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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 134-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Tackling congestion by making better use of England's motorways and trunk roads
Wednesday 8 December 2004 HIGHWAYS AGENCY MR ARCHIE ROBERTSON OBE Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 128
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral evidence Taken before the Committee of Public Accounts on Wednesday 8 December 2004 Members present: Mr Edward Leigh, in the Chair Mr Richard Bacon Mrs Angela Browning Mr David Curry Mr Ian Davidson Mr Brian Jenkins Mr Gerry Steinberg Jon Trickett Mr Alan Williams ________________ Sir John Bourn KCB, Comptroller and Auditor General, further examined. Mr Brian Glicksman, Treasury Officer of Accounts, HM Treasury, further examined.
REPORT BY THE COMPTROLLER AND AUDITOR GENERAL: Tackling congestion by making better use of England's motorways and trunk roads (HC 15)
Examination of Witness Witness: Mr Archie Robertson OBE, Chief Executive, Highways Agency, examined. Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, welcome to the Committee of Public Accounts, where today we look at tackling congestion by making better use of England's motorways and trunk roads. We are joined by the Chief Executive of the Highways Agency, Mr Archie Robertson. You are very welcome. You are on your own? Mr Robertson: I am.
Q2 Chairman: You are very welcome. Could I please ask you to look at the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report and refer to Part Two of his report, which is headed: "The Agency has made little use of measures used abroad", and particularly ask you to look at Figure 4. Paragraph 2.2 details some of the ideas that we could be using more to relieve congestion on our motorways and, also, makes the point that, apparently, the Netherlands and, particularly, Germany have been more innovative in this area. Why have you fallen so behind other countries, Mr Robertson, in the innovative use of new solutions to relieve congestion? Mr Robertson: There have been some differences in approach, Chairman, which are pointed out by the National Audit Office in their report. There are a number of areas where, I recognise, we need to do some catching up, but that is not the only reason that there are tools which are more widely used elsewhere than there are in this country, in England, and at this time. If we run through the list under Figure 4, for example, tidal flow is something that we have examined several times over the years and found that as an application we cannot find the business case for it or even a suitable location to try it. Dedicated lanes are already in use in this country in four locations, including two which comprise the M4 bus lane and another one that we trialled this summer on the M5 going south in order to try and ease congestion from people heading to the South West for their holidays. We are just finishing a piece of work suggesting that more high-occupancy vehicle lanes are put in place in this country, and a recommendation will go to the Secretary of State on that very soon. We do use ramp metering, which is the next of those technical innovations - traffic signals to control traffic coming on to motorways - and we have identified that there are many sites where ramp metering may work. However, we will never be able to replicate the business cases of the leading exponents of this particular tool, which is the Dutch, and that is because they take a different view to the way in which public sector money is committed and perhaps a greater willingness to take risk or, indeed, a longer-run view of things. I am still trying to understand that better. That is certainly material in the whole context of things. The other thing I think we need to bear in mind is that geography matters here. We have the most hardworking motorway anywhere - and I do not mean "anywhere but", I mean "anywhere". So we are putting more vehicles through our motorways than anybody else and for things like ramp metering, which rely on very short injections of traffic from side roads into the main fray (?), it is very difficult to actually come up with a system that will manage that. Q3 Chairman: So are you saying, then, that no, there are no lessons that we can learn from other countries? Everything is fine here; our roads are not congested? They are obviously congested, we know that - you are not suggesting that for a moment, I know - but the whole purport of your answers seems to be, if you do not mind me saying so, rather complacent. Mr Robertson: I am not satisfied that we have done enough on dedicated lanes, and that is why we are putting forward a proposal just now. I believe there are things we can do in ramp metering that are currently being held back by bureaucracy and risk aversionists and I will be proposing to put in about 30 from the original 100, but the others do not stack up on the business case. We are pleased with the progress on the capability of the variable speed limits approach, and we want to roll that out in combination with other improvements that we are making, including widening the motorways. So there is lots to do, Chairman. Q4 Chairman: Let us look at one of these ideas, which is hard shoulder running, and look at paragraph 2.34. I have to say, the Chairman of the Transport Select Committee does not believe, apparently, in hard shoulder running, but that does not stop us looking at it anyway. Do you believe in it and, if it is a good idea, why have you delayed introducing it for so long? Mr Robertson: In my view it is a good idea and I am looking forward to getting the first stage of it running next summer and then to seeing a full hard shoulder running pilot running from summer of 2006. It has a long and difficulty history, which really keeps coming back to various stakeholders' concerns about whether it can be made to operate safely. That included, originally, people from within the Highways Agency who concluded that it would be very difficult to do without good technology in terms of knowing about traffic speeds and being able to see what was going on. That we can now do and that is what is being implemented on the M42 pilot. Q5 Chairman: You see, I find it disappointing to note your hesitancy in responding to overseas initiatives, particularly, in Holland and Germany, and I wonder whether it would be a fair criticism that your agency is too much in hock to special interests. Mr Robertson: I do not know what those special interests would be. Q6 Chairman: Take the AA and the RAC, for a start. Mr Robertson: I have many robust discussions with the AA and the RAC, including on this particular topic and including, particularly, the roll-out of the traffic officer role (which I am sure you will want to talk to me about) where they had, equally, concerns about their business. I think we do need to recognise ---- Q7 Chairman: What have they said about hard shoulder running, for instance? Mr Robertson: They are very concerned, as people who are going to have to ---- Q8 Chairman: Hang on a moment. Would one of the reasons why they are apparently very concerned be that they sometimes have the contract for getting their emergency vehicles down the hard shoulder in road works? That, of course, would be nothing to do with their hesitancy? Mr Robertson: It may be, but the hesitancy that everybody has had is the fact that people have to get out of vehicles in order to rescue stranded people. They may be ambulance workers, they may be AA workers, they may be RAC workers, and they will almost certainly be Highways Agency workers. We have to look after our people. Q9 Chairman: Can you please look at page 30? "The Agency started to install inappropriate technology in the South East region before changing its mind." (This is covered in paragraphs 3.12 and 3.13.) Why did you do that? Mr Robertson: The Agency had, at that time, a technology strategy and a road building or road widening strategy which were not completely joined up, frankly. Had it been as we proposed to evolve it then there would have been less exposure to this. There were, however pragmatic decisions made about how information could be provided so that customers - road-users - would benefit from information, albeit for a while not in the latest form of presentation. Q10 Chairman: If you look at paragraph 3.16 on page 31 you can see that there is disparity in these technologies. How long will it take for the technology in the South East to be as good as elsewhere? Mr Robertson: There will be a big catch up and an evening out as we implement the widening of the M1 and the M25 - the M25 round the north of London and the M1 virtually all the way up - because in behind that we will put in the technology, frankly, at a lower cost than we would have been able to do by doing it piece-meal. I would have to make the point, however, that it is unlikely that as technology develops and we introduce new means of either disseminating or collecting information that we would necessarily do it the same way right across the country. I think the messages received by our road-users have to be consistent; I do not think it should be mandatory that we deliver them all in the same way. Chairman: Thank you very much. Q11 Mr Steinberg: Mr Robertson, this report makes very depressing reading, does it not, particularly if you are a motorist? Would you agree or not? There is not an innovation in sight. Mr Robertson: I think what this report shows, and I am grateful for the recognition of the National Audit Office, is that there are a number of things that we are doing which are up with the best. The innovation, if you want one to think about, is the introduction of traffic officers, which is unique, in terms of this agency. Q12 Mr Steinberg: I cannot say that I have really noticed that when I have been stuck in congested traffic jams. What did you say it was called? Mr Robertson: The Highways Agency is launching a traffic officer service. It is rolling out in the Midlands now and by the end of next year they will be patrolling all of the motorways. Q13 Mr Steinberg: Patrolling. So when I am stuck on the Western Bypass they will get me out of a traffic jam, will they? Mr Robertson: What they will do is they will clear the accident that currently detains you for a long time. Q14 Mr Steinberg: They cannot be much slower than the police are. I will come to that, in a minute or two. You said there are more vehicles than anywhere else and you have quoted that, I think. But you have done less about it than anywhere else, have you not? Mr Robertson: Let me clarify ---- Q15 Mr Steinberg: You have been in the job a year, Mr Robertson. What have you done in that one year that you have been in the job to improve the traffic situation - congestion? Mr Robertson: It is important just to clarify, in terms of flows, that the last measured numbers that we have and that we have been able to compare with our colleagues in other agencies show that UK motorways take an average of 73,000 vehicles a day; Dutch roads take an average of 68,000 vehicles a day, and other roads in France, Germany and the US are handling between 32,000 and 50,000 ---- Q16 Mr Steinberg: I am not bothered about that. Honestly, I could not care less how many cars are on the road in France and I could not care less how many cars there are on the roads in Holland; all I care about is that when I drive up the Western Bypass to bypass Newcastle and Gateshead I get stuck in a traffic jam which is usually about four miles long. That traffic jam is there virtually every day of life. You get so sick that sometimes you lose the will to live when you are sitting in a traffic jam. Yet nothing has been done, certainly nothing that I can remember; it is just getting worse and worse and worse. What have you done to help me when I am stuck in a traffic jam sitting for 30 minutes not moving? What have you done to help me? Mr Robertson: This year we have put a very significant amount of our investment into new road schemes on the M1 going north, particularly north of Scotch Corner. So we are building new roads. Q17 Mr Steinberg: I did not ask you that question; I said "What have you done to help me in my predicament?" I could not care less about the M1; I very rarely go on it. What worries me as I go to Newcastle, possibly twice a week when I am home, is that I sit in a traffic jam for 30-35 minutes and I never move. What have you done to help me on the Western Bypass? Nought. Mr Robertson: If you look at our website you will find information on all the places that are going to be congested and, at the very least now - it may not encourage you too much - you can think about when you might want to travel; perhaps not at the same time as everybody else. Q18 Mr Steinberg: If I have an aeroplane to catch at nine o'clock it is no good going at 11 o'clock because I will have just missed it by two hours. It is a load of rubbish, to be quite honest, to say I should decide when I am going to travel. The vast majority of people travel when they have got to travel. If I do not have to travel I do not travel at all. So the fact of the matter is if I want to go to Newcastle airport in order to catch a 'plane at 10 o'clock to get down here, I have to travel at that particular time, but I have got to set off two hours beforehand because I know if I take the Western Bypass I am going to be stuck. It is getting worse and worse and worse, and your organisation is doing nothing about it; not a thing. What are you going to do about it? Mr Robertson: I am happy to take another look at the particular route that you are talking about. We are going to be investing significantly in ---- Q19 Mr Steinberg: You see, you do not even do that. You do not even have on the motorway a sign which says: "Don't come on to the motorway because there's a five-mile traffic jam. Why don't you take an alternative route?" At the moment, you do not know that; you guess that you are going to hit the traffic jam but you pray to God when you come on the slip road, "I hope there's no traffic jam." You get on it and you fly down it at 69 miles an hour, you fly down for three or four miles and then suddenly, whack, you hit it. Your organisation has never told me that there is going to be a traffic jam three miles down there and I am going to be stuck in it for 35 minutes. The only thing I know is that it has got a square sign which says "FOG" as you are going through. Everyone knows there is fog when you are getting to it, because you hit it, but you have a sign which I think was put up in the 60s which says "FOG. Travel at 30 mile an hour." That is the only information you have got. Why is there no information? I would have thought it was the simplest thing in the world to do to just put a bit of information up to help me, because I would rather travel 20 miles extra, right round the lanes of Durham and Northumberland, than to go on to the motorway and hit a four-mile traffic jam. Mr Robertson: I recognise that once you are on the network your options are greatly reduced. That is why the National Traffic Control Centre has, as part of its mission, the delivery of information to local TV and radio and, indeed, to the website because those are, we know, the methods that most people use in order to do their journey plan. There is significant investment in that enhanced quality, and I would hope that any blockage on the Highways Agency network was identified and informed to you via local radio. Q20 Mr Steinberg: You mentioned about this new organisation you are going to have. What I have also noticed, particularly on the Western Bypass because that is the one I use all the time, is that there is an accident every day - sometimes two a day on this stretch - and once there is an accident that is the end of it. Just as the accident takes place, for the first ten minutes or whatever it is, you can get through - people manage to get through. Then the police arrive, and there is total chaos; nobody can get through. You are stopped and you are stopped there until they have taken statements, and you are not there for 35 minutes you are there for two hours. What is your organisation going to do to improve on what happens now? Mr Robertson: We will release the police to do their scene of crime investigation quicker, and while they are doing their scene of crime investigation ---- Q21 Mr Steinberg: But will they still have the seven police cars and the 24 policemen there taking statements? Mr Robertson: That is up to them but they will not be there to do traffic management because we will be doing that. Q22 Mr Steinberg: I want to go on to the other point that I really wanted to raise, and I have wanted to say this for so long and maybe this is the opportunity. Lorries, Mr Robertson: lorries on the motorway and on the trunk roads. At one time, when I first got a motor car, the lorry drivers were, perhaps, the best drivers on the road; now they are appalling. They are the worst drivers in the world; they have no respect at all for anybody else on the road, and they have great big, huge lorries which thunder down. Why is it that they are allowed, first of all, to overtake so often? They overtake on inclines which means that nobody can pass them for miles and miles and miles because they are fighting each other to keep side-by-side; neither will give way. When are you going to do something about that? When are you going to make them stay in a dedicated lane so that they do not come out of a lane? Lorries do not need to be doing 90 miles an hour, thundering past your car so that it shakes all the time. When are you going to do something about that? Mr Robertson: We are undertaking consultation right now on the M42 with a view to trying it out. It has already raised the concerns of the Freight Transport Association and others, as you might expect, but we do believe, particularly as a means of keeping traffic moving up hills, that there is something to shoot for here and we will lead, I hope, for trials on the M42 very shortly. I have every sympathy, and not necessarily every answer ---- Q23 Mr Steinberg: It is no good having sympathy! You are a very sympathetic man, you can tell that, and you are a very compassionate man, but that does not help me when I am stuck behind a bloody lorry doing 70 miles an hour and another lorry is doing 71 miles an hour. Nobody can get past, the muck is coming over your windscreen, and they are never going to get past because there is an incline and it is a two-lane road and nobody does anything about it. It has been going on for years. Mr Robertson: I have just told you what we are proposing to do about that. You need to recognise that, again, just putting this into an international context, we carry more freight on our roads than just about any other country. We carry little freight by sea round the coast and inland waterways and we carry even less by rail. That gives us all, whether as road-users or people responsible for looking after the highway, a very, very demanding environment in which to work. As far as accidents with trucks are concerned, we have already begun working with the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association to point out the blindingly obvious, which is that if they do not have accidents they will not be stuck in the queues behind them. We are providing them with information about individual accidents suggesting that they go away and work out how it is not going to happen. Q24 Mr Steinberg: So they are going to regulate themselves? Mr Robertson: They are regulated by others, they are not regulated by the Highway Agency. What I am suggesting to them is that if they think of straightforward economics, if they run their fleets better they will be able to run longer because they will not get stuck in their own accident count. Mr Steinberg: I look forward to another year of you being in the job, Mr Robertson, and when I am stuck on the Western Bypass I shall remember your name. You might get a few letters. Q25 Chairman: Mr Steinberg has spoken up for people in their cars but you can look at this report in a more sedate manner dealing directly with Mr Steinberg's questioning. If you look at paragraph 3.3 which is on page 27, it says: "Motorway and trunk road user groups ... were dissatisfied with the quality of on-road information provided to motorists. They pointed out that the information was not up-to-date, and did not enable road users to consider alternative routes ... For example, electronic signs on the M25 carrying messages such as 'Accident M40 North' are of limited assistance to motorists as they provide no indication of how long it will take to clear the scene of the accident and the resultant tailbacks, or of what motorists should do to minimise or avoid delay .. etc, etc." So I think Mr Steinberg was simply asking you, Mr Robertson, what you are going to do to provide useful, clear signs to people not only on the motorway but before they join the motorway to make sense to them so they can plan their journey; so poor Mr Steinberg is not sitting there fuming, thinking up angry letters he is going to send you? Mr Robertson: The National Traffic Control Centre has a mission to deliver the information that is required to get us to a position where we can indicate to people how long they are going to be delayed, or whether there is an alternative route that they may consider. That information is already on the website, not in the form that we want it. We will continue to roll out --- Q26 Chairman: I am sorry, Mr Robertson. You have got to do a lot better than that. Reading the website is of absolutely no use at all to Mr Steinberg when he is sitting in a traffic jam. Mr Robertson: I agree with that. What we need to do, what we plan to do and what we will do - and I believe we have resources to do it in the spending review - is we will get that information transferred into a form that Mr Steinberg and others can use, whether it is over local radio or on breakfast TV, or whether it is on the website. Q27 Mr Steinberg: We want signs on the roads. I have never watched breakfast TV - never! Mr Robertson: I think the point is that that will be there as well, but different people will have different requirements in order to plan their journey. Q28 Mr Curry: You can see why road rage is such a problem. Unlike Mr Steinberg, I do have an acute interest in the M1 and, indeed, the A1 because I have a constituency in North Yorkshire and I drive up and down to it, and it is such a big constituency that if I take the train I have got hours of driving and I get to the wrong place at the wrong time - besides which rail fares are so monstrous it seems easier on the taxpayer if I take the car. At the moment, you have got major roadworks at a place called Carlton, just south of the trio of roundabouts on the A1, and the big decision I have to take is as I come down the A1. There is no point in my looking at a website two hours before I reach those roadworks because things might have shifted; the point of decision is when I am just near Leeds and the A1 divides and I go along the M1 or I go along the A1. What I need at that point is something which tells me whether, if I take the A1, I am going to be able to run through clearly - okay, accidents might happen subsequently and you cannot be responsible for that - or whether I should take the M1, which I know for certain will be brought to a halt about eight times on that road between Leeds and London, whether there is an accident or not. All I get on the signs is something which says, "Queuing ahead" or some slightly banal message like "Take a break" or "Have a rest", and when you are actually stationary on the road the thought of taking a rest is not the most useful advice you can be given. If it is suggested I take an alternative, I do not carry the road map of England in my head, I do not just want to be navigated off the road I want to be navigated back on to the road with clear signs. When can I hope to have that information, which is all part of the decision I have to take quickly when I am driving? No power on earth makes me listen to local radio, I am very sorry indeed. Absolutely no power on earth will make me do that and, like, Gerry I have never watched breakfast television in my life and I am too old to start now. I want a decision in the cab of my car as I am approaching the point of decision. Mr Robertson: On a sign, we already have predictive models that can give you advice about what are the likely consequences of continuing your journey, and we will present that. We are rolling out the signs as part of the National Traffic Control Centre's contract, and I would expect them to do that relatively soon. What is a challenge, of course, is being able to anticipate what everybody coming past and reading that sign might want to have as their decision, so when you talk about it being in your car and personal to you then I go on to talk about another generation of technology which people can already see in the sense of satellite navigation systems matching with information coming from a National Traffic Control Centre and giving you, ultimately, your personal decision, but that is some way away because the in-care technology and the transmission of it is not yet ready. Q29 Mr Curry: But there is at least the hope that at some stage I will have the information to make those decisions as I am actually travelling, which saves me the frustration and irritation and saves the planet warming just that tiny little bit? Mr Robertson: Yes, we are very conscious that congestion causes unproductive (?) emissions. Q30 Mr Curry: What are the rules for access to some of the roads? This is going to become a personal travelogue, I am afraid, but driving up the M1 the other day - and Gerry has talked about lorries driving past each other (I wish they would drive past each other at 70 miles an hour, it is driving past at 40 miles an hour which is the problem) - one of the reasons for the delay was a fleet of lorries going down the inside lane carrying locomotives, probably to Doncaster. Does it not strike you as being slightly curious that locomotives should travel by road? Mr Robertson: One of our challenges is making sure that we schedule abnormally or heavy loads (a) to minimise the disruption to the travelling public but (b) also to make sure that the roads are still in a workable condition after. Q31 Mr Curry: Could you extend that to military vehicles which go in convoys whose top speed appears to around 30 mile an hour? Mr Robertson: I would need to check whether they are covered, but the principle would be the same if they have a very heavy load ---- Q32 Mr Curry: Sometimes they are not carrying loads they are just driving extraordinarily slowly. Mr Robertson: The risks we are trying to manage are safety in terms of if they are wide loads and they project into the next carriageway or if they are very heavy loads. Q33 Mr Curry: There are two points you raised in your initial reply to the Chairman, which I think will be interesting to explore. You said that the Dutch took a different view of the use of funds, or some expression like that. What did you mean by that? Mr Robertson: If we take ramp metering as one of the things that we have spent a lot of time talking to each other about and trialling, it is quite evident that the way that Breitsmaataslan (?) in Holland have progressed is to look at the potential of the ramp meter and do some sort of evaluation that says "Yes, that looks like it might be a runner, let's get a few of them out there and then let's tune them to get them right." They will have a business case at one point but we do not think they do a separate business case for every installation, and they cannot tell us what benefit they are seeing relative to the cost of the build, whereas we would, following normal government rules, put together a quite stringent business case and our people would be expected to provide quite a high level of confidence ---- Q34 Mr Curry: Tell me about the business case. If, like Mr Steinberg, I am stuck on the M1, basically, I am not massively interested in the business case, I just want to get to where I am going. If, as a result of my being stuck, I get to London averaging, let us say, 36 miles a gallon as opposed to 38 miles a gallon, and it takes me four-and-a-quarter hours' driving as opposed to three-and-three-quarter hours' driving, that is a very small statistic which ought to go into your business case; the savings for everybody - from me personally, the taxpayer and the planet - of my getting there economically. How do you work out the business case for this sort of thing? Mr Robertson: Almost exactly the way you describe, inasmuch as the time value of travellers and the commercial value of freight is included in the calculations that are done, as are any safety improvements, and these are offset against the cost of the installation and the likely effectiveness of the tool - in this case ramp metering. What is really difficult to see, as far as that one is concerned, is the difference in perception between us and our Dutch colleagues as to how effective that tool is. Q35 Mr Curry: I want to find out what that actually means in practice. There is what I would regard as a common-sense point of view; if a motorway is screwed up - and one of the reasons it is screwed up is because of people merging from another road or it may be screwed up but people are still coming in from the other side - common sense would seem to say, "If the damned thing is overflowing then do not pour anything else into it for the time being." That is simplistic, is it not? Mr Robertson: That is common sense, but if you do that, of course, you jam up all the local roads. So you need something rather more sophisticated that decides ---- Q36 Mr Curry: If you do that there is no point in just having your signals on your entry ramp, you have got to start having indicators way back from that, so that people approaching that point - on to the M11 over the 404, for example, or the M25 where you have got that spectacular set of roadworks on the M11, at the moment, helpfully regulated by speed cameras, which I thought might be used more usefully elsewhere. How far back do you take that process of management to make it work? Mr Robertson: We operate in the same way as most of our overseas colleagues; we only have one set of lights which is on the entrance to the main highway and then you have detector loops in the road which detect how far back the queue is going. If it is going back as far as threatening local roads then the machine automatically changes the lights. Q37 Mr Curry: That is a sort of traffic tautology, is it not, really? The motorway is screwed up and you stop people coming on, but when it looks like that is going to screw that up you tell them to go on to the motorway but the motorway is already screwed up so they cannot go on to the motorway. Mr Robertson: There is only one way to defeat the arithmetic at the end of the day and that is to put in more capacity, and things like ramp metering do not put in more capacity they smooth the flow by controlling the rate at which traffic from the side road goes on to the motorway. We successfully do that in some of our locations, we just have not been able to justify doing it as often as we would like. Q38 Mr Curry: One final question, which again is just one of the bees in my bonnet, is that you approach roadworks and you have a sign which says "Please use both carriageways". However, you will always find some helpful lorry driver who has decided he is going to become the local gendarme and he will halt his vehicle alongside another lorry and they will proceed, side-by-side. There can be miles of open road on the outside carriageway in front of them but is he going to give way? No, because he has determined that he is the local policeman. What are you going to do about that? Mr Robertson: That is an enforcement matter, I am afraid, and one I can only refer to the police. I do not have any enforcement role, as far as that is concerned. Q39 Chairman: Although, as we see at paragraphs 4.19 and 4.20, the Agency is taking over from the police responsibility for clearing motorways after incidents and accidents. What difference is that going to make? Mr Robertson: At the moment, the police have responsibility for clearing accidents. Although that responsibility is not written down anywhere, their principal responsibilities are to deal with a scene of crime, if there is one, and to ensure the safety of the road. As far as the police are concerned, a road with nothing moving on it is a safe road. We do not subscribe to that view, of course (and I am sure none of us here do), and the responsibility we have is to get traffic moving; also, to get diversions in place quickly and, also, if there is a really serious incident, to get people across the road and back on to the network somewhere else. Basically, to get detritus off the road and to clear cars that have broken down. A lot of hold-ups on roads are not great big crashes, they are a car that has broken down on the outside lane, and it does not need four or five policemen to take care of that, it needs a traffic officer, and that is what we will do. Q40 Mrs Browning: Mr Robertson, I do listen to local radio and I am sure it is a useful tool in advising motorists once they are on the road, but my experience is that as I am driving over Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire the only local radio I can get is Radio Berkshire, which is not covering Wiltshire, and it is the most irritating thing because I have one of those things - somebody will tell me what the technological term is - where, as I am listening to a Marla (?) symphony on Classic FM, local radio keeps interrupting. It is never relating to where I happen to be driving at the time. I think your dependence on this facility is really not satisfactory. I think you really should give attention to what my colleagues have said to you about getting timely and informative information on to those notices or on to the radio through, presumably, notices you can give to radio to make sure we get useful information and not things that really do not apply. Mr Robertson: I was reflecting what people tell us they use as a means of collecting and getting information when they are making their journeys. We get this information as part of our customer surveys that we do twice a year. Of course, the answer is everybody wants a bit of something so there is no media that you can neglect, at the end of the day, and that includes the variable message sign, which we are deploying as quickly as our resources will allow. Q41 Mrs Browning: On the point of resources, can I draw your attention to paragraph 4.22 where it sets out for us what I think I picked up in a remark you made earlier when you said you look after your people. You certainly do, do you not? I see here that since taking over responsibilities from the police's traffic management, your budget has increased from £44 million to £73 million, and I see here a breakdown of how you are spending that extra money. Tell me, Mr Robertson, how come you have spent (is this really true? I am sure the Comptroller and Auditor General can confirm this) £3 million on additional uniforms for the 600 more traffic officers and control staff? I did a quick, back-of-the-envelope job and I reckon that is £5,000 per head for uniform. Now, I am somebody who knows about spending money on clothes, Mr Robertson, but even in my wildest dreams £5,000 per head for uniforms seems a tad excessive. Mr Robertson: I agree with you and certainly there is no such amount of money being spent on uniforms alone, although there is stock and other safety equipment which will be included in that. I would be happy to give you a breakdown. Q42 Mrs Browning: I would be very pleased to know who you commission this from, which designer company has designed and produced these catwalk uniforms. Mr Robertson: I am sorry to disappoint you but they are not exotic, at least to my sartorial sense. Q43 Mrs Browning: Let us just focus, then, on this breakdown of this extra money on offices, on uniforms, on training (clearly, that is allowable). What actually are you going to deliver for this extra expenditure compared to what the police have been delivering? What will we see on the ground? Mr Robertson: First of all, there will be 454, approximately, policemen who will be doing other patrol duties in future (chasing criminals, I guess, at the end of the day, is what they should be doing) and we will be taking over their responsibilities. We will be manning seven regional control centres which replace over 20 that the police have right now, and managing the traffic using variable traffic signs, using CCTV, using loops in the road, detecting incidents early and deploying traffic officers. These regional control centres will also take over from the police the responsibility for setting the local signs, and they will provide information to the National Traffic Control Centre which will put the information on the 50 MSs (?) that we see round the country which are intended to give you information about choices in your route. The traffic officers themselves will deploy to accident sites and with whatever resolve they can they will get the accident cleared quickly; if it is debris they will move it, if it is vehicles in carriageways they will move them to the side, if it is vehicles on the hard shoulder they will arrange for their recovery either from the AA or by private contractor. They will also collect information about what is causing accidents in the first place, and will log that information back to enable us to know where accidents happen and why and further inform the sorts of decisions we can make to make traffic work better. They will also provide more information about what causes accidents, and I optimistically hope that that will enable us to reduce the number of accidents we have in the first place, because that form of congestion, although it is not the biggest form of congestion, is the worst because you never know where and when it is going to happen. Q44 Mrs Browning: Could I venture to suggest an area you might like to start looking, because it seems very obvious to me? For about the last 40 years I have driven, I suppose, something like 25,000 miles a year, so I am somebody who has used the motorways a lot. It seems to me that one of the biggest problems on our motorways, apart from the point that has been raised about lorries (and I do agree with colleagues about the standard of lorry driving, which is quite different now to what it was a few years ago), vehicles travelling too close to the car in front at a speed where they clearly cannot brake, resulting in all those multiple shunts that you get. Are you going to have the powers to do something about that, or make specific recommendations? You see it all the time. Mr Robertson: What we will do is we will collect the information and put it together in a way that it has not been put together before, because the police gather information for follow-up on criminal proceedings. So we will be able to identify whether there are patterns like that which are causing problems, and we will pass that information to the people who should rightly do something about this - who, in this case, would be the department in conjunction with the Home Office, because it is an enforcement issue. Q45 Mrs Browning: Can I ask you - and you have touched on it quite a bit today - about when there is an accident on the motorway? When that happens, automatically now the police close between those junctions as they now regard it as a potential scene of crime - something they never used to do. In your judgement, is that really the right way forward or should it be a matter of judgement at the time for the most senior police officer present to decide whether that is applicable? Do you feel there should be some more flexibility in this? I hear what you say about clearing vehicles and, obviously, getting emergency vehicles to the scene has got to be the priority here, but it seems to me that we could perhaps have some traffic being properly directed by your new staff in their lovely, new uniforms around the scene of the accident while the police deal with the part of the accident they have got to deal with. Have we not become too rigid in this? Is it not time for a re-think about whether that is appropriate on every occasion? Mr Robertson: The police are currently reconsidering a document that I believe is called the Police Incidents Investigation Manual, which I have not personally seen but which sets out the ACPO guidelines for investigating such incidents. They have told us about it and they want to talk to us about how it shapes up in the future. So I consider that to be an opportunity to ensure that we are getting the best for not only the people who are affected directly by the accident but those of us who are held up. Q46 Mrs Browning: What is your view on that? Mr Robertson: It is difficult to characterise an accident. My view is that there needs to be trust and confidence between traffic officers and police officers such that we can get on with keeping traffic moving on the bits of the carriageway they do not need to designate as part of the current rescue area or a scene of crime. I do feel there is potential for that. I equally think there is a huge amount of potential for investigation time to be reduced. In this country I understand that, currently, that averages about five-and-a-half hours. I have just returned from the United States and Canada where they achieve significantly shorter times than that because they have a different attitude to incidents but, also, because they use technology differently. I intend to work with the police to get them to introduce that technology, or buy it out of some of my uniform funds, to return to sites and measure things electronically for them and save a lot of their time. Mrs Browning: Thank you very much. If I could just say I think you have got plenty of scope there within that budget to spend some money on the sharp end. I can certainly see some savings there that you might draw upon. Thank you. Q47 Jon Trickett: I wonder if it is true to say that we have got X millions of pounds to spend on the highways, that when it comes to congestion, schemes compete for that money, they are prioritised according to the business case and that, generally speaking, this report seems to say that the business case almost invariably in the past has proved in favour of additional road capacity rather than traffic management schemes, and that is the reason why we get more and more road building and we have not done anything like the traffic management that has gone on abroad. Is that broadly the case? Mr Robertson: There is one other area of investment called the Small Schemes (or referred to in the document as Local Network Management Schemes) which are small schemes of value, up to about £5 million. These, basically, entail things like realigning junctions or realigning slip roads, and so forth; small bits of money just to make traffic flow better. These, in terms of benefit cost ratio, are easily the best show in town. Q48 Jon Trickett: Thinking about the bigger, strategic decisions which have to be taken, can you give us an indication, because if I talk about the management of traffic flow, the kind of software-type things, and hardware in terms of using more tarmac, what is the ratio between one and the other in general terms? Are you able to give us some feeling of the relative costs? Mr Robertson: A good small, £5 million scheme will give you three times the benefit cost ratio of a major road scheme. There are simply limited opportunities to do small schemes ---- Q49 Jon Trickett: I am asking you about traffic management, the management of flows, such as information which is accurate and immediate to drivers as opposed to new tarmac. I am talking about the balance of cost between the two, since it seems to me that your business case, the way that it is structured, is invariably pointing towards new roads rather than towards management of flow. I am not talking about these smaller schemes now. Mr Robertson: You need to do all of them. This is an environment where demand for road use is going up 17%. Q50 Jon Trickett: This paper is saying that each time you look at the business case almost invariably, in terms of the management of traffic flows, the business case fails, which presumably means that the money is then being spent on additional roads. Is it not? Mr Robertson: The business case is not failing, the business case is not showing us that we would use a particular tool as much as our colleagues overseas have done. Q51 Jon Trickett: I am trying to get you to tell me if you have got some indicative costs of the ratio in terms of cost benefits between the management of flows, on the one hand, and the building of roads, on the other, in alleviating congestion. That seems to be the direction which the Agency has taken historically. I am thinking you do not have that figure. Mr Robertson: Every scheme is essentially evaluated in the same way in terms of the cost of the scheme and the benefits it will bring in terms of flow. That applies equally to an information investment, like a sign or the National Traffic Control Centre, as it does to a small scheme to realign some junction, as it does to widening the M1. Q52 Jon Trickett: I wonder if you could reflect on my questions and, perhaps, do us a note, because I want to pursue some other matters. Let me ask you about this issue, which a number of Members have raised, which is to do with two commercial vehicles running in the inside and middle lane and, thereby, causing congestion, which frequently happens, in my experience, particularly whenever there is a slight uphill incline and they try to get past each other. How would a business case be constructed to justify the action that says you cannot overtake in certain parts, for example, which you say you are going to try on the M40 or M42? Have you done a business case in that particular scenario? Mr Robertson: There will be one, but I have not seen it. However, it would be done on the basis of increases in average speeds or reduction in time spent below 30 miles an hour, which is when you are congested and you then begin to suffer ---- Q53 Jon Trickett: Presumably, the freight would possibly move more slowly than it was hitherto doing, since some vehicles were trying to overtake others. Mr Robertson: That would also be factored in but it remains to be seen, which is why we are consulting and putting the business case together on just how much impact that has. Again, this is something that other countries are also trialling. Q54 Jon Trickett: You have clearly said that the way in which the British - presumably the Treasury or somebody - ask you to do business case scenarios mitigates against the adoption of such traffic flow management systems. Mr Robertson: What I mean to say is that in some cases, because of the different attitude that different governments or different services take to this, different tools have different levels of attractiveness. That has certainly been our experience with ramp metering. I am not saying it is going to be the same answer with constraining trucks to the left-hand lane. Q55 Jon Trickett: I personally - and I think the Chairman agrees - would like to know more about this business case, how it is constructed and so on, since it seems to be one of the critical factors in making decisions in declining to do the kind of things which are happening elsewhere. That is what you said and that clearly is in the report. If the Chairman agrees, could we have a note to explain how the system works and how it might be constructed differently? Mr Robertson: Can I just draw one other painfully obvious point to this, which is that I always have more good business cases than I have resources. Q56 Jon Trickett: If you have business cases for £200 million, and you only have £100 million to spend, you are spending £100 million on building new roads rather than managing the flow of traffic on the existing roads, and that seems to be the problem. It seems to be an entirely financially driven set of decisions resulting from the way in which the business case scenarios are being constructed. It seems to me that if you are being given different ways of calculating the business case with different outcomes, it is entirely feasible to suggest different outcomes would come, and some of the irritants that we all see when we are driving would be removed. I want to move on. I drive quite a lot in France, and one of the interesting things in Paris is how you can influence driving behaviour if you give people sufficient information, which is immediate. On the Périphérique and in all the Parisian motorway network, it will actually tell you how long it will take to go from one junction to the next, "huit minutes, situation fluide" or whatever. Why are we not able to get that kind of information? Has a business case been done on that? That would clearly influence driver decisions and probably help quite a lot in resolving congestion, would it not? Mr Robertson: It may do where we can give people choices, and there are some places where we can do that - not perhaps as many as there are in France, but they are there, and ultimately we can already give people advice on which way to go round the M25 if they are coming down the M6. There is still a lot more work to be done on it. Q57 Jon Trickett: You were saying to Mr Curry earlier that the technology is not there in terms of coming into the cab. Clearly, it has been present in Paris for many, many years. Most Members will have driven there over the years, and the information comes down to how long it takes to get from one junction to another and possible alternative scenarios. So the technology is there, is it not? Mr Robertson: The technology is there. The predictive technology is there. It is used on our website already. As and when we can roll out the signs... Q58 Jon Trickett: Has the business case not demonstrated that it will justify itself? Mr Robertson: No, the business case is justified. Q59 Jon Trickett: So when are you going to do it then? Mr Robertson: I expect to do it in the Spending Review period, given that for this making better use type of activity, which encompasses traffic officers, technology and the small schemes I was talking about, that there will be, I expect, something like £1.3 billion over a three-year period. Chairman: As you approach Paris, it tells you "Périphérique est" or "ouest fluide" so you know it is moving. Q60 Mr Davidson: There is a fair amount of criticism of your organisation in this report. Do you accept the general thrust of what has been said? Mr Robertson: Yes, I do. I have accepted this report and there are things that we need to do to be clear. Q61 Mr Davidson: I am just wondering to what extent you accept the issue about the agency being risk-averse and clearly in need of cultural change. I wonder, if that was accepted, what you have set in train to actually change the culture of this organisation. Mr Robertson: What we have been discussing, without using the expression "risk-averse", is exactly that, which is a different culture between, let us say, the Dutch and the one that has been used here on ramp metering. I think there is an element of unwillingness to try out the novel thing in government, and I take the responsibility for pushing that forward in the bit of the organisation that I am responsible for. Q62 Mr Davidson: What I actually asked you was what you had done to change it. I understand you have analysed the problem correctly. What I am asking is what have you done since you arrived to change the culture? Mr Robertson: What we have done since I arrived is roll out the traffic officer service, which is a completely new approach to traffic management. Q63 Mr Davidson: That is an action, in a sense. That does not necessarily change the culture. To some extent it changes by example, but that in itself will not change the culture. That could just simply be another arm of the organisation with the same risk-averse, stuck-in-the-mud culture that you have had up to now. What you done to change the culture? Mr Robertson: We have a new finance director, who is a professional, to help us make our financial decisions. I have appointed an innovation director... Q64 Mr Davidson: He could be just as bad as the previous one. I understand to some extent that changing the personnel is helpful but it is not in itself changing the culture. Mr Robertson: If you let me finish, there are a number of personnel changes. There is an organisational change within the organisation in terms of focus. The people who are currently described as the traffic operations people, who mange the maintenance contracts, will in future have accountability for the performance of the bits of road that they are responsible for, which does not exist now. That is a corporate thing, and so it is everybody's and nobody's at the same time. I want to get down and will get down to people being accountable for the congestion and for the safety performance of the particular bit of road that they are earmarked to take care of. In addition that, we are about to launch a culture document by which I explain the way in which I expect people to conduct themselves and to innovate within the organisation. It happens to be called "Customers First", but that is what it is about. Q65 Mr Davidson: That is helpful. Do we take it then that you would expect to have some sort of evidence of the organisation being less cautious, less risk-averse, within a certain period, and would there be ways in which that would manifest itself? Mr Robertson: What is really important is that it manifests itself in tackling congestion and improving safety, so it must manifest in the outcomes. Q66 Mr Davidson: Not necessarily, because anybody will argue that the organisation is continuing to have the same aims, and in the sense of being more willing to take risks, being more responsive than it has been up to now, being more willing to look at examples of what has happened abroad, how do we know within, say, a couple of years or so if the NAO look at you that the culture of the organisation has changed? We have all had a bit of fun and we could continue taking pot-shots at you all afternoon, because it is so easy. That is unfortunate. Mr Robertson: I do not think you have a "before" and "after" perspective that would make it easy. One of the things I notice the agency is criticised for is not having a good enough "before" position, but I would have thought that in two years' time, if you were talking to our people, you would be clearer about what got them going, and you would hear them getting going about the sorts of things that we need to have, which is actively taking steps, innovative or whatever, to provide a better service to people who use the roads. Mr Davidson: As long as I am convinced that you have a perspective that is going to change the culture, and I recognise the joys sometimes of personnel changes in new circumstances. Can I ask you about one of the references in the document about driver behaviour in England as being particularly difficult in some way? I have always found some difficulty with the English in general, and I am sure you have, but why are they particularly bad drivers or difficult to manage? Chairman: This may be in danger of being a racist remark, and I have to rule it out of order. Q67 Mr Davidson: There is reference in here where you have referred to driver behaviour in England as being particularly challenging. I am not quite sure why that is, whether it is genetic, historical, or whether it is just an excuse. Mr Robertson: I do not think I find driver behaviour in England particularly challenging. What we need to take account of is the fact that it is different everywhere, and it reflects all sorts of historical factors, but not the one, Chairman, that you might be worried about. It is in the way that we pass on information to each other, and it is what my son picks up about driving behaviour watching me doing my driving. All of those things are very important in driver behaviour, because of course, once you have passed your test, you are then a driver and you do not need to be retested. Q68 Mr Davidson: If you say driver behaviour in England is different, but no more difficult than elsewhere, then presumably there are a whole number of things that you could have learned from overseas that for some reason you have not picked up. Again, maybe if it is just a question of culture, you are on the way to resolving that. Using a particular example, the point that has been made before about the antisocial behaviour of the freight transport industry in terms of the clear way in which the structure that they have encourages the sort of behaviour by their drivers that results in them running parallel up hills and all the rest of it. You are considering experiments now to deal with that, but why do you think it has taken so long for something like that to be trialed? Is it because you are bullied unduly by the Freight Transport Association? Mr Robertson: It is because the Highways Agency, whatever you may have perceived it to be before, did not have a network management role until about 18 months ago. So its job when it was created in 1994 was to build and maintain highways. Its role has changed over its short-ten-year history, has expanded in fact; nothing has been given away. It has expanded to include providing information and traffic management, and is now, in the condition we will be as we move into the next Spending Review period, beginning to think of itself as somebody who provides journeys, not roads. Q69 Mr Davidson: There is mention made in the report of the difficulty of getting the public to accept new ideas, and you have experienced that in governmental and public service life. The suggestion is that you have been a bit slow in picking up examples from overseas again about how to persuade drivers to behaviour differently, how to persuade them to accept new methods of running the roads. What confidence can we have that you have learned that lesson and there will be some new pattern of behaviour into operation within a reasonable period? Mr Robertson: I do not actually think the organisation has any shortcomings in terms of looking at techniques that other people use in other countries. I think where we need to improve is in the way we deploy those here, and that is what counts. People are always anxious to see how others do things, but if you look at it and you do not do something about it, it is all rather wasted effort, and that is what I want to harness. Q70 Mr Davidson: Do you think the difficulties are exacerbated by the extent to which organisations like the AA and the RAC appear to be reactionary in lots of ways? Mr Robertson: We have had our moments, and I think in some areas they are right. For example, we share the role of responsibility for people on the highway and the hard shoulder, doing jobs to rescue and take care of people and, as I have said already, you really cannot mess about when it comes to that. The AA and the RAC have been concerned that the development of our traffic officer role in particular is something that will undermine the commercial service that they provide for their customers. I do not believe that is the case. There has been discussion in the House about this as well, because once somebody is on the hard shoulder, then I am happy for the AA and the RAC to take over, provided they do not hang about in getting there, because the hard shoulder is a dangerous place. Q71 Mr Davidson: We should not be taking their commercial interest into account. That is a clear case of a vested interest for their own revenue stream, is it not? Mr Robertson: They do provide a valuable contribution to what happens on the highway and I want that contribution to continue and be enhanced, but we do have changes to make. Q72 Mr Davidson: Finally, in terms of people hogging the middle lane, which is another road issue like the question of the lorries running parallel, is that something that you will have a degree of responsibility for as well? Mr Robertson: One of our recent initiatives has been to run a short trial on our variable message signs on the period when they are not required to deal with accidents or incidents. We ran a short "Don't hog the middle lane" trial, largely in the north-west, because it was easier to evaluate there. For those who were exposed to the trial, there was a fantastic popular reaction to it, people saying "Why didn't you do that before? We get so frustrated with these people that we can't get past." In terms of the trial, we have yet to see the properly evaluated before and after results. There was some short-term benefit, but we have not yet got to the point of saying this is the way to get people back into the inside lane. There was not sufficient change on that trial, but it was very encouraging and we will work further on it. Q73 Mr Davidson: I have the impression that those who drive in the middle of the road do not bother to look at the signs either, and therefore it is not necessarily appealing to those who ought to be influenced. Mr Robertson: What is definitely the case is that some people did see the sign and change their behaviour - not as many as we might have liked. Mr Davidson: This we can hope for, I suppose. Q74 Mr Bacon: I am sorely tempted not to flog this horse any more, but my temptation is not as strong as the temptation to continue asking questions about it. Apart from the fact that when your agency failed to grit the M11 I was in that 30-mile queue, I do not think there is any single issue that most users of major highways and motorways find quite so frustrating. I am sorry for being late. I had another Select Committee. I understand members have already asked about this. I take it you are talking about three-lane motorways, where the middle lane is being hogged by a truck. Is that what you are talking about? Mr Robertson: Yes. Q75 Mr Bacon: There are also two-lane motorways, and that is in my own personal experience much more serious, two-lane motorways where trucks occupy the left-hand lane and the right-hand lane, and if I am chugging along coming into London on the M11, I frequently find suddenly, for no obvious reason, I am doing 54 miles an hour or 56 miles and hour instead of the speed I was previously going at, and I look ahead, and sure enough, there is a truck. My first question is how long have you been looking at this problem? Mr Robertson: There are a number of issues there. I think you did miss some of the conversation earlier. Q76 Mr Bacon: Yes, and I apologise for that. I have been looking at it for three and a half years, every week, on the M11. How long have you been looking at it it as the Highways Agency? Mr Robertson: We have only been looking at it in the last few months seriously, although we have been aware that others overseas have been doing it, and we have been watching how they have been getting on. There are two aspects to this. One is any suggestion of lorries deliberately doing that is a matter of enforcement for the police. Q77 Mr Bacon: Sorry? Deliberately doing what? Could you clarify? Mr Robertson: Where two trucks are riding parallel to each other. Q78 Mr Bacon: Yes. When you say deliberately, as if you could accidentally be in the right-hand lane, it suggests the lorry driver is not in control of his vehicle. That is not what you are suggesting, is it? Mr Robertson: This is a point that was raised by somebody else earlier, that sometimes it appeared to be the case that two trucks were trying to travel... Q79 Mr Bacon: I am not suggesting that they are chatting, but that the lorry is not powerful enough to get past. That is my sense. Mr Robertson: The issue is particularly acute on hills, which is where we now have a programme of introducing crawler lanes, some of which you will see on the M25, and on other parts of the network, some of which we are about to put in on the M5 around the south of Bristol near the bridge. Q80 Mr Bacon: None on the M11? Mr Robertson: I cannot tell you right now whether we have plans for the M11, but we will look into that. We are planning to do a trial on the M42, which would test the effects of restricting trucks to the inner of the two lanes and therefore not permitting them to overtake each other, and we are currently consulting on that trial. Q81 Mr Bacon: So you have not started the trial; you are consulting on the trial, presumably with consultants? Mr Robertson: With people like the Freight Transport Association, who are going to take a little bit of persuading, of course, but we believe there is a case to try. Q82 Mr Bacon: When do you expect this trial will (a) be completed and (b) you will have evaluated the results of it? Mr Robertson: I do not know that for the moment. We are only at the consultant stage. I have not seen a timetable. Q83 Mr Bacon: Give me a rough guess. Do you think it will be 2026 or some time before that? Mr Robertson: I think it will be before that. Q84 Mr Bacon: When? Mr Robertson: Assuming that we get to a position that we want to go ahead, and the police have to enforce it and things like that, there are those other parties, this is something that can be done in a number of months, with a good before and after analysis. Q85 Mr Bacon: So when would you expect it to be completed by? Mr Robertson: I do not have a date. Q86 Mr Bacon: If I understand you correctly, when you just said "assuming we decide to go ahead", you mean if you decide to do this trial which you have not yet done. Is that what you are saying? Mr Robertson: If we get the cooperation to go ahead, then we will go ahead and do the trial. Q87 Mr Bacon: From whom do you need cooperation before you decide to go ahead? Mr Robertson: The police. Q88 Mr Bacon: The police, and it is not clear whether you are going to get the cooperation of the police? Mr Robertson: I do not know right now. I am optimistic about this trial. I would like to see it done. I know it is difficult for traffic flow and for people's convenience when they get stuck behind traffic going up hills. There may be an opportunity here to tackle this with a good prospect much quicker than we would otherwise have been able to do it by putting in crawler lanes. Q89 Mr Bacon: The overall gist of this report is that you are risk-averse, unadventurous, and very slow to take up ideas, and your answers on this particular point give the same sense of a lack of drive and urgency, as was the central criticism in this report. The question that most people who use the M11, certainly I as a user of the M11, ask is when are you just going to stop faffing around and deal with it? It is obvious to most people what is needed, is it not? Mr Robertson: I have more good projects I can do than I have resources. Q90 Mr Bacon: I wanted to come on to this point, because you did say that earlier. How much do you need in the way of resources? I gather from talking to our clerk that one of the questions is signage but actually, to implement something like this, what resources do you really need? You need a clear position in law, do you not? Mr Robertson: Yes. Q91 Mr Bacon: You need the truckers to understand that if they break the law, there are consequences. That does not require a huge amount of resources, does it? Mr Robertson: That is why I am optimistic and attracted by it. Q92 Mr Bacon: Good. I am glad. Could I ask you to turn to figure 6 on page 23. The agency ran a trial on the M25 on variable speed limits. I wonder if you could clarify the amount of expenditure. Figure 6 says that for that site you had a budget of £10 million and actually spent £11.2 million, although my brief says £14 million. How much have you actually spent on variable speed limits at the site on the M25? Mr Robertson: Our spend to date is £11.2 million. I think the £14 million may be the potential total for this trial. Q93 Mr Bacon: You mean by the time you have completed it? Mr Robertson: Yes, by the time we get it back, because we are also doing a significant amount of work on road works on this section. Q94 Mr Bacon: Do you think this £14 million at one site is good value for money? Mr Robertson: I think it has been good value for money to establish the principle of what we should be doing next, which is when we widen the M1 and the M25 and on other roads put the variable speed limit facilities in at the same time and save a lot of money. Q95 Mr Bacon: Why did it cost £14 million to establish that? Mr Robertson: If you go round there, you will see that there are frequent gantries, the overhead structures that have to be put in place. Then signage has to be put in place. The digital enforcement cameras have to be put behind. The detectors have to be put in the road in order to monitor the traffic speeds, and then a controller has to be there to manage the traffic and decide when to cut it down from 60 to 50, say, when traffic is building up. That is the kit that you buy. Q96 Mr Bacon: How much does one of those big signs - I presume you are talking about those big "L" signs that have a pole coming out of the side and a big rectangular sign coming across the road. That is what you are talking about? Mr Robertson: We call it a gantry. On the M25, it will go right across the road and the signs hang from that. The signs you are talking about are not part of the variable speed limits. They are information signs. Q97 Mr Bacon: Let us stick with the signs that you are talking about. How much does one of those signs cost? Mr Robertson: I cannot tell you right away, but it is several hundred thousand pounds by the time it is designed, has its structure put in and traffic management put in place to enable it to be... Q98 Mr Bacon: How many did you have all together on this site on the M25? Mr Robertson: That is also a very good question. It is in the tens round that, so 30 or 40, I would think. I cannot give you an accurate figure. Q99 Mr Bacon: Thirty or forty, at several hundred thousand pounds each. How did you only spend £14 million? Mr Robertson: I just do not know what the exact numbers are. I am happy to give you a note. Q100 Mr Bacon: Is it possible that you could give us a note with some more detail on this, and also a detailed breakdown of the £14 million? Mr Robertson: The £14 million is not committed. What is committed is £11.2 million, but I am happy to tell you what that has been spent on. Q101 Mr Bacon: But you are expecting to spend £14million, if you can, on this project. Is that right? Mr Robertson: We are expecting to get the very best out of it for the very minimum that we can but we know we are still going to have some expense to recommisson after the road works. Q102 Mr Bacon: I am just trying to be clear about the total numbers, because my brief says £14 million. In answer to an earlier question you said £14 million was where you expected to be at the end. Mr Robertson: That is the budget within which we will do this. Mr Bacon: If you could send us a note on that project and on the breakdown of this budget, and assume it is £14 million, that would be very helpful. Q103 Mr Williams: I know you have only been there a year, and it is probably unfair, but what I feel is that you lack any sense of urgency. This is what comes over. It may be doing you a great injustice. It is your first time here, so I am not trying to be unkind, but one does get the feeling that you are saying, "We have got to try this, we have got to try that." Let us get on with it. We get the feeling of reluctance in addressing the possibility of experimentation. Are we doing you an injustice? Mr Robertson: Yes, I think you are, and it would be true to say that we have concentrated our management efforts very much on launching this new traffic officer service, which never even existed before. It got off the round in June 2003 and people have been out providing the service in the Midlands since April and have their powers this month to start operating on the highway, so we are actually very pleased at the way in which we have been able to grab that and get on with it. We need to harness the energy that has gone into that and drive the organisation forward. As I have explained, I think, my aim is to get everybody with a stake in the outcomes that I want the Highways Agency to achieve, which is targeting congestion and improving safety, and by having a personal stake in it in terms of having objectives upon which they want to improve. As an organisation, we are not bad at identifying good things that we want to do. Where we need more help, where we need to help ourselves more, is to pull it through. We need somebody who is responsible for the M11 or some stretch of road, to say "I need some kit to help me get my customers through here better in future." Q104 Mr Williams: Who would be the people who could do that, and what approach have you made to them, saying "We desperately need this advice from you"? Mr Robertson: These people are being organised to do that now, and given new roles as part of that organisation, given new structures, new support from managers, and the people who are good scientists who can borrow those ideas from others, who can evaluate them, are already there. They just need more encouragement from the end users. Q105 Mr Williams: Can I again have a personal indulgence, as some of my colleagues have, over various irritants? I drive up and down the M4, which compared with my colleagues is a delight compared to travelling on the M1 and the M6. I am lucky, but going up and down at the weekend, what is the status when you come to these long stretches of 50 mile an hour road with the bollards all along the side of the road, no work going on, but "50" signs are still there and the warnings about cameras are still there? You get one lane of traffic going through at about 85 miles an hour down the outside, taking no notice, and the rest all crawling along at just over 50 miles an hour. Cannot something be done to clarify the position? Mr Robertson: It is a good question. There might be a couple of reasons for that, but we do not actually provide either reason in our signage at road works as to whether it is a temporary problem, where the equipment is there to prevent you going above the speed limit to prevent you getting hurt, or whether it is road works that we are doing overnight and from which we do not withdraw all the signs. Q106 Mr Williams: But these are long-term stretches down the Swindon end. During the middle of the week it is clear what is happening because there is work going on. On Saturdays and Sundays there may be nothing going on, but there is nothing to tell you that you no longer need to observe the 50 mile an hour limit, and there are still the warnings about the cameras. Mr Robertson: That is actually there for your safety, because the integrity of the carriageway is not assured, because they are doing some maintenance on perhaps the drains. Q107 Mr Williams: I do not see any safety benefit to me in that if there is no work going on. The work is going on off the motorway actually. It is at the end of the motorway. I can understand when there are people working there that we owe them a duty of safety, but when there is nothing going on, why do the motorists have to put up with the irritation of thinking "Dare we or daren't we?" and crossing their fingers if they are in a hurry? Why can you not do something to indicate to motorists what is going on in those stretches? Mr Robertson: We should. My next move on that is that we are doing our very best to get all traffic management associated with road works off over Christmas and the holiday period. We will not be able to get it all off because there are some bits of work that are so complicated and that will need to be finished to get good value for money that they will be there, but we will be explaining in signs for the first time that we have left that material there for people's safety. At the moment I know we say nothing about it. Q108 Mr Williams: But is the speed limit still in effect or is it not still in effect? Motorists are clearly confused from the way they drive. Mr Robertson: The speed limit will be in effect if there are signs with a speed limit. If the signs are there, the speed limit is in effect. Q109 Mr Williams: Even if there is absolutely no work on the motorway at all? Mr Robertson: That is correct, because it is not related to the work; it is related to the hazard that may reside on the highway. Q110 Mr Williams: What hazard can there be when the highway is clear, when the hard shoulder is clear, and when you can see quite clearly what is along the side of the road? It is not that at all, is it? It is just that you cannot be bothered to get out and mask the signs. Mr Robertson: I do not believe that that is the case, but I would like to look into your particular circumstances. Q111 Mr Williams: I wish you would, because frankly, I do not think your explanation stands up for 50 seconds. Switching to your new traffic officers, I can understand the logic of trying to take some of this load off the police. One understands that, but are we in the process of seeing the evolution of a new type of road police? Is it envisaged that your traffic officers will be allowed to carry cameras, to speed-check? Will that be part of their role? Mr Robertson: I am determined that it should not be. This is a new service. It is a service for customers, perhaps not so much for the one stuck in the accident as for the thousands who may be stuck behind. We do not want to have an enforcement role. There are others who can deal with that. We believe we can provide a good service. Where similar sorts of things have been done overseas, that appears to have worked very well. I know there are going to be opportunities to develop the service in the sense of being more efficient and effective and perhaps helping customers more, but I have no vision that encompasses enforcement duties for highways traffic. Q112 Mr Williams: What of the enemy in the corner over there? You want more money for this service. If you agree to operate a camera system you could become self-financing. Can I take it you would resists such pressure from our friends at the Treasury? Mr Robertson: I have not heard the prospect, and certainly in terms of the challenge that I see in front of us in the next few years, I do not think that would be at all helpful. Q113 Mr Williams: I suspect I have blundered in raising the possibility in front of someone from the Treasury. Mr Robertson: But you have not changed my mind. Q114 Mr Williams: What will your role be in relation to the declaration of black spots? You are highways management, and most motorists have a high suspicion of where they put the cameras, because many go past these spots and never remember ever seeing an accident there. It is very hard to get statistics. The Home Office says it is up to the local police force and so on. Do you have central road accident statistics by site? Are you involved in the definition of accident black spots, and if not, why not? Mr Robertson: Yes, we do it for the highways and trunk road network that we are responsible for. It is actually compiled from police reports. Q115 Mr Williams: So this information is available centrally with you? Mr Robertson: No, it is collected by the police at the moment but we do have access to it on a specific basis, because the decision-making we do, of course, is based on an individual road, so where there are road safety concerns on the basis of police reports, we will sit down with the police and decide whether there is a black spot in a particular part of the network. There are of course very few of those on the motorways, for the simple reason that they are motorways. Q116 Mr Williams: But in so far as they are, you have that information centrally, therefore it is open to us to table questions to a Minister - you are answerable to the Minister for Transport - and we would be able to get information relating to the relevance of cameras in alleged black spots along the motorways? Mr Robertson: Yes. I am not sure that we keep it, but we could get it from the individual camera partnerships, because for our network there are actually very few cameras. There are cameras for enforcement of the variable speed limits, and there are some cameras on black spots, as you call them, perhaps on junction exits, but we have very few cameras that are operated by the camera partnerships for the purposes of black spot safety. Q117 Mr Williams: Following on Angela's point about information being available, something that surprises me is how little use is made of the service stations themselves for promulgation of information. It should be relatively easy, because there is a limited number of them, to have both-way direction information on traffic flows and hold-ups and so on, yet occasionally you come across a flat screen with that sort of information. You get one as you go into Magor services going down into Wales. I can see what is ahead of me on the motorway as I am going through Wales but why can you not do this more generally? That should be fairly easy to do, should it not? Mr Robertson: Yes, it is just a question of putting the systems into the various places. We are not quite at the stage yet where we are launching the reliable information that would hep for that. That is the role of the National Traffic Control Centre, but it is the sort of thing that I would expect them to do as part of their contract with us. Q118 Mr Williams: You would expect them in future or expect them to be doing already? Mr Robertson: I expect them in the future. They are not able to do it yet. They have to get their information in a form that is worth looking at first. I expect them to contribute to better information on the variable message signs, including delays; I expect them to contribute information to radio and TV stations; I expect them to promote the website; and I expect them to promote information in a number of ways. Q119 Mr Williams: Will you let us have a note indicating what you envisage making of the service stations in this respect and the timescale in which you see things developing, if that is possible Mr Robertson: We will do our best, yes. Mr Williams: That is all you can do. Thank you very much. Q120 Chairman: Mr Robertson, will you look please at page 34, paragraph 4.7. It says there, "The Agency knew nothing about a major pop music concert at Stockwood Park in Luton (close to junction 10a of the M1 that was expected to attract some 40,000 people) on the same weekend as the Robbie Williams concerts at Knebworth House until one of its officials heard a local radio announcement just two weeks before the event was due to take place." Are you going to insist with these large events, which are licensed, that at least you are informed as to what is going on? Mr Robertson: Yes. Chairman: Thank you very much. Q121 Mr Steinberg: Like Mr Williams, I get the impression from your answers that you are very complacent. It may well be that you just have this very relaxed way of dealing with things, but I am sitting here almost as frustrated as I am when I am in a traffic jam, because you seem to have given no positive answers to any of the questions that we have asked. Usually you go away from these meetings feeling at least as though perhaps something might be done, but I get the impression from you that still nothing is going to be done; you are still going to continue in the same sort of relaxed way. I am sorry if I am flogging a dead horse, but on the lorry issue, you have been asked about the lorry issue on a number of occasions, and I am not the first one to mention it, yet you keep saying, "It's nothing to do with me, guv. It is an enforcement issue." But it is something to do with you, because it does not have to be an enforcement issue. There are such things as dedicated lanes, which presumably you are entitled to bring in after whatever regulations you have to go through, and that would probably solve the problem. There is an example of what I see as complacency: "It's nothing to do with me, guv. It is an enforcement issue," but it is not. That is the first example, and I would really like a positive answer that you are actually going to do something about it. Mr Curry asked you a question, the answer to which seemed to me very complacent. We know where the black spots are in terms of traffic coming on to motorways and trunk roads. We know that going down the western bypass, certain junctions are going to cause huge problems. You seem to say, "Well, the only thing that would happen if we did something about it would be that it would cause a knock-on problem to the minor roads", but surely this proves that you do not have any liaison with the local authorities. I would have thought on those particular areas where you know there are problems, you would liaise with the local authorities on the minor roads and you would come up with alternative routes, and tell people there are alternative routes. You do not seem to do that. On page 39, paragraph 4.30, it more or less infers that there is just not enough liaison with local authorities to solve the problems before they actually happen. On the enforcement issue and on liaison with local authorities, I would like a positive answer. Mr Robertson: Dedicated lanes: we have talked about the trial on the M42 on trucks, which we will do, if we can get the partners to come with us. We are going to be recommending high-occupancy vehicle lanes be considered by the Secretary of State, and that is going up to him very shortly. We are going to continue working with the sorts of initiatives that we have had, whether it is hogging the middle lane or whether it is the trailer lane pilot that we did on the M5. All of those things are happening now, and going on. We are going to continue to roll out the active traffic management pilot. I am sorry to repeat myself. We can put in all of those things, but we are not proposing to put any of them in in the sense that then channels a motorist or a truck down one piece of highway from which they cannot emerge until they get to the next junction, therefore we are going to be relying on trucks staying in the left-hand lane as an enforcement matter, although we will provide the signing; and with high occupancy vehicles lanes, we are going to be relying on enforcement to check that. Q122 Mr Steinberg: So you are not going to have dedicated lanes? That is what you are saying. Mr Robertson: These are dedicated lanes. Q123 Mr Steinberg: That is not what I would call a dedicated lane. I am referring to a dedicated lane where a lorry comes on to the motorway in the inside lane and it says "You are in a dedicated lane now. You cannot go out of that lane until you are told you can." Mr Robertson: OK, but if he comes out of that lane, it is up to him, and it is an enforcement matter. Mr Bacon: I do not understand that at all. It is up to him but it is an enforcement matter? What do you mean? Mr Steinberg: He means it is up to the police to ensure it happens. Q124 Mr Williams: I am still slightly puzzled about the answer you gave about the cameras, because we are continually being told that the cameras are primarily to prevent accidents at black spots, but you said quite clearly that it is a very small minority of the cameras on motorways that are for that purpose. Is that correct? Mr Robertson: The majority of the cameras on the motorway network are used at road works to ensure the safety of people going through there. They are used on the traffic management around the M25 between junctions 10 and 14 in order to ensure that people do not speed beyond the speed set on the signs, and they will be used on the M42 for the active traffic management project. So there are enforcement cameras but they are principally there to control the speed of the traffic so that we get more through, so they are there for speed control purposes, not safety. There are some places on the network, either on trunk roads or on slip roads, for example, where people may be approaching too quickly, where we will install a camera with the agreement of the local safety camera partnership, and it is their camera, their revenue, at the end of the day, not the Highways Agency's, but we get the benefit of speed control on that particular junction. Q125 Mr Williams: I know there are portable cameras and so on, but do you have the information on all the fixed cameras on the motorways? I am not asking where they are. Are you aware of them and do you have a record of them? Mr Robertson: Yes. Q126 Mr Williams: In that case, can you let us have a note afterwards, in the next couple of weeks, saying how many fixed cameras there are and how many of them are justified by black spot arguments? Mr Robertson: OK. Chairman: Thank you very much. Q127 Mrs Browning: I wonder, Mr Robertson, if you would just take a look at the picture, which I think you provided yourself, on the cover of this report. Look at that chap in his lovely uniform, sitting there in that control centre. Look at the amount of data and information there must be on that plethora of screens in front of him. Ask yourself is all that information and all that technology used to convey information to the motorist? From what we have heard this afternoon, it is not. I have to put to you the sort of investment and the impressive picture on the front of this bears no relation to the sort of data and the sort of activity on the ground that one would expect from looking at the cover of this report. I would like you to take away from me in your mind, if you would, the fact that what we want to see is---- Mr Robertson: I think I just need to clarify something. This is a police control room. Q128 Mrs Browning: You are going to take this over, are you not? Is this not going to be your responsibility? Mr Robertson: I would hope so. Mrs Browning: This is the sort of thing that money is being invested in, and when I turn to page 1 and see that picture of the motorway, again provided by your agency, with those gantry signs, the quality of the information on those signs should reflect the investment that has gone in as shown on the front of that cover. Chairman: Mr Robertson, thank you very much for appearing before us. It has been very interesting. The bottom line, as we read in our brief, is that average traffic speeds, for example, fell by 6%, 4 miles an hour, between 1995 and 2003, depending on the time of day, and around 7% of the network suffers from heavy congestion on at least half the days of the year. So we will be issuing, I hope, a very strong report and I hope you take note of it. Thank you very much.
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