Reports:

Paying for road use

Chapter 3: The problem of congestion

The latest research on national transport networks across Europe, published by CfIT in November 2001, shows that the UK is the most congested country in Europe. This is not necessarily surprising since the British seem to have a special relationship with their cars. British people make more use of cars than any other European country, despite having below average car ownership. Almost nine out of ten motorised journeys (car, bus, motorbike) in the UK are by car, compared with the EU average of just over eight out of ten. We are also travelling further in our cars. The annual distance travelled by car increased by 45% between 1985/6 and 1997/99 (DTLR 2000). Indeed, the average British household now spends almost 15% of expenditure on motoring.

With such a large proportion of household expenditure consumed by motoring costs, it can not be fair, then, that congestion prevents the average motorist from using a car to make the sort of reliable journeys that were once possible. CfIT believes the real "anti-motorist" policy would be to decide not to tackle congestion, to accept the nature of our current car journeys and to accept that they would only get worse.

Congestion does not only have an adverse effect on motorists. Research undertaken by the Freight Transport Association shows congestion creates serious problems with planning and scheduling freight deliveries that affect the ability of the operator to provide a consistent quality of service to customers and suppliers. This unreliability affects all road users, not just hauliers, and is a particular problem for those who need to arrive at their destination at a certain time. For over 75% of haulage operators, more than 10% of their journeys are subject to delays resulting from network unreliability and over a quarter of these experience delays in more than 25% of cases. Unreliability of journey times means that over 40% of operators suffer more than a 5% increase in their transport costs.

Many companies have to allow for extra journey times on the present congested network. For example, a milling company based in the south Midlands has to plan for its wagons setting off an hour early to get up the M1 and the M6 to Lancashire. Similarly, a retailer making deliveries to its North West stores has to schedule afternoon trips on the M60 an hour earlier to avoid the office rush hour, and a journey that should take an hour and ten minutes still actually takes two hours. A building company based off the M6 in Lancashire has to allow an extra half hour to Birmingham because of congestion on the motorway, while extra vehicles have to be used because the company cannot afford the risk of missing drops to customers because of delays en route. It all adds significantly to industry's costs.

We have a stark choice. We can either introduce an effective price mechanism to be used in conjunction with traffic management, targeted investment and marketing of public transport, or we will be stuck with the problem of congestion - which is set to get even worse in the long run.

Source: European best practice in delivering integrated transport, CfIT, 2001.

Source: European best practice in delivering integrated transport, CfIT, 2001.

Setting a 6% target for reducing congestion as the Government has done in its 10-Year Transport Plan was a courageous step. CfIT supports congestion targets. However, CfIT is concerned that the Government may not meet these targets, especially in view of these forecasts having been made on the basis that congestion charging will have been introduced in 8 urban areas by 2010. To date, take-up of congestion charging schemes by local authorities remains very slow.

Furthermore, whilst the future climate bodes well for cheaper motoring costs - which are forecast to fall in real terms by 20% by 2010 as a result of manufacturing progress in improved engine efficiency, coupled with the fall in the real price of petrol - this does not help rid motorists of the problem of congestion, but rather the opposite.

Using CfIT's approach, congestion could be reduced by 44%. This reduction would be achieved by people choosing to travel at less congested times, or on less congested routes. Some people would wish to choose to travel using a different mode - by bus or by train or to walk or to cycle. Some would even decide not to travel at all. It is therefore an essential pre-requisite of the introduction of such a charging scheme that the improvements promised in the 10-Year Plan for bus and rail and for enhanced facilities for cyclists and pedestrians are in place. CfIT believes that such a charging scheme would only be introduced once the Government's 10-Year Transport Plan has been successfully delivered.

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