Responding to the UK Prime Minister’s announcement which outlined a ‘roads revolution,’ the 6983 Freight Transport Association (FTA) has said that plans to deliver roads improvements across the country are good news for the freight and logistics industry.
David Cameron stated that plans for the biggest road building programme for almost half a century will be unveiled in next month's Autumn Statement and would contain a US$24 billion overhaul of 100 of Britain's busiest roads and motorways by the end of the decade as the economy continues to recover.
Speaking on Monday at the6694 Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI) annual conference in London, Cameron said that the Government will embark on the “biggest, boldest and most far-reaching road improvement programme” for 40 years.
Malcolm Bingham, FTA’s head of Road Network Management Policy said: “FTA is pleased to hear of the planned ‘roads revolution’ as such improvements have to be good news for all UK freight operators. Improved road reliability will help to ensure transport operators can provide an efficient service to their customers and will reduce the unnecessary costs associated with traffic jams. Such roads improvements will also assist the economies of those areas which are badly served by strategic transport infrastructure such as the Trans Pennine routes, the south west, eastern and north east England. The combination of improved roads, rail and port connections are the lifeblood of this country and the need for improvement is well demonstrated.
“FTA believes that the UK’s roads networks have suffered from underfunding from successive governments. This is supported by our own research in which FTA members reported a deterioration in the reliability of the road network compared with 12 months ago. With an almost 30 per cent decrease in reliability of the motorway network and over 40 per cent decrease in local authority roads performance, urgent investment is needed to improve journey reliability on major routes.”
However, traffic intelligence provider163 Inrix questions whether widening roads is the answer to the UK’s congestion issues, asking if it, might it be wiser to spend this investment on other congestion reducing measures such as smart motorways with variable speed limits, or improved, cheaper public transport.
Nick Simmons, general manager and vice president of Inrix, says: “It’s encouraging that the government is acknowledging the problem of congestion on our roads, but the question is whether widening carriageways is really the answer to traffic congestion. Recent research from Inrix and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) found that the number of cars on the UK’s roads will increase in the coming years, mainly as a result of continued population growth. The risk with widening existing roads is that it’s expensive and has consequences for the environment, and with vehicle numbers set to increase we may be investing billions simply to preserve the status quo if these wider roads reach capacity again in the near future.
“Roads are the lifeblood of the UK’s transport infrastructure and while a £15bn investment may help ease gridlock across the country in the short term, we also need to be looking at alternative methods underpinned by innovative new technologies and traffic data.
Technology such as smart motorways with variable speed limits, multi-modal navigation and real-time traffic analytics must be adopted more widely. Connecting cars to create smarter cities is going to be instrumental in the fight against traffic congestion because it will provide drivers with the information they need to make smarter transport decisions. Technological solutions such as these could have a greater long-term impact on congestion than increasing the capacity of our road network, which is costly and not guaranteed to solve future congestion issues.”
David Cameron stated that plans for the biggest road building programme for almost half a century will be unveiled in next month's Autumn Statement and would contain a US$24 billion overhaul of 100 of Britain's busiest roads and motorways by the end of the decade as the economy continues to recover.
Speaking on Monday at the
Malcolm Bingham, FTA’s head of Road Network Management Policy said: “FTA is pleased to hear of the planned ‘roads revolution’ as such improvements have to be good news for all UK freight operators. Improved road reliability will help to ensure transport operators can provide an efficient service to their customers and will reduce the unnecessary costs associated with traffic jams. Such roads improvements will also assist the economies of those areas which are badly served by strategic transport infrastructure such as the Trans Pennine routes, the south west, eastern and north east England. The combination of improved roads, rail and port connections are the lifeblood of this country and the need for improvement is well demonstrated.
“FTA believes that the UK’s roads networks have suffered from underfunding from successive governments. This is supported by our own research in which FTA members reported a deterioration in the reliability of the road network compared with 12 months ago. With an almost 30 per cent decrease in reliability of the motorway network and over 40 per cent decrease in local authority roads performance, urgent investment is needed to improve journey reliability on major routes.”
However, traffic intelligence provider
Nick Simmons, general manager and vice president of Inrix, says: “It’s encouraging that the government is acknowledging the problem of congestion on our roads, but the question is whether widening carriageways is really the answer to traffic congestion. Recent research from Inrix and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) found that the number of cars on the UK’s roads will increase in the coming years, mainly as a result of continued population growth. The risk with widening existing roads is that it’s expensive and has consequences for the environment, and with vehicle numbers set to increase we may be investing billions simply to preserve the status quo if these wider roads reach capacity again in the near future.
“Roads are the lifeblood of the UK’s transport infrastructure and while a £15bn investment may help ease gridlock across the country in the short term, we also need to be looking at alternative methods underpinned by innovative new technologies and traffic data.
Technology such as smart motorways with variable speed limits, multi-modal navigation and real-time traffic analytics must be adopted more widely. Connecting cars to create smarter cities is going to be instrumental in the fight against traffic congestion because it will provide drivers with the information they need to make smarter transport decisions. Technological solutions such as these could have a greater long-term impact on congestion than increasing the capacity of our road network, which is costly and not guaranteed to solve future congestion issues.”
