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It's time for a serious think about congestion. There's no two ways about it - unless an ambitious and workable plan is put in to place Britain is sure to face a serious congestion headache.
It's time for a serious think about congestion. There's no two ways about it - unless an ambitious and workable plan is put in to place Britain is sure to face a serious congestion headache.
While admittedly we have seen recent announcements from Government aimed at tackling congestion, these read like short term contingency measures as opposed to a serious long term plan. Department for Transport last month announced that they are about to open up motorway hard shoulders at peak usage time to ease congestion and have also committed to an average of just over 100km of new lanes a year until 2015.
A solution is needed well beyond this date, however. The problem, of course, is that no Government can guarantee how long it will be in office and is therefore unlikely to commit funding to a project that will only provide payback 20 or even 30 years in the future.
I hope a report this week from the RAC Foundation can act as something of a wake-up call and trigger a serious look at Britain's creaking transport infrastructure. As many will have read, the report 'Roads & Reality' claimed that Britain's traffic flow could increase by 43% in the next 30 years. It recommended 373 miles of new lanes to be added to the strategic road network every year between now and 2037 if the motorway network is not to degenerate to gridlock conditions.
According to Department for Transport forecasts the number of cars could rise from 26 million currently to 38 million by 2041. With the roads already groaning under the sheer weight of traffic, the prospect of 12 million extra cars is nothing short of frightening. At the same time, the UK is under pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and while some of those will come in a range of cleaner, greener cars, the Government will also be looking at ways to get us out of cars and into public transport.
However, public transport, important in its own right, can't solve the problem: cars carry 86% of passenger traffic, and 65% of domestic freight moves by road. Doubling the uptake of public transport would have only a minimal impact on congestion.
Yes, I admit that there is no easy answer, but so important is the road infrastructure to the UK's productivity and profitability that we need a solution and that solution must come sooner rather than later.
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