Tag: a66

• A66 scheme breaches the £2bn barrier

  Returning to the theme of the schemes in the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3) that will carry both construction activity and costs into the next RIS, getting more expensive the longer they are delayed, the A66 Northern Trans-Pennine is now set to cost over £2bn.

  What makes this example even more farcical is that the scheme was part of Boris Johnson’s 2020 Project Speed to, well, speed up infrastructure schemes, and was given special funding for this purpose.

  

  I was the first person to report that the costs of the scheme had hit £1.5bn.

  Now, the Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) advice on National Highways’ draft strategic business plan reveals that the total costs of the 16 enhancement schemes in the draft strategic business plan (SBP) are around £600m higher than previous estimate.  

  This difference is predominantly from the A66 Northern Trans-Pennine scheme, where the outturn cost in the draft SBP compared was £540m above the most recent forecast.

  Assuming that the most recent forecast was £1.5bn, that puts the scheme at well over £2bn. I don’t really like saying that something has breached an imaginary barrier but in this case I use the word ironically, to point out that the costs of these schemes just seem to escalate without any constraints.

  (more…)

  2026.04.02

• Throwing random numbers at the problem

  *UPDATE: I have now confirmed that the government has not green lit 28 local road schemes*

  The Department for Transport announcement about a “green light for over 50 road and rail upgrades” has a lot of random numbers and very little detail but cannot disguise the fact that Labour is throwing a lot of money at road schemes in a climate emergency, with very little for rail.

  One number that isn’t in the press release is the £1.5bn cost of the A66 Northern Trans-Pennine, which I wrote about yesterday, and which dwarfs the “£27 million to reinstate passenger rail services between Portishead and Bristol city centre”.

  Neither is the benefit cost ratio of 0.9 for the A66 scheme, representing poor value for money.

  And it is unclear how much funding the government is giving the Midlands Rail Hub, other than that it is “significant”.

  

  Among some obviously made-up numbers about road and rail schemes supporting tens of thousands of new jobs and new homes, there seems to be quite a sleight of hand over the number of road schemes that have actually been given the green light.

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  2025.07.08

• Throwing money down the utilities

  Transport Action Network has published the latest piece in its National Highways Watch series, which I researched and wrote, looking at how the government-owned company regularly overspends on enhancements projects.

  It is, I hope, a comprehensive account on past, current and future projects, as well as scrapped schemes like the A303 Stonehenge Tunnel.

  

  Among schemes that the Labour government has not yet admitted it can’t afford are the £10bn+ Lower Thames Crossing and the £1.5bn A66 Northern Trans-Pennine project, which is currently stuck in the Department for Transport’s value for money review.

  Both have very low benefit cost ratios and seem to be being driven by politics more than anything.

  Last month’s Spending Review did not mention the A66 scheme, something that the Northern Echo noticed, before reporting what it optimistically called an “update”, based on a Treasury Statement.

  A spokesperson for the Treasury said: “The Department for Transport will set out their long-term plan for the Strategic Road Network through the third Road Investment Strategy.

  “Further details on individual schemes like the A66 will be provided by the Department for Transport in due course.”

  Labour is rightly using a hiatus between five-year road investment strategies to rethink what it want to fund but the government has previously said the RIS would be aligned with the spending review and “in due course” is governments’ much-mocked way of refusing to give a firm date.

  So not much of an update.

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  2025.07.07