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Congestion on England's motorways and trunk roads is estimated to cost industry and commerce £3 billion a year. The government has set a target of stabilising congestion at 2000 levels by 2010, but has acknowledged that it will not achieve it. Average speeds have fallen as the volume of traffic has continued to grow. Around 7% of the motorway and trunk road network suffers heavy congestion at peak times and a further 13% on at least half the days of the year.
The Highways Agency (the Agency) has been too risk averse in testing out and adopting measures used abroad to tackle congestion, falling behind leading countries such as the Netherlands, Germany and the United States. Greater leadership and innovation will be required from the Agency if progress is to be made in tackling England's congestion problems.
The Agency has run trials of traffic management measures, but it has managed them poorly, contributing to some trials' inconclusive results. The Agency has also been unable to prove individual business cases for many of the traffic management measures it has tested at sites on the network. In the Netherlands, traffic authorities have carried out broader, longer range evaluations of particular measures, and so have proceeded to adopt measures more widely than the Agency.
The Agency has failed to give motorists the information they need to make choices both before and during their journeys, and has given insufficient attention to changing driver behaviour. Message signs at the road side are not up-to-date and do not give motorists any indication of how long it would take to clear sections of congested roads or for motorists to reach their destinations. In Paris, by comparison, drivers are given information on how well the traffic is flowing and how long it will take them to get from one junction to the next. The Agency already has the technology necessary to provide such advice and is investing in technology to gather better traffic information. But it is only now starting to provide such information to drivers in England on a limited number of roads.
The Agency's technology strategy is not well integrated with its road building and widening strategy. The Agency has not targeted its most sophisticated technology at the most congested motorways, failing to install appropriate technology on many of the heavily congested motorways in the South East. In 2001, it started to install cheaper, less sophisticated technology in the South East in an attempt to close the significant gap between the regions. The technology was inappropriate, however, and would have cost £64 million more than the progressive installation of the appropriate technology from the outset; and the Agency has therefore reversed its decision.
The Agency also needs to improve its intelligence about planned events, such as concerts and major sporting events that can cause congestion, so that it can take action to mitigate the impact as far as practicable.
On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General[1] we took evidence from the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency on the Agency's approach to tackling congestion; actions to influence motorists' behaviour; and the deployment of measures to tackle congestion.
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