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A road too far?



On Wednesday, the Deputy First Minister announced the National Transport Strategy for Wales with the main headline being the cancellation of the M4 relief road, a project with an estimated pricetag of £1 billion.

With the inevitability of significant reductions in the amount of funding coming from the Treasury to Wales during the next few years, this was a relatively easy decision for the Assembly Government to make in order to focus dwindling resources on other areas.

The main question, of course, is whether it was the right decision for a Welsh economy which remains firmly rooted at the bottom of the UK’s prosperity league table and needs every advantage it can get.

Certainly, business groups such as the CBI, FSB and the Chambers of Commerce were outraged at the decision, remaining convinced that the road was the "most important scheme needed to take Wales' economy forward".

Whilst the cost of the road has now become prohibitive at a time of austerity, the delays by politicians and civil servants in making a decision regarding this scheme means that many of the alternatives to the relief road - such as encouraging local drivers not to use the motorway, upgrading the southern distributor road south of Newport, and opening a seven-mile private dual carriageway through the Corus site at Llanwern – have been delayed.

This will, undoubtedly, result in increased congestion within the South East Wales area which, in turn, will drive up the cost of doing business in the region.

More generally, there will be disappointment that there is no long term and visionary solution to the problem of traffic congestion such as that experienced on the M4 around Newport.

Indeed, if the government and business groups were actually serious about solving this problem, then they would look to adopt a far more radical approach to that of just throwing money at it.

For example, businesses could encourage staff to avoid rush hour traffic altogether by offering staggered work hours in which staff can arrive at different times as agreed with their employer, thus reducing the ridiculous amount of commuting that goes on during the peak hours of morning and evening. Such practices are widespread within major economies such as the USA or Germany but have yet to be adopted widely in the UK.

Research has shown that a third of all schoolchildren now go to school by car, a figure which has doubled in the last twenty years. The school run by parents across the UK accounts for one million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. This adds enormously to congestion around traffic hotspots such as Newport where the roads are practically empty during the school holidays at peak hours.

This could be eased by staggering the opening times of schools (backed with pre and after-school clubs) so they do not open at the same time as the daily commute. This could make a real difference.

There is also the alternative of providing a properly subsidised school bus system on the American model which would, according to some, cut 130 million car journeys a year across the UK.

Certainly, these solutions would cost considerably less than the estimated £1 billion bill for a new relief road.

Government also needs to focus more resources on getting freight off the roads and onto the railway system. Whilst this is an issue which the National Transport Strategy says will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air and noise pollution, there is almost no funding being made available to support the development of the infrastructure needed to make this work.

For example, the Freightliner terminal in Cardiff is ideally placed to enable transport companies to bring goods into South Wales and then distributing them around the region and yet little funding is being made available to support this site which could help reduce the amount of traffic coming through the Newport area at peak times.

Therefore, rather than dealing with the issue of why there is too much traffic at a certain time of the day, the only response to date has been to assume that we need more roads to deal with the problem. That is clearly not the only solution and perhaps it is time for a bit more lateral thinking from politicians and policymakers to deal with the growing economic and transport challenges we face in Wales.

Comments

MH said…
I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of what you've written, DJE. In fact I agree with everything after the paragraph that begins, "Indeed, if the government ... "

In a nutshell, the big problem is to do with peak time, rather than overall, capacity. So the things you've highlighted are spot on.

However, if the solutions to reduce peak traffic ARE implemented (and of course the new rail stations with park and ride are part of what IWJ announced) then I must admit that I find it hard to understand why you would say:

"This will, undoubtedly, result in increased congestion within the South East Wales area ... "

Surely the package of measures announced will REDUCE congestion, and other measures such as those you highlight would reduce it further. After all, what we're looking to do is provide relief for the pinch point at the Brynglas tunnels ... the equivalent of one lane each way. Building a new six lane motorway was always going to be four lanes too many.

Yet there still seems to remain a mindset that thinks that building these four-lanes-too-many would have been the right thing to do, and that the only thing that has stopped it is the lack of money. You seem to go along this when you say,

"With the inevitability of significant reductions in the amount of funding coming from the Treasury to Wales during the next few years, this was a relatively easy decision for the Assembly Government to make in order to focus dwindling resources on other areas."

But in fact the proposed new motorway was never going to cost the Welsh Government ANYTHING in terms of resources. The model was always going to be PPP/PFI. It would have been built privately, and funded from tolls ... and there would have needed to be a deal similar to that for the Severn Crossing by which the existing motorway would have an equal toll. Ironically, funding the new relief scheme (improvements to the SDR and the new Llanwern stretch) IS going to cost the Welsh government money ... between £64m and £110m. So the "resources" or "the WG can't afford the money" argument is a red herring.

Isn't it more pertinent to say that business, in fact the very business community whose "representatives" are now complaining so loudly about the new motorway not being built, are the ones who would not be able to afford it? At a rough calculation, the second Severn Crossing cost £330m (plus a bit more for the links) and has a toll of £10.90 for a van and £16.30 for a truck. So a project costing more than twice as much is likely to require a toll of somewhere around twice as much. "Dai the Plumber" is hard pressed enough by having to pay £10 for getting his van over the bridge. Would anyone in their right mind advocate a solution which meant he had to pay another £20 or more to get past Newport? Anyone who gives the matter five minutes' thought will see that a brand new motorway on that model is crazy economics. It would have a huge negative effect on business.

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Finally, I'd take issue with you on the matter of "delay" by politicians and civil servants. For the past 30 or 40 years, we have had a culture of "officialdom" which thought that infrastructure meant roads and nothing else. Within that mindset, building the new M4 would have been virtually automatic. It takes time, and a good deal of political courage, to reframe that way of thinking.

I firmly believe that what is now proposed is a BETTER solution than building the new motorway would ever have been ... and better still if we also take on board the things you suggest.

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P.S. You can read what I've written on the decision here:

http://syniadau--buildinganindependentwales.blogspot.com/2009/07/national-transport-plan-roads.html

I'm about to post something on rail, and switching freight to rail will be part of it. Could you enlarge a little on what sort of funding you think would be helpful to Freightliner in Cardiff?
logicalman said…
Some good points there dylan and MH (if not long..) - the road network east/west is good but crazy for up to two hours a day. A simple method of helping this is undoubtedly flexible working hours, even if the school stm can't see fit to do so just yet it would still make a significant difference by allowing the non-school run workers to go into work sooner or later into the morning

But as employers we are to stuck in our traditional ways and beliefs - working from home is still seen as a 'dodge' and coming into work at 10am and working till 6.30 is seen as being late in...vice versa for going home at 4

one other way to ease morning traffic congestion is to TRAIN (and i mean properly train)the lollipop men and ladies of this land - some of these do not have a clue what traffic chaos they cause by stopping traffic for the parent to get back to the car, every ten seconds (sorry, pet hate)

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