Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • Alexander: We’ll cross that bridge when… oh, wait

    Transport for London (TfL) is to introduce a “safety-critical” 18 tonne weight restriction on Vauxhall Bridge from July, after it failed to find the cash to do “top priority” renewal works that Heidi Alexander deferred in 2018.

    It said the restriction follows a recent assessment that showed that elements of the structure had “recently” deteriorated and that it has “a lower weight-bearing capacity than previously assessed”.

    While emergency vehicles and buses will be exempt from the restriction, the 0.5% of current traffic that is above 18 tonnes will be required to use a signed diversion.

    The weight restriction will remain in place while TfL works to resolve the problems as quickly as possible and continues to develop a long-term plan for the bridge

    The issue with these structures, as with the original Severn Bridge, is not individual (ordinarily) heavy vehicles, but the risk that too many will be on the bridge at the same time.

    The imposition of such restrictions has been on the cards since TfL postponed planned renewals work on the bridge in 2018, estimated at the time to cost £40-70m.

    This was part of a “two-year pro-active renewals freeze”, which included the deferral of major proactive renewals on London’s roads, as described in this paper to TfL’s Programmes and Investment Committee.

    Attending the meeting as deputy mayor for transport was Heidi Alexander, now transport secretary.

    The paper noted:

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  • Artificial stupidity

    Waymo has issued a non-apology after one of its trial robotaxis reportedly repeatedly woke up residents in a London street by reversing loudly after finding itself blocked by a gate.

    The BBC reports:

    A driverless taxi company has apologised after one of its cars repeatedly reversed out of an east London cul-de-sac in the early hours, making a loud noise.

    Residents of Elder Street in Spitalfields said a Waymo car had been waking everyone up with a “ridiculous mixture of a reversing noise and siren sound” at about 04:00 BST most days last week.

    The problem appears to be the robotaxi is too stupid to realise that it cannot get out of the street going forward. According to the BBC report, the safety driver told residents that he just had to let the car do what it wanted. It said:

    US firm Waymo, which plans to be operating a robo-taxi service in London by September, apologised “sincerely for any disruption caused”.

    Apologising for “any disruption caused” is a refusal to admit that disruption has actually been caused – presumably on lawyers’ advice – and is meaningless.

    Meanwhile, Brent Green Party has launched a petition calling on London mayor Sadiq Khan to:

    Implement an immediate moratorium on the expansion of the Waymo pilot until a transparent safety audit is completed.

    Publish a full log of all safety breaches, “near misses”, and traffic violations involving autonomous vehicles in London to date.

    It follows the incident last month in Harlesden where a Waymo vehicle drove through a police cordon at a crime scene.

    The Green Party has criticised the (still) Labour-led Brent Council for backing Waymo, which located a depot in the borough.

    The picture shows Cllr Krupa Sheth, cabinet member for public realm and enforcement and council leader Muhammed Butt.

  • All change or plus ca change?

    A couple of announcements linked to Great British Railways show quite how slowly Labour is bringing “change” to the rail network.

    The BBC reports:

    The rail operator Great Western Railway (GWR) is to be renationalised in a “significant” move for trains in the West of England, the government has confirmed.

    GWR, based in Swindon, runs services linking London to the south-west of England and South Wales. It will come back under public ownership on 13 December.

    It’s not really news, other than the confirmation that it will happen, and will happen this year. In fact, it might be seen as later than expected. The BBC reported last September:

    Train firm GWR ‘to be renationalised in a year’

    Train company GWR (Great Western Railways) will be returned to public ownership “in about a year’s time”, one of its bosses has said.

    Meanwhile, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced:

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  • DfT sets new record for hype

    The statistics regulator is to have a very quiet word with the people at the Department for Transport (DfT) who have a habit of making up claims of “record” funding but, as usual with regulators, the touch is so light as to be almost intangible.

    I grassed the DfT up to the Office for Statistics Regulation over this claim in a press release about £3m funding to help councils with bus franchising:

    local authorities are already using record government funding to introduce schemes such as discounted and free fares, as well as new services to previously unserved rural areas

    which was repeated by minister Simon Lightwood.

    And this one in a press release about the mythical structures fund:

    a record £1 billion total package to enhance England’s roads

    Bizarrely, the DfT told me that

    the minister’s quote refers to the fact that this is the first time ever that multi-year bus settlement have been provided to all local transport authorities

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  • Road runoff plans remain clear as mud

    National Highways has appointed WSP to lead of a group of firms supporting delivery of its Water Quality Plan, but the government-owned company is still refusing to be straight with the public about whether the plan can be afforded.

    WSP, which has been technical partner on the programme since 2024, said that under the new contract it will lead as National Highways’ technical partner, supported by Mott MacDonald, Ramboll, Arup and AECOM, providing programme leadership, technical assurance and delivery support.

    Its announcement appeared to give a hint as to how National Highways may deliver the 250 interventions that it is still promising to make by 2030, but which its regulator previously said were unaffordable.

    The project will identify and deliver designs to treat water running from the highest risk outfalls on the strategic road network. Treatment will include either nature based solutions or mechanical approaches delivered within the existing road boundary.

    Working closely with National Highways, WSP will continue to support the development of a long term, evidence led approach to water quality, ensuring interventions are targeted, proportionate and aligned with wider environmental goals.

    The first bit is perhaps ambiguous as to whether all schemes will be within the existing road boundary, or just the “mechanical approaches”.

    As I have reported, when the Office or Rail and Road advised in November that National Highways could not afford to mitigate 250 sites at high risk of polluting the environment, it said:

    For some schemes land is required beyond the highway boundary. Consequently, estimated costs have more than doubled to between £900,000 and £1.2m per asset.

    So, have the company and WSP scaled back or ruled out some interventions outside the highway boundary to save money, or is it just a badly worded announcement?

    Scaling back would certainly be consistent with the suggestion that interventions should be targeted and proportionate, words that are usually code for cutbacks.

    Replying to a question from me on LinkedIn, David Symons of WSP wrote:

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  • DfT blind to sunk costs risks of Thames tunnel

    If you want a definition of hubris, look no further than what the Department for Transport (DfT) and ministers are saying about the risk that the billions being put into the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) will be wasted.

    In one of the Debrief Drop In Sessions that took place just after the Road Investment Strategy was released in March, a wholly understandable question was:

    If £1,655m is being spent on preparatory works for the Lower Thames Crossing before any private sector delivery agreement is in place, is there a risk that this money could be wasted?

    This is actually part of a total of around £3bn of public money put in so far, in advance of a form of private finance that is a long way from being put in place.

    The DfT’s response is typical of its current lines about the issue:

    The Government remains committed to delivering the Lower Thames Crossing, the most significant road investment project in a generation, and to securing private sector involvement to support its construction and operation. The £1,655m included in RIS3 represents Government funding for the essential preparatory and enabling works required before the scheme transfers to a regulated private sector entity. This includes activities such as procurement, all of which are necessary to progress the project and would be required irrespective of the precise timing of any private sector transaction.

    So far, we have an assertion of commitment, a bit of PR spin, and an explanation of where the money is going. The issue of whether it might not happen at all is simply ignored.

    The answer continued:

    The project is expected to be delivered using a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model, under which responsibility for construction and long term operation would pass to the private sector part way through the third road period. As part of this approach, there is an expectation that the private sector will reimburse the taxpayer for some of the costs incurred ahead of the transfer, helping to reduce the overall burden on the public finances. The total spend by Government will depend on the final timing and terms of the transaction, which are still being developed, with the current expectation that the project will transfer in 2028.

    This again ignores the possibility that the project might not go ahead at all, acknowledging uncertainty only over the extent to which the public money put in might be recouped if it does.

    But there are known and acknowledged material risks for a scheme costing well over £10bn that will not have a full business case until 2028, for which there is no legislation in place and where there is “significant uncertainty” around the expectation that the Office of National Statistics will declare the scheme to be off the government’s balance sheet.

    The Accounting Officer Assessment for the scheme, which is itself a piece of spin, admits:

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  • Gaslighting the public about a target that doesn’t exist

    The Department for Transport has released a written version of what it called Debrief Drop In Sessions that took place just after the Road Investment Strategy was released last month, including a sort of explanation as to why National Highways will be expected to do so little to improve safety.

    It follows comments by a senior National Highways official last month, in which he admitted that the company had not bothered with its target for the last (2020-25) RIS, because it depended on matters outside its control.

    As I have pointed out, what is described in the RIS as a “KPI Target” is not a target at all, but a requirement that it at least try to meet a level of casualty reduction:

    National Highways must demonstrate it has done all it reasonably can to achieve a 7.5% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) on the SRN by the end of 2031, based on the 2022-24 baseline.

    It’s worth pointing out that transport secretary Heidi Alexander misrepresented this in her introduction to RIS 3, where she referred to:

    setting National Highways a target to achieve a 7.5% reduction

    One stakeholder at a Debrief Drop-in asked:

    Why is the safety target so unambitious, given previously the target was for zero harm by 2040?

    The answer goes back to the idea that National Highways can only control what it can control:

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  • Could Khan disrupt the disruptors?

    Local Transport Today/TransportXtra reports mounting policy and regulatory tensions between the government and Transport for London (TfL) under mayor Sadiq Khan over the commercial rollout of driverless taxis in the capital, currently being trialled.

    It says that while the Government is fast-tracking a new permitting scheme to launch services this year, TfL has warned that no current autonomous vehicle meets its strict licensing standards for carrying fare-paying passengers.

    It adds:

    Ironically the situation could see Khan in direct dispute with his former Deputy Mayor for Transport Heidi Alexander- now Transport Secretary. Alexander held the position from May 2018 to December 2021. In this capacity, she was also Deputy Chair of the TfL board.

    The report frames the friction as between TfL describing robotaxis as “unproven” and ministers like Alexander and roads minister Simon Lightwood, who have championed the technology as a way to “lead the world”, create new jobs and enhance transport provision.

    Leading the world by doing something that is already prevalent elsewhere in that world is almost as dodgy a claim as creating new jobs, but how might robotaxis enhance transport provision?

    Possibly by reducing the costs through putting people out of work, but the question for both service provision and safety is, are the robotaxis to be additional to or instead of current transport forms?

    LTT/TransportXtra notes:

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  • Lightwood happy with inadequate smart motorway safety provision

    The roads minister has again resisted scrutiny over the provision of emergency areas on smart motorways, implicitly admitting that they do not meet the spacing standard to which the previous government said it agreed in principle.

    As I have reported, the government has broken a pledge to consider adding further emergency areas under the new road investment strategy.

    But, faced with parliamentary questions over current spacing levels, Simon Lightwood has continued to obfuscate, relying on a definition of “places to stop in an emergency” that includes locations other than designated emergency areas.

    Having deployed this definition once to sidestep a question from Rotherham MP Sarah Champion about the average distance between emergency areas, Lightwood simply refused to answer a follow-up from her that explicitly excluded other places to stop:

    what is the current average distance between dedicated emergency refuge areas, excluding slip roads and junctions, on All Lane Running Smart Motorways.

    Lightwood replied:

    My previous answer on 27 April 2026 set out that the average distance between places to stop in an emergency is now less than a mile (around 0.9 miles). Design standard GD301 sets out the new spacing standard (around 3/4 mile where feasible and 1 mile maximum) and defines what a place of relative safety is. The document can be found at: GD 301 – Smart motorways.

    This obstructive and disingenuous answer not only evades the point about dedicated emergency areas but includes a crass non sequitur switch between the definitions of “places to stop in an emergency” and “a place of relative safety”.

    The point remains that neither definition is what the last government signed up to in principle in 2022 following a recommendation from the Transport Committee:

    The Department and National Highways should retrofit emergency refuge areas to existing all-lane running motorways to make them a maximum of 1,500 metres apart, decreasing to every 1,000 metres (0.75 miles) where physically possible.

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  • Are Heathrow owners jumping ship over third runway?

    It looks as if plans to expand Heathrow Airport in a climate emergency may be a dead duck – especially if their main backer in government – chancellor Rachel Reeves – is ousted.

    The FT reports that:

    A Chinese sovereign wealth fund is considering a sale of its stake in Heathrow airport partly over concerns about the rising cost of developing a third runway at the London hub.

    The Chinese Investment Corporation, which is backed by Beijing, has put its 10 per cent stake in Heathrow on “active watch” and is mulling a sale, two people with knowledge of its thinking said.

    The FT adds that CIC is concerned that commercial aspects of the airport, including the steep costs, undermine the business case for expanding the airport and that airlines have raised similar concerns, warning that the costs could be off-putting to carriers and that the total bill for the project, which includes moving part of the M25, may be far higher than currently forecast.

    In response, a Heathrow spokesperson said:

    The costs for expanding the airport have been reviewed by the CAA and their independent experts have determined they are credible.

    However, writing on LinkedIn, Alex Chapman of the New Economics Foundation noted that the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) had recently commissioned an independent report that showed the true cost of the scheme is in the range of £33bn-£52bn, excluding public transport improvements.

    He wrote:

    that’s a very big caveat. Years ago, TFL estimated the public transport improvements required to support the scheme would run to several billions. Uprate that to today’s money and the scheme costs are *beyond HS2 levels*.

    The government has clearly stated that any such costs must come “at no cost to the taxpayer”. So the net private cost of the scheme is even higher than the stated range.

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