Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-372)
MR TONY
BOSWORTH, MR
STEPHEN JOSEPH,
MR PAUL
HAMBLIN AND
MR GERALD
KELLS
19 JANUARY 2005
Q360 Clive Efford: So
you do not see the current legislation as a barrier to local authorities?
Mr Joseph: It is a minor barrier
but it is not a showstopper, would be my judgment.
Q361 Clive Efford: Just
going back to the technology, in a nutshell you are saying that
you believe the technology is available to introduce a national
road charging scheme?
Mr Joseph: That was not quite
what you asked earlier; it was about local charging schemes. I
think the technology will be available to do some kinds of road
charging schemes, not however the full scale distance-based charge
scheme that the government was talking about in its feasibility
study because that requires a level of accuracy probably not available
but certain types of charging schemes will start to address some
of the issues. I also think, as has been observed by a number
of academics, one of the problems with road charging is that ever
since this has first been talked about the technology has always
been 10 or 20 years away and, as happened in London, if somebody
says "I want a charging scheme and I want it in three or
four years' timè, then it will be very easy to see how
we can get there.
Q362 Clive Efford: So
who should determine, if the government does go down the road
of a charging scheme on inter urban or on motorways, the charges
and what sort of factors should be taken into consideration in
calculating the charges?
Mr Joseph: The government's feasibility
study, and the Transport 2000's evidence endorsed this part of
it, is that we want a standard distance charge that can be varied
for local circumstances to take account of new development or
to take account of the kind of factors we were talking about earlier.
There is a real danger in focusing on roads with current high
levels of congestion and not on levels with high traffic growth.
The danger is that if you focus on the places that are congested
now, you push development and traffic out of those areas into
the neighbouring areas, and certainly any scheme that did not
address outer suburbs or the M25 in the south east context, or
the outer West Midlands as well as Birmingham city centre, would
not deal with the problems we have.
Q363 Chairman: If you
address the issues you have got to things that you can do now,
would you still need a national scheme?
Mr Joseph: You might not need
a national scheme right this minute but you would for two reasons.
Firstly, if you were introducing public transport and other improvements
as alternatives to the car, particularly soft measures like workplace
travel plans and school travel plans which government research
has shown to be terribly effective, but without measures to block
the benefits from those and see people, for instance, who have
given up the school run have their cars on the road replaced by
other cars, road user charging is one of the main ways in which
the benefits from those schemes can be locked in, and the same
goes for road building, and the government has a real problem,
and we have highlighted this in our evidence. The charging debate
really came out of some of the studies, particularly on the M25
and South West Yorkshire, which were very clear. They said that
there might be a case for some more road building but only if
you locked in the benefits from it through some kind of area-wide
charging scheme, which would have much wider benefits. What the
government has said with the M25 is they are going ahead with
the extra lane with a clear expectation from their own work and
the study that this will not meet full demand, but they are not
proposing any of the measures that would be needed to lock in
the benefits. So there is an inconsistency in government policy
at the moment where they are proposing some road building but
not proposing measures to lock in the benefits, and charging is
one of the ways we would have to do that.
Q364 Mrs Ellman: Are you
satisfied that the Multi Modal studies looked at the potential
for charging schemes properly?
Mr Joseph: A number did. We have
already heard about the West Midlands one which talked about cordon
charging and ultimately tolling on the M6 as one option—the
existing M6 not the new road. I have already mentioned that the
M25 and the South West Yorkshire studies did detailed work on
this and on road user charging and, as my previous answer suggested,
I think those did spell out the importance of road user charging
and were very persuasive, actually, in showing the extent to which
road building alone could not solve the problems in those areas.
The orbit study, the M25 study, showed that in the bits of the
M25 that had been widened from three to four lanes each way traffic
had grown by 33% in as little as 12-36 months. In other words,
you had a bigger, wider traffic jam within three years of the
widening, and that was very persuasive. It is for the proponents
of large scale new road uncharged infrastructure of the sort that
some of the West Midlands people were talking about earlier to
say how they propose the benefits from that widening in terms
of time savings could be locked in without some kind of charging
scheme.
Mr Kells: On the MIDMAN study
it recommended widening to four lanes but rejected five lanes.
The four-lane option included a charge on the motorway. There
was no recommendation from the MIDMAN that we should have a free
M6 in perpetuity; it was an M6 widening and then road user charging
across the whole motorway, as opposed to the Expressway which
would not bring in charging across it. It was for a completely
charged M6 with a pricing scheme. That was the recommendation
of the MIDMAN Multi Modal study.
Q365 Mrs Ellman: Do you
think the M6 Toll road has been successful, and how would you
judge it?
Mr Kells: I think there is a huge
question mark on what you can judge after three months; I agree
wholeheartedly with that proposition. I would be very concerned
about what is put in the M6 Expressway consultation because it
gives a very glossy picture of what is a very mixed picture. There
are time savings if you travel on the M6 Toll motorway but they
are not that great; they average out at about ten minutes. Most
people perceive—
Q366 Chairman: Where do
you get your ten minutes from? Most people would say that is a
bit mean.
Mr Kells: The Highways Agency
monitoring three month report says the average is seven minutes
in a southerly direction and 12 in a north, if I have it the right
way round. There is a perception that it is greater, and my judgment
is that people tend to compare it with their worst trip on the
M6 so they tend to find the worst option, but the average during
the week is about 7-12 minutes. Friday afternoon is the best time
to use the M6 Toll.
Q367 Chairman: Southwards?
Mr Kells: Yes, I think so, but
the M6 Toll is most successful on a Friday afternoon, and that
is the figure quoted in the consultation for the Expressway but
what one has to remember is that, although there is some time
saving and you appear to do quite well, all the motorways that
lead into it, the M42 and the M6, are carrying larger volumes
of traffic as a direct result, something in the order of 5%, because
we are locking traffic into the whole of the Midlands motorway
network. Now that congestion, which people will not believe is
caused by the M6 Toll because they will just think the M42 is
doing rather badly or they are delayed, there are delays which
result from the M6 Toll which are affecting both those people
who use it who are paying to use it and also the people who are
not using it. People using the M42 to get to the airport now are
suffering increased traffic delays who have nothing to do with
the M6 Toll road, so there are disbenefits which have nothing
to do with the people using the toll road. So it is a very mixed
picture and I think elements of that have been taken out for the
M6 Expressway consultation, and I would say that as a result that
gives a rather glossier opinion of what we know is happening.
The evidence in the long term is that the M6 will get back to
roughly the level it was at; that was the evidence put to the
inquiry; that was our view but also of the Highways Agency and
Midland Expressway, and we would get roughly back to where we
are. There will be some time savings but there was never a proper
economic analysis to prove that the time savings that people were
getting equated overall, if you took it in the overall economy
rather than the perception of people using it, and whether the
money going into the tollbooth was bringing economic benefit overall
to the people using it and to the non users. So there was never
any judge of that because it was not dealt with like a public
road. Lastly, what I think is particularly worrying if one is
moving forward is that the M6 Toll is being used as the model
for the M6 Expressway. The M6 Toll relies not just on the M6.
Most of the M6 Toll's traffic comes from other A roads and from
the M1/A50 route, so that the volume of traffic within the conurbation,
the whole of that package, is what encourages people to use the
M6 Toll. The M6 Expressway would not be travelling past anything
like as congested a network; there would not be the sheer volume
of traffic across the whole network, so to compare the M6 Expressway
and the M6 Toll, where the M6 Expressway has much less traffic,
is very dangerous.
Q368 Chairman: What, then,
are the planning lessons of the M6 Toll road?
Mr Kells: Well, I think there
are huge planning problems in terms of economic development along
the road. The generation of interest in economic development is
not going to be across areas of the West Midlands, certainly not
across the kind of areas in the Black Country that were mentioned
earlier where we are desperate to have industrial development.
The M6 Toll is rather lucky in terms of inter urban motorways
because it does have some areas where we do need regeneration—Burntwood,
Cannock, areas like that—but once those brownfield options
are fulfilled the planning implications afterwards are likely
to be development on greenfield sites along the edge of the motorway,
and the Walsall unitary development plan which is just going through
its final modification has identified the M6 Toll as a consideration
for economic development, or specific sites. Now, any sites that
came forward through that process would be likely to be greenfield
sites so there is an issue about it opening up greenfield sites.
The wider issues of economic development I would be thoroughly
unconvinced about.
Mr Hamblin: Briefly, just to broaden
out the issue from just the M6 Toll to the whole subject of road
pricing, we would see an important objective behind the development
of road pricing being ensuring that it reinforces rather than
undermines spatial planning policies, as we are beginning to experience
in the West Midlands. So it will be important that through the
way in which the pricing structure is established it is not encouraging
development on greenfield sites and therefore undermining an urban
renaissance.
Q369 Mrs Ellman: Would
you support the proposed Expressway?
Mr Hamblin: No, certainly not.
We believe that demand management is about charging existing roads
rather than finding money for new road building. The Expressway
would considerably increase the landtake compared to the existing
proposals. It would run through a corridor of the Staffordshire
and Cheshire plains which the Countryside Agency has said would
have "a massive impact on the landscape character of the
area" and in addition to the footprint from the actual tarmac,
the impact in terms of stimulating a lot of greenfield development
and additional traffic along the corridor would be severe.
Q370 Mr Stringer: Do you
think this country will be a better place if you close the M6
Toll now?
Mr Kells: I think the M6 Toll
is here and it would be better if people are using it for its
purpose. Unfortunately there was some reduction in the M6 traffic
which we will not keep and if we had used that opportunity to
put public transport on to some of those routes I think that would
have been of benefit. One of the difficulties, coming back to
this issue of planning and housing, is that we in the West Midlands
are losing 10,000 people a year from our conurbation into the
countryside. Both the M6 Toll and the M6 Expressway are going
to act as catalysts for that continued decentralisation against
the policies we are enacting through the regional planning guidance
to try and bring people back into the urban area. So in that sense
I think the world would be a better place if our inter urban network
was not being developed in a way which encouraged people to move
out of our conurbation with the social and environmental impact
that has. So I think there are disadvantages in that sense which
we will very much regret or are likely to regret unless we can
mitigate against them.
Mr Hamblin: The M6 Toll is here.
It is extremely important, as with all the other road schemes
we have seen being built, to look at what the implications have
been and to learn lessons from the past. The Prime Minister has
said in the foreword to the Transport White Paper that we cannot
build our way out of the problem of congestion. We need to see
that demonstrated in decisions taken, rather than new consultations
for 50-mile tolled motorway.
Q371 Mr Stringer: Do you
not see the intellectual difficulty, then, for green organisations
that oppose every motorway but never want to close a motorway
when it is built? How can we take with credibility the evidence
you give when, post the event, you resile from your original position?
Mr Hamblin: If you took from my
answer that we now support the M6 Toll then that would need to
be put right. We do not and did not. Our position is that road
building should be an option of last resort.
Mr Joseph: I think the choice
that we face is dictated by the existence of the M6 Toll and that
there are a range of options facing us, including closing it.
My colleague has mentioned one other which is to reallocate space
on the existing M6 and other cases; there may be other things
you could do involving public transport options. In other words,
we would take the existence of the M6 Toll and see what options
are available based on the values and objectives we were talking
about at the start in relation to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
traffic and so on, and the M6 Toll may or may not be part of that
but we would want to look at it in that context, recognising its
existence rather than just shutting it down as a response.
Mr Kells: When we were debating
the M6 Toll, had we closed J9 and J10 of the M6 in Walsall we
would not have had to have done anything because we would have
got rid of all the local traffic using the M6 in the congested
periods effectively, and the Highways Agency did figures and the
M6 through Birmingham would have run perfectly well. The problem
with the M6 is it picks up a lot of local traffic. We would then
have had to have spent a lot of money investing in local areas
to provide them with alternatives. That option was ten years ago
but when it was built there were other options that could have
been pursued that would have achieved the same objective, but
we would have had to approach the rest of our transport policy
very differently in the West Midlands.
Mr Bosworth: Briefly, the M6 Toll
is with us but we have to make sure we learn the lessons from
the M6 Toll and one of the lessons I hope that the government
will learn is that part of the government's mantra about the M6
motorway is about providing choice, the choice between two roads,
one of which you pay for and the other you do not, but that is
not necessarily providing a full choice for a lot of people and
that real choice may be better provided by improved transport
services along the M6 corridor between towns like Manchester and
Birmingham and also between the towns along the corridor.
Q372 Mr Stringer: If you
had a choice between introducing road pricing or congestion charging
in urban areas or in the inter urban motorway system, what would
be your priority?
Mr Joseph: It would be the local
road charging schemes on the grounds they will attack where congestion
and traffic problems most are and are strongest, and the packages
that can be put together involving road charging can have the
greatest effect, but in some ways inter urban roads in some cases
are a misnomer because some of them are used as local roads, and
in places like west or east Midlands that is particularly the
case, or in parts of greater Manchester. I know there has been
great debate in the north west about the function of the M60 which
is seen variously as an inter urban, orbital motorway of Greater
Manchester and as a local access to the traffic centre, and it
is not easy to make those divisions. Local road charging schemes
are a priority, I think, not just because that is where the local
traffic congestion problems are but because that is where you
can really make some progress using existing technology now.
Chairman: On that interesting note I
shall say thank you, gentlemen. The Committee stands adjourned.
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