Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • Council takes small risk to “unlock” thousands of homes

    Returning to Gloucestershire County Council’s stalled redevelopment of Junction 10 of the M5, the BBC has some news, of sorts:

    Work has begun on upgrading a motorway junction despite a £70m funding gap.

    Preliminary ecological works for the £363m junction 10 near Cheltenham and Gloucester revamp – which would allow motorists to drive on and off both northbound and southbound – has already begun.

    Councillor Julian Tooke, Gloucestershire County Council’s cabinet member for infrastructure, admitted they were taking a “financial risk” by starting work before having all the funds in place.

    It might not be wise, but it isn’t that unusual for preliminary works to take place before a scheme gets a full green light.

    Just look at the hundreds of millions being sunk into the Lower Thames Crossing, which may never get under the ground.

    In this case, there remains a £70m gap between the funding and the projected cost of the scheme, which the council is hoping to fill with more cash from the Housing Infrastructure Fund.

    The BBC helps out a bit with some wishful thinking:

    The scheme is expected to unlock further development including up to 15,000 homes, 12,000 high-skilled jobs, and support for the £1bn Golden Valley development.

    All those houses, just waiting to be unlocked.

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  • Bus lane amnesty in Liverpool

    The BBC reports the continuing return of bus lanes in Liverpool, noting that the city council scrapped many of its bus lanes in 2014 but started to reintroduce some in 2023.

    Proposals to create one on Longmoor Lane in Fazakerley and add one on Upper Parliament Street in Toxteth were unveiled by Liverpool City Council earlier this week.

    There’s a typically mixed reaction, with some councillors saying they had been given no advance notice of the plans, one resident saying it was “an absolute joke”, and another welcoming the initiative.

    Or is that just the way the BBC likes to report things?

    The BBC (via the Local Democracy Reporting Service) says the new bus lanes will cost £125,000.

    The council has said no fines will be issued for vehicles straying into the bus lanes, which they describe as “experimental”, until they have been in place for six months.

    The report includes a baffling quote from one (Labour) councillor:

    Declan Henry, a Fazakerley councillor, said: “I agree that bus lanes could really help ease congestion and encourage the use of public transport but we have to have the infrastructure in place so that public transport is a convenient and cost-effective option.”

    Yes, put infrastructure to support public transport in place before spending a hundred and twenty five grand on bus lanes.

  • Harris blames crash victims for road safety failings

    National Highways’ chief executive has sought to dodge responsibility for the company’s poor progress on road safety, claiming “success” for its limited efforts to reduce casualties through engineering.

    With the company expected to miss its key performance indicator (KPI) for reducing killed and seriously injured (KSIs) casualties during the second (2020-25) road investment strategy (RIS), Nick Harris pointed out that the next RIS does not currently have an equivalent target.

    In an interview for the official podcast of the Highways UK trade show, he said:

    Increasingly on safety though the focus is shifting from that headline KPI to the things we are doing. So there’s a little bit of a shift there.

    The comment also reflects the expectation that the next RIS will give National Highways a National Programme on safety, “supporting specific programmes of activity” and measure it against how much it delivers.

    Harris also sought to blame the victims of collisions:

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  • National Highways looks to clear funding stream to fund clear streams

    National Highways is set to be given funding and a clear target to tackle toxic water runoff from its roads under a new-style “National Programme” in the forthcoming road investment strategy (RIS 3).

    The government-owned company is under pressure to tackle the contaminated water that runs off the strategic road network (SRN) into sensitive waterways in particular.

    Last month Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) challenged its chief executive, Nick Harris, on its plans and funding.

    He replied without explanation that it expects to be “funded to do all 250” of the “high-risk” outflows on the strategic road network that it has prioritised for mitigation.

    It has now emerged that water quality will fall under a National Programme for environmental mitigation, as floated in the draft RIS 3 published in August:

    We are considering introducing new National Programmes to deliver defined outputs that support RIS objectives or commitments which are not within other programmes (for example, supporting specific programmes of activity around safety and environmental mitigation).

    The company has since published a Preliminary Design Playbook, produced by consultants and setting out measures to mitigate high-risk outflows.

    In an interview with New Civil Engineer, Stephen Elderkin, director of environmental sustainability at the government-owned company, said:

    Rather than having different design teams coming afresh to each of those locations, given that we’ve now got a national programme, we’ve centralised it.

    He added:

    We take pollution contained in water running off our network incredibly seriously. It can contain heavy metals, hydrocarbons, tyre crumbs and other particulates and without suitable management of that runoff there is a risk of polluting water bodies where it gets discharged into water so this, this matters. It matters for health and it matters for ecosystems; it’s quite an extensive problem.

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  • Alexander takes a punt on Waymo trial

    As Waymo announces that it will be bringing its “fully autonomous ride-hailing service across the pond” from next year, it’s worth looking at what the benefits and risks might be.

    The company says that over the coming months, it will “lay the groundwork” for its service in collaboration with fleet operations partner Moove, “and continue to engage with local and national leaders to secure the necessary permissions for our commercial ride-hailing service in London”. 

    Conspicuous from its absence in its press release is any comment from local leaders, such as the London Mayor/TfL and the necessary permissions are clearly not in place yet.

    On the other hand, transport secretary Heidi Alexander, who never misses an opportunity to shoehorn the latest slogan into a quote, is happy to comment:

    I’m delighted that Waymo intends to bring their services to London next year, under our proposed piloting scheme.

    Boosting the AV sector will increase accessible transport options alongside bringing jobs, investment, and opportunities to the UK. Cutting edge investment like this will help us deliver our mission to be world-leaders in new technology and spearhead national renewal that delivers real change in our communities.

    You can’t argue with the idea that autonomous vehicles could increase mobility for people with disabilities but the rest of the list, particularly “bringing jobs” by getting rid of drivers, is a lot of wishful thinking.

    Also quoted in the press release are Robin Spinks, head of inclusive design at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, who is severely sight impaired, and James Gibson, executive director of Road Safety GB. I don’t think I am in a position to argue with either of them.

    What else could go wrong?

    Yesterday, the Independent reported:

    A California prankster has gone viral after sending 50 driverless Waymo vehicles down a dead-end street in San Francisco.

  • Ministers bury Thames tunnel bung as sunk costs hit two-thirds of benefits

    The Treasury has confirmed that chancellor Rachel Reeves secretly awarded the Lower Thames Crossing a quarter of a billion pounds in last year’s Autumn Budget, as the cost of the scheme are set to hit £2bn, before construction begins.

    The preparation costs for the planned £10bn+ tunnel between Kent and Essex are now likely to reach two-thirds of the scheme’s projected benefits.

    Labour has said it will examine using a form of private finance for the project, which it appears to consider unaffordable and which will be funded outside the usual road investment strategy machinery.

    But public funding includes £250m that was allocated to the project in Labour’s first Budget, last October, but not publicly announced until the National Infrastructure Strategy was published in June.

    This said the government was:

    providing £590 million of capital funding to progress work on the Lower Thames Crossing, in addition to the £250 million which was provided at Phase 1 of the Spending Review.

    The Treasury has acknowledged that the £250m was allocated at the 2024 Autumn Budget on a “provisional” basis as the project’s development consent order (DCO) was pending, with the infrastructure strategy being the first time the funding was revealed publicly.

    The Department for Transport has confirmed that the cash was part of the capital spending total of £21.8bn announced in the Budget.

    Following the Budget, the then transport secretary, Louise Haigh was forced to resign, following a leak about a criminal conviction that appeared to have come from No 10.

    Her successor, Heidi Alexander, then approved the DCO in March of this year, in time for the cash to be included in confirmed spending plans for 2025-26.

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  • Crunching no numbers

    Very junior housing minister Keir Mather has replied to a parliamentary question about electric vehicle chargepoints with a promise to continue to monitor something it is not currently monitoring.

    Shadow transport secretary (and former transport minister) Richard Holden asked:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many public electric vehicle chargepoints have been installed but are not operational due to grid connection delays or other technical issues.

    Mather replied:

    The Government does not hold a centralised figure on the number of public electric vehicle chargepoints that have been installed but are not yet operational due to grid connection delays or other technical issues.

    However, he added:

    In December 2024, the Government published the outcome of a review aimed at improving the grid connection process for EV charging infrastructure.

    That review stated:

    CPOs [charge point operators] have raised concerns that when infrastructure installations are completed, they can experience long waits before energisation.  

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  • National Highways not stripped of LTC, government says

    The government has rubbished yesterday’s Guardian story that ministers had stripped National Highways of responsibility for the Lower Thames Crossing.

    I reported the story yesterday with the headline Ministers keep control of Lower Thames Crossing and that is indeed the government line.

    While maintaining the usual refusal to comment on “leaked” documents, the Department for Transport (DfT) insisted that nothing has changed and suggested that most of the Guardian story was based on a misunderstanding.

    As I noted yesterday, the £10bn+ plan to build a tunnel and new roads linking Kent and Essex was already classified as a “Tier 1” infrastructure project. The DfT pointed out that all such projects are “governed and funded” by the government and that key decisions “are a matter for ministers”, while delivery is the responsibility of National Highways.

    This has not changed.

    The DfT added that, as the Guardian pointed out, that National Highways is responsible for the development of the crossing and will publish a breakdown of costs in its annual report, with decisions over the scope and funding of the project are taken by ministers.

    It said that as this is how Tier 1 projects are governed, this directly contradicts the claim that National Highways has been stripped of the project.

    The DfT added that the project’s scope of the Lower Thames Crossing has been legally fixed by its Development Consent Order (DCO) which was granted by transport secretary Heidi Alexander in March, and that any material changes to a DCO, including scope, must be approved by her.

    A DfT spokesperson said:

    Backed by £590m, the Lower Thames Crossing is the most significant road building project in a generation – and will cut local congestion, better link up motorists and businesses in the Midlands and North with key ports in the South East, and spreading growth throughout the regions, as set in our Plan for Change.

    As I pointed out yesterday, Labour has actually given the project £250m as well as the £590m. More on this soon.

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  • Ministers keep control of Lower Thames Crossing

    I’m not sure how much new news there is in the Guardian’s “exclusive” story today on the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC), which is a bit confused – to say the least – and is probably a bit exaggerated.

    Citing “internal consultation documents”, the paper reports:

    Ministers have stripped the government’s road-building agency of responsibility for a £10bn tunnel under the River Thames amid a drive by Keir Starmer’s cabinet to take tight control over important infrastructure projects for fear of cost overruns and delays.

    It sounds very dramatic, but usually things in consultation documents haven’t happened yet.

    Apparently oversight of the LTC “has been taken away from National Highways and handed to the Department for Transport (DfT)”, but:

    It is understood that National Highways will remain responsible for the development of the crossing and will publish a breakdown of costs in its annual report, but decisions over the scope and funding of the project will be taken by ministers.

    The article correctly describes the LTC as a “Tier One” infrastructure project. In fact the accounting officer’s assessment for the scheme states:

    LTC falls under the Department’s definition of a Tier 1 Project and therefore adheres to control and governance arrangements within NH, DfT and HMT levels. Final approval of each stage of the business case is made by DfT and HMT ministers. Under its procurement delegations, NH would approve all other steps in the process.

    So the DfT and Treasury have had control over the mega-project’s huge costs – expected to be well above £10bn – for a while.

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  • Heathrow “struggling” with record passenger numbers

    Heathrow airport reported record September passenger numbers, which some might think is a bad thing in a climate emergency, but the (London) Standard thinks is inadequate.

    The airport announced that:

    Heathrow welcomed nearly 7.4 million passengers last month, making it our busiest September ever and rounding off a record-breaking summer. It’s a clear sign that Heathrow is the UK’s hub for global travel.

    It may be stating the obvious, but passengers and flights are not the same metric and more passengers can fly on the same number of flights (or fewer), particularly if planes are getting bigger.

    But the Standard reported the same “record-breaking summer” as very much glass half-full:

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