwood has admitted that no genuine assurance process is taking place that would justify his cover-up of National Highways’ evaluations of smart motorways.

    He has responded (sort of) to another question from fellow Labour MP Sarah Champion about the 14 Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports on smart motorways that the Department for Transport (DfT) is suppressing.

    Judging from Lightwood’s determination to hide these reports until he works out how to spin them, you might imagine that they show that the safety, economic benefits and environmental impact of individual schemes are not great

    Asked:

    what the assurance processes are under which the Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) of Major Schemes are conducted

    Lightwood replied:

    National Highways follows its established “Analytical Assurance Framework” for assuring POPE reports, which includes fourth line independent external expert analytical assurance from DfT.

    As these are complex reports it is right that my officials take the time to provide summary advice of these reports in the round and undertake wider assurance to advise me on the quality of collective findings.

    The first part appears to be untrue as National Highways does not have an analytical assurance framework that is separate from the DfT’s framework, but this is probably irrelevant as Lightwood is no longer claiming that this is still happening.

    Instead he has made up a completely new process under which his officials supposedly group together a whole bunch of POPE reports to summarise them and carry out a fictional “wider evaluation”. Implicitly, he is admitting that no formal assurance process is being carried out.

    To be fair, he is not actually saying either that an informal “wider assurance” process is happening, just that it is right that it should happen.

    Of course, the point about such a process is that concern for the “quality of collective findings” does not mean that the individual reports need any further assurance before they can be released.

    We are back to the reality – that ministers are working out to spin – or bury – the bad news.

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