Effective road and traffic management

Written evidence from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (ETM 39)

Effective Road and Traffic Management

1.1. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is one the world’s leading professional bodies for the engineering and technology community. The IET has over 150,000 members in 127 countries and has offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. The Institution provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and to promote the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world.

1.2. This evidence has been prepared on behalf of the IET Trustees by the Transport Policy Panel. The IET would be pleased to provide further technical assistance and evidence as part of this inquiry.

Summary

1.3. The Eddington Transport Study shows that a 5% reduction in travel time for businesses and freight can lead to a reduction in costs of £2.5 billion and through general reduction in traffic levels and the derived benefit of more predictable journey times on the road network, around £7-8 billion of GDP per annum could be generated. The Department for Transport in estimating the feasibility of introducing a national road pricing scheme, suggested that time savings and the value of increased journey reliability could total £12 billion a year to the UK economy. [1]

1.4. Such examples show the increasing need for traffic management schemes and measures which can reduce congestion. Such schemes need to be developed with the user in mind, with the impact of road and traffic management schemes on drivers and the wider public being properly addressed as part of any project. This would ensure high levels of compliance, an understanding of the rules and an appreciation of the unintended consequences that may arise.

The prevalence and impact of traffic congestion and likely future trends

1.5. In December 2006, Sir Rod Eddington submitted his Transport Study to government. The study looked at the long term links between transport and its impact on the UK’s economic productivity, growth and stability. The report shows that 73% of passengers and 65% of freight travel are moved using the UK road network. [1]

1.5.1. The report used figures from the 2001 Census and the National Travel Survey 2005, which showed that of the 30 million commuters in the UK, 55% of their journeys are destined for large urban areas and over 52% of business journeys start or end in the 22 largest urban areas.

1.5.2. Within freight, 72% of journeys are over 100kms, with their surface access routes to ports and airports, often being the same routes shared with urban and inter-regional passenger traffic.

1.6. Looking to the future Eddington makes some stark observations. If no action is taken to address congestion, there will be a 31% increase in road traffic and a 30% increase in congestion, which would waste £22 billion worth of time in England alone by 2025.

1.7. The cumulative impact of all this will be an increased cost to business of £10 billion a year, a cost of £12 billion in wasted time for households and 13% of road traffic being subjected to stop-start travel conditions, primarily in urban areas where most journeys take place. It should be acknowledged that the recent recession may have slightly reduced these figures but the overall trend is still valid.

1.8. Additional figures for London, the UK’s largest urban area, show that with no intervention there would be up to a 20% increase in vehicle delay by 2031, and with both funded and unfunded intervention measures and projects taken into account, up to 14% increase in vehicle delay. [1]

1.9. International examples such as the 100km traffic jam in Beijing which lasted for almost two weeks, demonstrate that where no alternative plan exists for motorists, traffic congestion will get worse. There, a combination of freight from Inner Mongolia and urban and inter-regional passenger traffic, combined with scheduled road works, led to 11 days of stop-start traffic. Such examples illustrate the need for government and local authority action to manage congestion, but also crucially information sharing with the wider public around traffic disruptions and changes.

1.10. The availability of efficient transport is a heavy influencing factor in overseas businesses decision to invest in new offices and employment in the UK. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers came to the conclusion that "transport infrastructure stimulates FDI inflows to a country, since companies looking to invest will benefit from better accessibility and reduced transport cost." [1]

The extent to which the Government and local authorities should intervene to alleviate congestion and the best means of doing so

1.11. The Department for Transport in its published Business Plan for 2011-2015, has made clear its intention to ‘no longer micro-manage’, but there is a clear distinction between fostering development where a national solution is more practical and involvement on a day to day basis. With the financial pressures facing the public purse and local authorities, concerns must be raised about who will be tackling traffic congestion.

1.12. National networks are managed by the Highways Agency, and are interlinked with local routes, yet evidence suggests that little joined up management or strategic planning exists between the two and where it does (such as the Highways Efficiency Liaison Group), the focus is on finance and funding not strategic planning. As we have seen in the example above from China, if we leave it to the individual traveller nothing will get done. The Government has a clear role to play as arbiter at least in the interim, to ensure more strategic planning in congestion hot spots.

1.13. The Highways Agency through its work Tackling Congestion by Influencing Travel Behaviour (centred around ‘Travel Plan Schemes’ and ‘smarter travel choices’), has tried to engage with the public and local authorities to develop a package of measures to reduce reliance on cars, tailored to each individual area. [1] However the evidence is that traffic congestion is still going up and will continue to rise.

1.14. More effective measures must be pursued such as achieving a modal shift to public transport, which is one method of tackling congestion; additional measures include ensuring delivery of a more reliable journey using existing road space. The Government should proactively engage with bodies which can contribute smart systems to achieve both outcomes without the need for more road space, and encourage the development, testing and deployment of such systems nationally.

1.15. Despite the examples across the country of schemes being used to tackle congestion, there does appear to be an element of short-termism and limited leadership in both current and past government strategy. Road user charging on a national scale has been ruled out (aside from HGV’s) by the current government as a measure to tackle congestion.

1.16. The evidence from large urban areas (where the majority of journeys commence or terminate) demonstrates that such schemes can be configured to work in some cases. The Government should make it clear to local authorities, that where traffic congestion is a key problem, they should not rule out some element of congestion charging, if it would encourage modal shift to public transport or changes in behavioural patterns (e.g. travelling outside rush hours or car sharing).

1.16.1. In London with the introduction of congestion charging, traffic has been reduced by 21% and a shift to public transport of 6% has been recorded during charging hours. In Stockholm, where a similar scheme was piloted in 2006, there was a 20% reduction in traffic and a subsequent referendum, after the pilot, asked residents if they wanted to keep the scheme and this was won with residents in Stockholm voting yes. [1]

1.17. There is also an important role for information and data sharing if we are to alleviate congestion. The second Quarmby Report on Winter Resilience, published in December 2010, highlighted the improvements made by some local councils in providing up to date traffic information on their websites, including traffic cams, state of roads and opportunities to sign up for updates via text and social media. [1] However, such action is undertaken by motorists at a time of urgency i.e. if they can’t leave their homes, rather than before a standard daily commute.

1.18. While the actions of local councils who have taken measures to upgrade the information provided to road users must be applauded, more needs to be done to share information between local authorities and between the traffic agencies and local authorities, so that a unified and real-time system is available to road users when needed. If a local authority is unable to support its own traffic information service then at minimum it should make the underpinning data available to potential users, as advocated by the EU Directive on deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems.

1.19. The most important part of congestion management is reliability and the ability to plan journey times, local authorities do not generally have the expertise to consider and implement such systems. The Government must do all it can to ensure such services do not suffer as a result of reduction in local authority funding. There is also a key role for the Government to play in setting standards and ensuring openness of data, to allow the ‘Digital Economy’ to develop information sharing solutions.

1.20. The commuting environment has changed profoundly over the last few decades, such activity can no longer be done by humans alone as it is now too difficult. Managing traffic today demands intervention, as it is too difficult for the large numbers of very independent individual drivers and it requires management on much larger areas than was the case 5 years ago, local and national networks have to be linked and co-managed as a result. All of this requires Government intervention to set the technical standards and the management frameworks to ensure effective operation.

The extent to which road user culture and behaviour undermines effective traffic management, including the relevance to today’s road users of the Highway Code

1.21. In most professional walks of life, where an exam is required to receive certification to practice, Continuous Professional Development forms an integral part of ensuring existing knowledge is kept up to date. Unfortunately such CPD is lacking for car users (for practical reasons), and a culture has developed which requires road users to pass a driving test and not necessarily to learn to drive a car, the lack of respect for rules (i.e. ‘they are for everyone else’) is also a key issue that needs to be tackled.

1.22. The Quarmby Report raises questions about the general understanding amongst the public around the realities of snow and ice on roads. Driving lessons and tests take place in normal weather conditions and because increasingly drivers are taught to just pass the test, this has a knock on effect on future knowledge levels outside ‘normal’ conditions.

1.23. Driving has become an ever more complex activity, the pass rate for driving tests is on a constant downward trend from 63% in 1935 to 43% in 2003-2004 [1] , questions have to be raised about the 18 year old who passes their driving test today, who can be expected to drive for over 50 years without receiving any update on changes in the environment in which they are allowed to drive, or any information being provided on changes to the law. It is also worth noting that the DfT Business Plan states the Government will no longer ‘waste money’ on ineffective national advertising and marketing campaigns.

1.24. The Highways Agency implemented a scheme on the A14 which uses average speed cameras to monitor compliance with the national speed limit. This is an example of speed camera use which has delivered some results in mitigating road traffic accidents. Since their installation in 2007 on the Bypass between Huntingdon and Cambridge, the fatality rate has remained at zero and delay caused by incidents and roadworks has decreased in both directions. However, the increase in traffic flow has lead to a marginal increase in recurrent delay attributed to the total weight of traffic. [1]

1.25. An independent review commissioned by the RAC Foundation [1] on speed cameras, found that:

1.25.1. they lead to a considerable reduction in speed and collisions in their vicinity, which has persisted over time. One study in West London showed a reduction across the wider road network beyond the area of the camera

1.25.2. there was an increase in speed recorded at sites where speed cameras were clearly out of action.

1.26. Of course, compliance can only take place in a system where the rules are known and ideally uniform. The Highways Agency currently sets speed limits for motorways and trunk roads, with various traffic authorities able to set the speed limits on other roads. In the UK, speed limits can vary from 20mph to 70mph. This wide range creates the conditions for confusion, especially when the limitations of driver knowledge mentioned above, are factored in. For example there are currently signs for maximum speed limits, speed limit zones, speed limits on motorways and minimum speed limits, including differences in the national speed limit between single and dual carriageways and rules on speed limits where roads with differing speed limits intersect at a junction.

1.27. If road users are to be expected to self-comply with speed limits, steps need to be taken to ensure people know what the rules and speed limits are; this may not be as straightforward as it seems. There needs to be an acceptance by policy makers that drivers are human and as such are fallible. On that basis a safety system needs to be created where traffic management is looked at as a whole, where driver exposure to risk is designed out and minimised, rather than one which looks at issues in isolation.

Intelligent traffic management schemes, such as the scheme which has operated on the M42 and their impact on congestion and journey times

1.28. The M42 Managed Motorways, Active Traffic Management Scheme is an example of an innovative scheme which uses a combination of controlled motorways, hard shoulder use and ramp metering, to develop a solution to traffic congestion. The evidence of its success is well documented, which includes a 24% reduction in average journey times, 27% improvement in journey reliability and a rollout which was 40% cheaper than building an extra lane. Personal injury accidents also decreased from 5.1 to 1.8 per month. [1]

1.29. Such a successful scheme works because the driver is actively engaged in complying with the rules; the Highways Agency should be encouraged by the government to be more creative with other uses of traffic management, including the planned rollout of more Managed Motorways schemes.

1.30. Localised control schemes exist such as SCOOT, which is used in many large urban areas, the implementation of which has an average reduction of around 20% in traffic delay. SCOOT is an adaptive traffic control system. It coordinates the operation of all the traffic signals in an area to give good progression to vehicles through the network. Whilst coordinating all the signals, it responds intelligently and continuously as traffic flow changes and fluctuates throughout the day. It removes the dependence of less sophisticated systems on signal plans, which have to be expensively updated.

1.31. Data collected from such schemes could be used to better understand the relationship between congestion, demand, management measures and emissions. Such information, currently not often used by traffic managers, could be useful to the general public to inform in-trip decision making.

1.32. Getting the most out of roads needs an integrated network approach and a network-wide management approach, which means an ICT based system. Traffic control centres operated by human monitoring, can’t cope with the volume and changes in traffic congestion any more than the national air traffic control system can run with just air traffic controllers and no automated computer monitoring systems.

The impact of bus lanes and other aspects of road layout

1.33. One of the most effective ways to reduce traffic congestion would be through a modal shift from cars to public transport where such capacity exists. This would free up space on the road network for non-passenger journeys such as freight. Buses are an efficient way of transporting passengers in an urban setting when compared like for like with cars. To ensure that buses do not suffer from the same plight of traffic congestion (which would reduce their overall benefit); bus lanes are used to reduce delays for public transport.

1.34. Even where bus lanes operate, there are opportunities for innovation. Just as signals on the rail network can be used to prioritise express trains over local services, signals can be used to divide up the bus lane network into blocks, to allow cars to use bus lanes when no buses are nearby. Several aspects of such a system already exists, buses in some UK urban areas update the countdown timers at bus stops using GPS, they could therefore update roadside signals or in car systems, to make them aware of their position in advance and as such clear that section of the bus lane of car traffic. This concept is not dissimilar to the hard shoulder running aspect of the Management Motorway Schemes used on the M42.

1.35. Other innovations include allowing taxis to use bus lanes, however as mentioned earlier, a uniform and consistent approach across an area is needed. The Newcastle experience of ‘no car lanes’ is an example of bad practice, with differing rules for different times of day, different councils opting for different rules on what constitutes a ‘car’, and virtually no traveller information provided in advance of a necessary lane change. All this has the effect of a system being created, which causes much confusion for the road user. Compliance levels can be expected to fall under such a system and the net effect is less effective traffic management.

February 2011