Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2005
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING
MP AND MR
DAVID ROWLANDS
Chairman: Gentlemen, can I welcome you
most warmly to the Transport Committee. You are certainly top
of our favourite guests and we are always thrilled to see you
here. Can we begin by a little bit of housekeeping. Any Member
having an interest to declare?
Clive Efford: Member of the Transport
& General Workers.
Mr Clelland: Member of Amicus.
Mr Martlew: Member of the Transport &
General Workers and member of the General & Municipal.
Chairman: Gwyneth Dunwoody, ASLEF.
Mrs Ellman: Transport & General Workers
Union.
Graham Stringer: Member of Amicus.
Q1 Chairman: Thank you very much.
May I, gentlemen, point out to you that since you are such important
persons I shall not run the risk of some terrible social gaffe
in addressing you in the wrong order but, Secretary of State,
would you like to introduce yourself for the record?
Mr Darling: I will do that. I
am the Secretary of State. David Rowlands is the Permanent Secretary,
who you certainly know very well and I expect the Committee does
as well.
Q2 Chairman: Did you have something
you wanted to say to us or may we go straight into questions?
Mr Darling: No, I am quite happy
to go to questions. I think the points I want to bring out I can
probably do so during the course of the afternoon if that is okay.
Q3 Chairman: It will not surprise
you if I ask you why does the new congestion target focus on the
worst 10% of journeys? Are you not worried about the other 90%?
Mr Darling: Yes, we are. It might
be helpful if I explain what we are trying to do here.
Q4 Chairman: It would be surprising
but it would also be helpful.
Mr Darling: That is a very happy
coincidence then. You will remember that the original PSA target
that we had was one that measured a notional level of congestion
across the entire network, and indeed in simple terms if you wanted
to bring the number down simply sorting out the problem on one
road or building a new motorway would result in an apparent drop
in congestion across the entire network, which of course was nonsense.
Since I became Secretary of State I have been determined that
we reduce congestion in a way that is obvious to people who are
on the road, and that seemed to me to point towards making sure
that we had a target that results in reducing the actual congestion
on particular roads. So what we have done is using the data that
we now have—this sounds like a railway station.
Graham Stringer: We thought we would
make you feel at home, Secretary of State!
Q5 Clive Efford: We bought it from
BR!
Mr Darling: It sounds like a British
Rail announcement system to tell you when the 10.24 is due to
arrive. And of course it will be running on time now since train
punctuality is vastly improved, and that was one of the points
I was going to make during the course of the afternoon! To go
back to congestion, using the data we have got we have identified
100 of the main roads in this country, and on each one of them
we have aimed to reduce the amount of congestion by tackling 10%
of the worst journey times on that. To give you an example, to
go between A and B normally might take you 50 minutes. There will
be journeys on either side of that, sometimes better than that
but there will be a small minority of journeys that are worse.
They are usually caused by things like roadworks, by accidents,
by inappropriate junction design. These are all things that we
can sort through the legislation we have taken in the Traffic
Management Act, the traffic officers who now clear roads and so
on. In other words, what it is doing is aligning our target with
the policy and the things we pay the Highways Agency and other
people to sort out. So what you will get at the end of this process
is steady improvement. Of course, if you tackle the worst journeys
that does have a knock-on effect on the overall levels of congestions
on those routes, but what I am trying to do is move from a generalised
level of congestion to saying where on the network is there a
problem, how do I sort that problem out? And I believe this is
a far, far better way of doing it and it is entirely consistent
with something that I have been going on about for the last three
and a half years and that is in the past we have failed to manage
the road space effectively, in some cases we did not even try.
Through a combination of measures now we are managing it better
and we are getting more out of the system.
Q6 Chairman: We were not actually
that bad at managing the system, were we really? The AA Motoring
Trust did a Euro test and decided we were third. What you are
really saying is that this way can be clearer for the general
public to understand?
Mr Darling: Everyone who drives
a car and undertakes a regular journey into work will know whether
or not on a particular day the road is congested or not. They
will know that there are particular times when you travel when
the road is more congested. I take your point about internationally,
yes, we do manage our roads and for people who are always saying
British roads are terrible and everybody else's roads are fine,
that is nonsense. For example, we now have traffic officers on
most parts of the motorway network clearing up accidents and all
the evidence is that they are getting the roads running again
much, much more quickly. We did not used to do that in the past.
That is why I say we are now doing things we did not used to do.
Equally, with the traffic management legislation we have now brought
in we have introduced a permanent system to stop the indiscriminate
digging up of roads by utilities, which can cause havoc, as we
know happened here outside the Palace of Westminster a few years
ago. All these things do make a real difference to the amount
of congestion there is. Of course there are things in the longer
term like road pricing which we have discussed before, and I dare
say we will discuss again. I just think that what was wrong with
the old system was it seemed to me to be a theoretical examination
of congestion whereas most drivers want to see real, practical
improvements so their particular journey takes less time than
it might otherwise have done.
Q7 Chairman: So what assurances have
you got from the Highways Agency about their guarantee they are
not going to cause you problems by diverting traffic, for example?
Mr Darling: I think we are very
conscious of the risk of diversion. If you sort congestion on
one road only to congest a parallel road or nearby road, then
you are not really sorting the problem. Here the answer to your
question really depends on the particulars because what you do
on one road might be different to what you do on other roads—
Q8 Chairman: Secretary of State,
you are very proud—and I do not say this in a pejorative
sense—of your traffic management officers and the speed
with which they can clear things, so presumably the other side
of that is the Highways Agency will now feel confident enough
to give you a certain number of targets that they can fulfil?
Mr Darling: Not yet. I dare say
there will be but, remember, the traffic officers have only been
on the road for a comparatively short period of time, some for
only a few months on some parts of the network and others for
just about a year. When we have a proper evaluation of that we
will be able to decide how far we roll that out. I do not want
to overdo it because the traffic officers are only one part of
a whole lot of things we are doing. Each and every one of us knows
that the problem used to be that you would have an accident, the
police would turn up, the casualties be removed and then several
hours might elapse before crash vehicles were removed, and a small
crash could result in a major traffic jam, sometimes shutting
an entire road for several hours. We still have examples of that,
but all I can say is we are getting better at clearing those things
up than we used to be.
Q9 Mr Goodwill: We have a number
of routes in this country which are regularly congested because
they are commuter routes or school runs, et cetera, but we also
have routes which are congested seasonally, so the routes to the
South West during the holiday season, Silverstone, Castle Donington,
the A64 to Scarborough, dare I mention! How will this system prioritise
these regularly congested routes because many of the travelling
public, whilst they can put up with a bit of congestion on the
way to work because they know to allow for it, it is when we get
these major congested weekends, and I am wondering how they will
fare compared to the others?.
Mr Darling: You are right, there
are events in different parts of the country or routes like the
M5 just south of Bristol which are particularly prone to becoming
bottled up with the holidays in July. I do not want to fall foul
of the caravan lobby but you get a lot of caravans going down
that way. That particular route is one that both the Highways
Agency and the local police have given quite a lot of attention
in terms of regulating the flow of traffic, which you can do now,
using early warning signs. Also we do not do it on the M5 yet
but on the M25 for example there are mandatory speed limits to
regulate the flow of traffic, also again clearing up after breakdowns,
and getting the roads cleared as quickly as possible. You mentioned
Silverstone. That is becoming a major policing operation every
time there is a meeting there. The police, the local authority
and the Highways Agency do work very closely together. It can
be inconvenient for people living nearby. Some roads have to be
closed or there have to be restrictions and so on, but I think
the last Silverstone event a few months ago in the summer passed
off quite well. But whether it is that or rock concerts at Milton
Keynes, I think it is a combination of the Highways Agency and
the local policing making sure that people get about. There is
always going to be this tension. You cannot have a road system
that is so big that you can cope with whatever happens. It is
a question of managing the system properly and being prepared.
For the sake of completeness, I would say—and this is a
pilot that will be rolled out, I guess, over the next few years—on
the M42 south of Birmingham if you go up that motorway you will
see all the overhead gantries which are being put in place in
preparation for hard shoulder running at peak hours but which
are also there to regulate the flow of traffic. It is rather like
air traffic control, you slow down the approach of traffic and
you get an awful lot more through. With more sensible measures
like that we can get a lot more out of the existing road network.
I have said before we will need to add capacity in places and,
frankly, we have not done enough in the past to make sure we get
more out of what we have got already, particularly in an area
like the one you represent where you know that for every one person
who wants a road, somebody else does not want it, at least not
where they live, and you have got to try and strike a sensible
balance there.
Q10 Graham Stringer: I am sorry,
I was not sure if in your previous answer to congestion you explained
why you used a different definition for urban congestion as compared
to inter-urban congestion.
Mr Darling: I did not because
nobody has asked me about that yet.
Q11 Graham Stringer: I thought your
explanation of inter-urban congestion relating to the perception
of delays in 10% of journeys was very good but why is it an "average
person" delay in urban areas?
Mr Darling: Quite simply because
you are talking about public transport there. You are talking
about, for example, a bus as one vehicle but it has got maybe
60 or 70 people on it. What we are interested in in urban areas
is the delays people face on their journeys whether they are on
public transport or in a private car, whereas most of the inter-urban
journeys you are talking about you are talking about cars.
Q12 Graham Stringer: Will not those
urban definitions by taking an average obscure the hot spots (slow
spots might be the best description) or the real congestion points,
because they will average them out?
Mr Darling: I hope not but remember
also what we have done in many of these areas is the objective
is that the local authorities (a PTE or council) meet the targets
they set themselves in the LTPs and that allows them to focus
on the particular hot spots, if you like. There always will be
a tension, you are right, when you have got average delays and
so on between the theoretical and what are the practical steps
you need to sort these things out. What we have tried to do in
urban transport is to reflect the fact that you are dealing with
a lot of people moving, a lot of people on public transport as
well as in cars, but by using the LTP mechanism which is actually
focused on specifics, you can then deal with the hot spots and
particular problems in a city or conurbation.
Q13 Graham Stringer: I think when
you were in Manchester recently, Secretary of State, you said
that Manchester had the second worst congestion outside London,
or words to that effect. What measure were you using when you
said that?
Mr Darling: I think that was in
terms of vehicle delays. I am pretty sure that was because I remember
asking on what basis were we calculating that.
Q14 Graham Stringer: Do you think
you could let the Committee have a note on that? I am surprised
at that because it is not my perception and it is not my reading
of the statistics either.
Mr Darling: I was surprised when
I saw it which is why I asked about it, but I will subject my
speech to close textual analysis and I will write to the Committee
and explain the basis on which I said it.
Q15 Graham Stringer: But it is not
the basis on which the new local transport plans will be assessed?
Mr Darling: Since you raise my
speech in Manchester—and I am glad that one person read
it at least—
Q16 Graham Stringer: I read all your
speeches, Secretary of State!
Mr Darling: That is very encouraging,
Mr Stringer. The point I was making was in relation to Manchester,
and you will recall that I have on many occasions been urging
Manchester, as in the case of other big cities, to come forward
with comprehensive plans to deal with congestion. Lots of people
and businesses in Manchester say the same thing. Nobody is saying
it is San Francisco or Los Angeles-style congestion in Manchester,
of course it is not, but it is a growing problem. I made the remarks
I did on the basis of the information I had but I am happy to
write to the Committee and I will tell you the exact basis on
which I said it.
Q17 Chairman: You might add a little
bit in on whether the local authority transport plan will be influenced
by the fact that we understand you changed the basis for the calculation
quite recently.
Mr Darling: The basis for which
calculation?
Q18 Chairman: The congestion.
Mr Darling: At the moment we have
received the second round of LTP plans for the next five-year
period but I do not think that anything that we have done (because
they are all being judged together) is going to disadvantage any
particular local authority.
Q19 Graham Stringer: But they will
have to change their definition of "congestion" in the
transport plans?
Mr Darling: Yes because we published
these figures in July when they changed. We can arrange to do
that but there is no question of anyone being disadvantaged because
of that.
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