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Manchester, my home city, was named last summer in Inrix's Traffic Scorecard Report as the second most congested city in the UK.
Six months on, traffic in this part of the so-called northern powerhouse is even worse, a sink-hole having seriously affected one of the city's key roads, roadworks covering large swathes of the centre as the Metrolink tram network is extended, and the M60 ring road being upgraded to a smart motorway, due for completion in late 2017.
Inrix's report placed the UK as the fifth most congested country in Europe, behind the leading culprit, Belgium. The firm's president, Bryan Mistele, put growing congestion down to "unprecedented increases in population, combined with strong economic growth and the consequent increase in building and construction", intimating that economic growth and congestion go hand in hand.
Department for Transport figures released earlier this month reveal that UK traffic rose by 2.2% in 2015, with motorway volume up 2.4% and van traffic up 6.1%, the government again linking this to the UK economy's 2.2% increase in GDP, along with the drop in fuel prices.
Newspaper websites' comments sections are awash with criticism of local authorities' planning strategies and commenters' arguments often sound reasonable as, unlike in London where bus lanes make more sense, lanes created on Manchester's primary arterial roads are used by buses far less frequently, creating road and truck bottlenecks as a result.
Last month's government announcement that bus lanes in London, Milton Keynes, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Bristol will be opened up to ULEV drivers is an excellent step forward - and the sooner Manchester can follow suit, the better.
My view resonates with that of Chris Fletcher from the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce in that temporary traffic light sequences need addressing in order to keep traffic flowing. Additionally, I seldom observe a worthwhile number of cyclists using the city's new cycle lanes, again illustrating that planning needs to be improved.
As a director of a car leasing firm, I naturally have a passion for cars, but feel that car-sharing incentives could be one of the answers, along with a park and ride scheme and the re-evaluating of certain notorious pinch points around Manchester.
Business leaders in the Midlands estimated that congestion causes their region £1billion per year, and the figure for the Manchester metropolitan area must surely be higher. With firms such as LEBC threatening to leave the city, I, along with many others, am waiting with baited breath to see if the completion of improvements to the motorway, tram and road network in the city by 2017 will indeed result in reduced congestion over a sustained period.
Lee Wolstenholme is a director of Vehicle Consulting
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