Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

  • Harris gets delayed rebuke for gaslighting MPs

    Back on the subject of National Highways’ disastrous tree planting on its A14 scheme, the transport secretary has publicly rebuked the company for inaccurate evidence it gave to a Commons committee about who was a paying to (try to) put it right.

    Looking back at the evidence given by its then chief executive, Nick Harris, and his subsequent non apology shows quite how arrogant the company – or at least Harris – is.

    Here’s the original exchange:

    Olivia Blake: I just want to pick up on what all this has cost in terms of the A14. In particular, what has so far been spent on putting this issue right? Going forward, what are the estimated costs of keeping on putting it right, if that makes sense?
    Nick Harris: On the planting, that is a commercial conversation with the contractors. They have not met the quality standards, so that planting is at their cost.
    Chair: Just to clarify, that falls on them, not the public purse.
    Nick Harris: That falls on them, yes.
    Olivia Blake: Is that true for all the trees that you have?
    Nick Harris: It depends on how they have been established. For example, I mentioned earlier the issue of ash dieback. That is a cost that falls on us because that is our estate to manage.
    Olivia Blake: So you are doing good contract management, in your opinion.
    Nick Harris: We are doing good contract management. We are always seeking to improve how we manage our contractors. It is our responsibility.

    Of course, the company was not doing good contract management. In a subsequent letter to the chair, Toby Perkins MP, Harris said he wanted to clarify – not correct – his evidence:

    To date, National Highways has funded the replanting from existing project funds and contingencies, meaning this was absorbed in existing National Highways funding. Whilst we did not request additional funding, the costs have been met by National Highways from public funds, so I am keen to correct any misunderstanding of my evidence.

    Not a whiff of contrition, just a suggestion that his entirely clear but wholly inaccurate previous statement had been misunderstood.

    Perkins was decidedly unimpressed, despite an assurance from National Highways that “it was not Mr Harris’ intention to mislead the Committee”. In a letter to transport secretary Heidi Alexander in December, he wrote:

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  • All change on local transport funding

    A parliamentary answer from a transport minister sets out the distribution of local transport funding through mayoral and other transport authorities over the next few years – and proves to be a portal into a previously unannounced new framework for local transport funding.

    Labour MP Julia Buckley asked:

    of the £21 billion of new local transport funding announced across the Comprehensive Spending Review period, how much funding is allocated to (a) Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities, (b) Mayoral Strategic Authorities, and (c) local councils not within a combined authority.

    I think the answer from Lilian Greenwood is best broken down:

    Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities will receive c£7.7bn of transport funding through their integrated settlement over the Spending Review period from 2026/27 to 2029/30 (to 2028/29 for Resource Funding).

    Mayoral Strategic Authorities with a mayor in place will receive c£4bn of transport funding through the Mayoral Transport Fund over the same period.

    So far so good. Nearly £12bn of the £21bn is to go to the two top levels of existing mayoral authorities. Then:

    All other local transport authorities will receive c£9.6bn of local transport funding over the Spending Review period, via the Integrated Transport Fund and Bus Services Fund.

    This includes c£1.2bn for Foundation Strategic Authorities (combined authorities without an elected mayor) and c£2.9bn for local authorities that are part of the Devolution Priority Programme and are due to be established as Mayoral Transport Authorities.

    The first confusing bit is that while we know which authorities are part of the Devolution Priority Programme, no-one knows how many foundation strategic authorities there will be.

    The other really confusing thing is that the Department for Transport (DfT) has not announced publicly that it has created an Integrated Transport Fund, but only said this to local transport authorities.

    As it says in this memorandum of understanding between the DfT and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Unitary Authority:

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  • West Yorkshire workforce proves highly mobile

    The shambles that is West Yorkshire mass transit continues with the departure of another top transport official at the region’s combined authority and “the Cabinet minister in charge of devolution” apparently joining in the row about whether it will be trams.

    Three years after being appointed as West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s first executive director for transport “in a move to bolster the top team”, Simon Warburton is following mass transit director Mike Birch out the door. He wrote on LinkedIn:

    … with a strong team in place to deliver on the Mayor’s vision for a modern transport system in the region, including mass transit and a franchised bus system, I have decided to move on to pursue the next stage in my career.

    Meanwhile, the Yorkshire Post which has chronicled the different views of government ministers and West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin, quotes communities secretary Steve Reed as saying that “it is up to the people of Leeds” whether they want to spend regional funding on a tram system for West Yorkshire.

    I’m not so sure. For a start, as Reed acknowledged, West Yorkshire is more than just Leeds, and the region’s mass transit scheme also includes adjacent Bradford.

    (more…)

  • Not NEAR enough

    Roads minister Simon Lightwood is clearly determined never to give a straight answer to a straight question, particularly when it comes to the lack of safety of smart motorways, and his latest evasion is to sidestep an MP’s question on emergency refuge areas.

    As I have written, with Department for Transport (DfT) going back on a pledge to consider improving the spacing of emergency areas, Sarah Champion MP has been asking parliamentary questions about where this leaves smart motorway safety.

    With the DfT signalling that it has allowed National Highways to kick the issue into the long grass, Champion’s latest question was:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what is the current average distance between emergency refuge areas on All Lane Running Smart Motorways.

    Lightwood being Lightwood, he answered a different question:

    (more…)

  • Why did council greenlight transatlantic traffic lights?

    TransportXtra has a fascinating story about a Scottish road authority being very untransparent over the installation of what appear to be wholly unnecessary traffic lights on a historic bridge, “including whether the ostensibly operational decision was, in fact, a political one”.

    Carlton Reid, an award-winning reporter on transport, particularly the sustainable kind, writes:

    Preliminary work has started on the installation of traffic lights beside the scenic Clachan Bridge on Scotland’s Argyll coast. Known since the early 1800s as the “Bridge over the Atlantic”, the 234-year-old crossing to the Isle of Seil attracts visitors eager to boast of their trans-oceanic journey. However, there are fears that motorists given the green light will soon act aggressively towards pedestrians on what is a much-photographed landmark.

    The installation of traffic lights at such a sensitive heritage site makes little sense to locals and has been described as a “1980s-style intervention” by an experienced former town planner. This place-making expert adds that the council has also ignored current guidelines on transport hierarchies.

    “Somebody in a car or a bus or a lorry, [will think], ‘I’ve now got the green light, there’s nobody stopping me’,” said Grant Baxter of Fife, who has spent 30 years as a chartered planner in Scottish local government.

    It is indeed a much-photographed landmark and I was there with my family in 2021, while staying in Oban.

    Reid adds:

    (more…)

  • Should National Highways have been in the dock?

    I still have very mixed feelings about the conviction of Barry O’Sullivan for causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon by careless driving on the M4 after “smart motorway” technology failed but it is a relief that he will not be going to prison.

    O’Sullivan, who was convicted in February, was given a suspended sentence on Friday at Reading Crown Court.

    An appropriately balanced report from the BBC includes this:

    Investigating officer Det Sgt Mark Dunne has released a statement saying Thames Valley Police’s thoughts are with the victim’s friends and family.

    He adds: “Although the detection system on the smart motorway was not functioning at the time, other drivers saw the stranded Nissan vehicle and took the necessary evasive action, and we received a number of 999 calls alerting us to the break down in a live lane,” he says.

    We should remember that while Pulvinder Dhillon lost her life, she was not the only victim; O’Sullivan was also seriously injured and his barrister says he cannot walk more than 10 metres without becoming breathless.

    The report also includes a quote from campaigner Claire Mercer, whose husband and another man were killed in a crash on a smart motorway section of the M1 in 2019:

    Being so dependent on technology in an already dangerous environment, it’s just making it much, much more dangerous.

    The report covers O’Sullivan’s criticisms of National Highways and the police, alongside statement the company released after O’Sullivan was convicted:

    (more…)

  • National Highways manages expectations upwards on road runoff

    National Highways has reiterated its commitment to improving around 250 sites where road runoff provides a high risk of polluting the environment, despite a lower target in the Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3) and advice from its regulator that it should come clean about what can really be afforded.

    As I wrote here, although the company’s 2030 Water Quality Plan sets that date to mitigate all confirmed high-risk outfalls and soakaways, the commitment in the new RIS is to mitigate 190–250 high risk sites, implicitly by 2031.

    This is subject to “reviewing a deliverability plan by the end of 2027/28” and “includes those outfalls and soakaways mitigated during Road Period 2 and 2025/26”.

    As defined by the bottom of the range, the RIS pledge is significantly less ambitious than the 2030 plan but higher than what the company said it could afford, as quoted in its regulator’s November 2025 advice on its draft business plan:

    National Highways estimates that between 110 and 130 mitigated assets will be delivered from the allocated budget as part of this programme in RP3.

    However, appearing before the Transport Committee on Wednesday, chief operating officer Duncan Smith said:

    We’re very pleased to say that we’ve been given funding in RIS 3 to mitigate those locations where they have the highest potential risk to the environment. So it’s not saying they are polluting, but based on the receiving watercourse and some of the topography and dynamics of the road that they are supporting, those are ones that are the highest priority for us to invest in. And we think that by 2030, we will have improved around 250 of those locations to ensure that the receiving waterourses are protected.

    I asked National Highways whether this meant that it was sticking to the 2030 plan. A spokesperson referenced the plan and said the company estimated that by the end of 2030 it will have mitigated around 250 sites, adding:

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  • Planning to fail

    A senior National Highways official has told MPs that the company did not create a plan to meet its 2025 casualty reduction target – which it almost certainly missed by a long way – because achieving the target was dependent on factors outside its control.

    The admission finally provides an answer to questions raised, but apparently not followed up, by the company’s regulator about why it did so little early in the 2020-25 roads period (RP2) to achieve its target to reduce killed and seriously injured (KSI) casualties by 50% against a 2005-09 baseline.

    Appearing before the Transport Committee on Wednesday, National Highways bosses were challenged by Labour MP Scott Arthur about the company’s expected failure to meet its target.

    Elliot Shaw, chief customer and strategy officer, said: “We did not have a kind of clearly defined plan because it was reliant on broader factors.”

    This “broader factors” argument is consistent with National Highways’ excuses for missing safety targets over many years and was part of its attempt not to have a casualty reduction target in the new road investment strategy, but I think this is the first time it has been given as a reason for not having a plan to meet the 2025 target.

    It is also consistent with comments from regulator the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which was highly critical of the company in its Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance: April 2023 to March 2024:

    While we recognise that not all the actions to reduce KSIs on the SRN are fully within the company’s control we believe that if National Highways had been more proactive in recognising the risks earlier in the road period and developed more robust safety plans sooner this would have increased the likelihood of meeting the target.

    (more…)

  • “No-one told me we weren’t being transparent”

    National Highways obsessive secrecy is so extreme that no-one told its chair that it did not publish minutes of its board meetings,

    Appearing before the Transport Committee on Wednesday, Gareth Rhys Williams was told by Laurence Turner that similar government agencies and government-owned bodies all publish minutes and was asked:

    Why doesn’t National Highways do the same?

    Rhys Williams appeared totally surprised by the question. He replied:

    Um, when it’s somewhere we haven’t um, consider, um, I inherited that and that hasn’t been top of the list of things to think about, but, um… That’s a good question. Let me run back to you with when we thought about it. Hasn’t, hasn’t come up as something for us to think about before.

    Turner pointed out that the Information Commissioner’s definition document for public, wholly owned public companies, “does suggest that those documents should be published, and some of those other transport bodies have done so for 20 years”.

    He added:

    Now, I appreciate that you’ve not been in post for that time, but if it could be discussed at the board and that this committee updated on the outcome, that would be much appreciated.

    Of course, if the board does discuss it, we may never know.

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  • National Highways kicks smart motorway safety upgrade into the long grass

    Transport minister Simon Lightwood has published a response to a fellow Labour MP’s written parliamentary question about emergency (refuge) areas on smart motorways but, as part of an ongoing and determined effort to avoid scrutiny, has made no attempt to answer the question.

    As I noted on Monday, a question put down by Sarah Champion MP followed up on my revelation that the new Road Investment Strategy said nothing about adding new emergency areas to meet the spacing standard to which the government agreed in 2022:

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the Third Report of the Transport Committee of Session 2021–22, Rollout and safety of smart motorways, HC26, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that emergency refuges on All Lane Running Smart Motorways are spaced no more than 1,500m apart, and no more than 1,000m apart where possible.

    Predictably, Lightwood referenced the delivery of what the (Tory) government said it would do at the time, but made no mention of ensuring that the space standard would be met:

    (more…)

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