Spending in the next Road Investment Strategy (RIS) should prioritise safety, maintenance and congestion rather than capacity expansion, MPs have heard, with the AA calling for an end to all lane running smart motorways.
On Wednesday (1 March) the Transport Select Committee heard from a range of experts from industry, academia and campaign groups as part of its inquiry into strategic road investment.
It followed a hearing last month in which the Department for Transport’s (DfT) permanent secretary warned of ‘very limited headroom' for new enhancement projects in RIS 3 (2025-30) due to the cost of schemes carried forward from the current RIS such as the £9bn Lower Thames Crossing (LTC).
Focus on maintenance
AA president Edmund King (pictured) said that the top concern of his organisation’s members is the state of roads.
Guy Dangerfield, head of transport user strategy at watchdog Transport Focus, argued that capital spending on renewals on the strategic road network (SRN) should not be squeezed to top up enhancement spending.
Praising National Highways’ concrete road renewal programme under the current RIS, he said Transport Focus’ research found that two-thirds of road users prefer improving the network to expanding it.
Both agreed that enhancements spending should also focus on safety and congestion ‘hotspots’ on the existing network.
Mr King argued that, while the way road spending decisions were made before the introduction of five-year strategies was ‘pretty dreadful’, most parts of the SRN that needed dualling have been done, and that aside from ‘a few gaps A1 north of Newcastle… we’ve got quite a good network’.
However, Jonathan Walker, head of cities and infrastructure policy at Logistics UK, stressed the continuing reliance of freight on the SRN and its importance to the economy.
He called for freight to be prioritised both for RIS 3 and future strategies and for a long-term approach that would, for example, look beyond the LTC to ‘what investments are going to be needed either side of that’.
Sharon Kindleysides, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, raised concerns about parts of the local road network that connect with the SRN and see levels of congestion that were not anticipated when they were built.
In his evidence to the MPs, Professor Glenn Lyons of the University of the West of England stated that the DfT has repeatedly acknowledged the uncertainty associated with future demand for road traffic.
‘The uncertainty currently faced demands more from the analysis and appraisal process if proposals for investment are to stand up to scrutiny and decisions are to be deemed robust,’ he told MPs.
Smart motorways
Mr King singled out smart motorways as an example of poorly directed spending under recent policy, and in particular the expense of retrofitting safety measures like emergency refuge areas (ERAs) and stopped vehicle detection, which ‘should have been done 10 or 20 years ago’.
He described smart motorways as ‘a system that was brought in on the cheap to try and save money, and people were told at the time it would put lives at risk and also congestion at risk’.
Mr King told MPs: ‘That is one example of really poor policy over the years, and there’s just been this sticking-plaster approach. Can we make it slightly better? Can we put in a few more ERAs? Can we put in a bit more technology, even though that technology is not working?
‘And really the decision should have been made 10 years ago to stop this nonsense.’
Asked about the costs of restoring the hard shoulder on all lane running schemes, Mr King said this could be done relatively cheaply, with a painted line and a permanent red X over the hard shoulder and the technology left in place.
In a second session, witnesses largely rejected the suggestion that network expansion in the North, such as dualling remaining sections of the A1, could contribute to ‘levelling up’.
Lisa Hopkinson, representing Transport for Quality of Life, argued that many major road schemes in the past had ‘overclaimed’ potential benefits that were not borne out by post-scheme analysis.
