Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-499)
MR HOWARD
POTTER, MR
DEREK TURNER
CBE, MR JIM
COATES CB AND
MR MARTIN
RICHARDS OBE
26 JANUARY 2005
Q480 Chairman: Supposing
we were to widen the motorways, how would we then deal with the
extra traffic that was generated in the urban situation?
Mr Coates: I do not think I know
the answer to that question, Chairman, but I agree with a lot
of what Dr Coombe said about that.
Q481 Chairman: Anyone
else want to comment on that?
Mr Potter: In my view there is
a need to go towards a phased introduction of road pricing both
on an inter-urban basis and on an urban basis. The priority must
be to address the most critical inter-urban corridors. Regardless
of the urban situation, a lot more can be done and should be done
in parallel with trying to encourage local authorities to move
down the congestion charging route.
Q482 Chairman: Such as?
Mr Potter: Such as not waiting,
for example, until the panacea or perfect road pricing scheme
is introduced and not delaying the introduction of other measures
to do with demand management. I am talking about sophisticated
parking schemes, I am talking about more innovative physical solutions
for both urban and inter-urban cases, and introducing and encouraging
more travel information and use of public transport and innovative
ways of solving the congestion problem. A lot more could be done
and it should not be delayed whilst waiting and praying in aid
of some future charging system.
Q483 Chairman: Do you
want to identify for us your definition of the more critical inter-urban
corridors?
Mr Potter: Yes. I would suggest
that the corridors of the M6, Manchester to Birmingham, London
to Birmingham along the M40 corridor and the M4 corridor within
a few years are going to be at a very, very critical stage. I
believe that there is a case for selective improvement in a fashion
not dissimilar to Dr Denvil Coombe's projection, where there is
a mixture of physical improvement which is then paid for in a
very transparent way. I think that that is the way to progress,
whether it is done on a widening basis or by some parallel motorways,
as was suggested for the M6 expressway. I must confess that I
have experience of the M6 toll having been a senior technical
adviser on that scheme. I believe that that is the way forward,
some selective improvements with pricing bolted into them and
not forgetting that those corridors are capable of taking public
transport and, indeed, attracting public transport.
Q484 Chairman: Anyone
want to add anything else to that?
Mr Coates: When you look at the
map and see where the greatest congestion is, in addition to some
inter-urban lengths, on the motorway network it tends to be in
and around the big cities and it tends to be in the morning and
evening peaks. During the rest of the day the situation is not
so severe. If we found suitable pricing regimes to deal with the
problem within the major cities that might in itself bring quite
a lot of relief to the motorway network. The M25 is an obvious
case in point. Members of the Institute that I represent are involved
in the logistics business and it is these long distance freight
movements that they are particularly concerned about.
Q485 Chairman: Would you
like to add to that Mr Turner?
Mr Turner: I think it is a balanced
approach that needs to be taken. What Dr Coombe described is very
much that, treating these inter-urban roads as a corridor. Your
question about identifying which are the critical corridors is
all about a level of service and what Mr Coates has just said
is very much related to a peak period level of service at the
junctions on these key corridors.
Q486 Chairman: So we can
say they should be around cities, at particular times and very
largely connected with the specific pattern of movement?
Mr Turner: Absolutely. We are
aiming to address it in a corridor approach so you do not get
transfer to adjacent roads.
Q487 Mr Stringer: Mr Potter,
you said that local authorities should be encouraged to introduce
congestion charges. Do you not think they are in the best position
to decide if congestion is a problem? Why should they be encouraged?
Mr Potter: The effect of growing
congestion on the economy is so serious that there ought to be
a lead taken by central government because it is in the best position
to do that not just for the urban areas but also for the inter-urban
areas. It can provide financial inducement. What it cannot provide
is the economic confidence of each individual urban area and it
cannot automatically provide decent public transport or alternative
means of transport. Money can help to provide the latter of those
two.
Q488 Mr Stringer: Do you
know of any objective measure that would allow me or this Committee
to compare congestion in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle?
Mr Potter: Yes. I would have thought
that a comparison of average journey speeds over the day over
measured distances is probably the best indication of that. There
are other measures that one can think of, but that would be the
simplest, through probably a typical radial approach into the
city centres from the outer edge.
Q489 Mr Stringer: Which
city has the worst congestion?
Mr Potter: I can only estimate,
I do not know exactly, but I would have thought London.
Q490 Mr Stringer: I have
not mentioned London. London is a case in itself.
Mr Potter: I know Bristol, Manchester
and Birmingham quite well, I had an office in Birmingham, and
they are comparable, but no one city stands out. I think there
is always a different perception from people in those cities about
how serious congestion really is and there does need to be a careful
measurement of this on a consistent basis.
Q491 Mr Stringer: Do you
know of any academic study or any other study which would show
the economic impact of congestion in urban areas? I am not talking
inter-urban congestion, I mean just in urban areas.
Mr Coates: There was a study done
for the Department for Transport a few years ago by Leeds University,
which I am sure Professor Mackie will have been involved with,
which was looking at the cost of congestion on different parts
of the road network.
Q492 Mr Stringer: That
is rather a different point. That is a simple time issue, is it
not? It could be that if you have congestion you have a positive
economic impact because people go to work earlier and come back
later. I am not looking at time spent in cars, I am looking at
a serious study that says that because there is congestion measured
in this way the economy of this city is suffering.
Mr Coates: I am not aware of any.
Perhaps my colleagues might be.
Mr Richards: It is an interesting
concept, but I am not aware of any. I am aware of an American
study that argues very much that congestion is a good thing because
it implies that society is thriving, but I think it is a rather
questionable assumption.
Mr Coates: I think it is true,
though I have never seen a study that specifically went into the
detail of this, that if you get growing congestion and a shift
of travel patterns from buses to private cars the capacity of
the road network leading to the city centre falls. You cannot
get so many people in in the day in a large number of cars with
one person per car as you could when more of those people are
traveling in buses. I think congestion has this downward spiral
effect of making it more difficult to gain access to the city
centre and making the city centre a less attractive place. I think
there is a lot of evidence—but it is difficult to disentangle
the underlying causes—for commercial companies, the retail
trade and populations moving steadily out of the centres of our
major cities for the past 100 years or more and I think congestion
is part of that problem. If you want to try to perhaps not reverse
it but at least prevent it from getting a lot further then making
the accessibility of the city centre better is very important
and I would myself think that reducing congestion and, in particular,
making it easier for buses to provide a better service was an
important part of that.
Mr Potter: For eight years I was
chief transport engineer and planner for London's Docklands where
there was a good deal of peripheral congestion. There was not
very much activity going on in Docklands, but the aim was to regenerate
the area economically. The market research that I have been part
of in the quest for more evidence, precisely what Mr Stringer
is looking for, is saying that in order to maximize the development
potential for inward investment and to existing companies, there
is a strong desire for both quality and choice of access and that
means public transport of different types, a degree of private
transport accessibility and preferably fixed track system transport
as well for the public transport component. That is the kind of
evidence there is. It is very difficult to draw the link between
the economic performance of an urban marketplace and the quality
of transport.[5]
Q493 Mr Stringer: If we
accept, which I am not sure that I do, that there should be a
congestion charge or a road pricing charge in urban areas, who
should set that charge?
Mr Potter: At the end of the day,
if we ever get to the so-called panacea of global satellite assisted
charging by distance and by the hour etcetera, there should be
a national base level of charge modified, supplemented or even
reduced by a regional component, which might be through the tax
on fuel or local tax adjustments in regions that are clearly struggling
economically, plus an urban/environmental adjustment factor. The
last one of these cost factors can only be determined by the local
authority. There is a role at a regional level and certainly a
role at the national level.
Q494 Mr Stringer: And
a composite charge set by each of the three?
Mr Potter: I am afraid that would
be the end solution.
Q495 Mr Stringer: Anybody
else?
Mr Coates: I agree broadly with
that. I think it is important that the details of the charging
in urban areas should be under the control of the local authority
because it needs to be part of their overall transport strategy
for the area, but I think that needs to be within a framework
of general principles set down at a national level so that there
is some consistency over the country as a whole and so that people
traveling in various parts of the country are not faced by a bewildering
variety of different kinds of charge. The modeling work that was
done for the Department's feasibility study looked at different
levels of complexity of charge and came to the conclusion that
a fairly small range of different levels of charge on different
sorts of roads would bring most of the benefits and that you did
not have to go to the lengths that I think the RAC foundation
were recommending two weeks ago, which is that the charge should
vary minute by minute according to the level of congestion on
the road network. I think we would think that that was perhaps
being too complicated and it would be better if you had your AA
book that told you what the levels of charge were in different
counties so that if I came to Manchester I would know what I was
letting myself in for.
Mr Richards: That is absolutely
fundamental. If we are to use charging to affect behaviour people
must know in advance of making the travel decision what the charge
is that they are going to incur. It goes right back to the Smeed
Report of 1964 on road pricing which said that charges must be
set in advance.
Q496 Mr Stringer: Who
should set the prices for the use of the inter-urban motorway
system?
Mr Richards: Perhaps now that
we have the regional transport organisations—
Q497 Mr Stringer: Which
regional transport organisations are those?
Mr Richards: The regional transport
boards that have been set up to whom expenditure decisions are
now devolved. If local authorities are going to be responsible
for local transport then local authorities must have an influence
on charges on their local networks.
Mr Turner: I think the answer
really is that it is horses for courses. If you have a defined
urban area which has severe congestion, like we had in London,
then it is right that it is the local authority that ought to
be setting the level of the charge. Let us say it is an inter-urban
road of significant importance to be a national road, the national
authority should be responsible for setting the charge but needs
to do so in the regional context. As we were talking earlier about
the potentials diversions on to side roads, a framework at a regional
level needs to be established for charging if it is to be rolled
out across the nation as a whole.
Q498 Mrs Ellman: The evidence
from the Chartered Institute of Logistics suggests that we may
not get value for money with the charging system and that is in
relation to the costs of technology. Could you say how you think
we should proceed?
Mr Coates: We were commenting
on the conclusion in the feasibility study report that if we had
a national charging system then it should apply to every road
throughout the country. If you look at the figures in the report,
it shows that for over 80% of the miles that people travel on
most of the network the appropriate charge would not vary very
much, it would be fairly low and it would not be very different
from what we are paying at the moment through fuel duty. We think
that at least to begin with and perhaps even in an ultimate system
it would be more cost effective just to concentrate on the worst
20% of the miles and apply the electronic charging there and continue
to collect an appropriate level of charge for travel on the rest
of the network through the fuel duty. We would prefer that identified
element of the fuel duty to be reclassified as a charge and not
a tax which would help the Chancellor in achieving his Golden
Rule. Perhaps I could add to something that we were saying in
answer to the previous question. We think there should be some
sort of external regulation of these charges so that if part of
the charge did continue to be collected through the fuel duty
that would come within the remit of an external regulator. It
is true that perhaps in the long run every vehicle will have the
electronic device in it and so in principle you could monitor
movements of vehicles everywhere and charge electronically everywhere,
but you have to have some sort of enforcement system. In London
it is the cameras. If over most of the road network the fuel duty
would be a sufficiently differentiated charge why would one have
cameras stuck up in country lanes and quiet roads where you do
not need to have the complexity of an electronic system? We have
not got a final view on this because we have not seen all the
details of the costings which are in the Department's report,
but we question whether the conclusion the feasibility study came
to is right on that and we think it needs to be looked at in more
detail.
Q499 Mrs Ellman: How will
such a system work? Who would decide which areas were controlled
by charges?
Mr Coates: You would have certain
corridors and you would have certain areas with boundaries.
5 Note by witness: The available evidence tends
to contradict itself. Back
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