Jan 2010 18

If you build it they will come13

Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) has today released a report with the major revelation that traffic levels rise when new roads are built. They argue that spending on roads is a major “gamble” because the Highways Agency has, on occasion, inaccurately predicted their road schemes’ effects on traffic, noise and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Agency has often underestimated the increase in use when a road is widened or a new road is built.  When this happens it is because there is more pent up demand for roads than the Highways Agency thought.  That actually implies taxpaying motorists were particularly in need of new capacity in order to get around, driving to work or to access services.  The Millenium Dome was a failure because it didn’t get enough visitors; most people wouldn’t see a new road as a failure if it has too many users.

Amazingly the CBT appear to see things differently, at least when it comes to roads and see people being able to drive more as a bad thing. One has to question if a new bus route was introduced and carried more passengers than the operator expected, would it be branded as a gamble of public money by the CBT?

Probably not- but with such an avid belief in personal transport being the least desirable means for people to get around they ignore the basic evidence that driving is essential to most people getting around. £8.3 billion was spent on the roads in 2007-08  but they carried the majority of British passengers- 749 billion passenger kilometres in fact.  Other modes of transport carried far fewer people for each pound of public spending they received as we showed in our recent report.

Even the CBT report notes that

“Even though the volume of traffic turns out to be higher or lower than expected, the benefit-cost ratio of these four schemes stayed remarkably level (or even increased).” 

From the perspective of the anti-car fanatics at the CBT, it is surprising that a road carrying more people than expected makes it more useful.

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  • http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/system/files/HA-billion-pound-gamble.pdf Richard George

    Hi Jennifer,
    As the author of the CBT report, I have to respectfully say that I think you may have misconstrued our point. We looked at the four most recent ‘post-opening project evaluation’ reports by the Agency, which found (their findings, not ours) that the forecasts used to estimate the impact of road building were innacurate.
    In other words, major decisions on how to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money are being made on the basis of innacurate evidence. You don’t have to oppose (or support) road building to demand a firm evidence base for decisions of this magnitude.
    We did, as you note, show that the HA found higher traffic levels than predicted. The impact of this, as our report stressed, was that nearby communities were now calling for more public spending to relieve their villages of traffic created by the original bypass. See today’s Telegraph for some quotes from local people taken straight from the HA’s reports: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6998547/Road-schemes-not-easing-congestion-environmentalists-say.html.
    Actually, just last week we organised a meeting between local people and the Minister for Local Transport, in which we argued, amongst other things, that smaller scale road building represented better value for money than the major scheme put forward for funding.
    I would have thought the TPA would be firmly behind such measures, particularly as you highlighted the cost increases of road building in the Independent on Sunday a week ago: http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/media/2010/01/independent-on-sunday-where-does-all-our-money-go.html.

  • Bedd Gelert

    Jennifer,
    What crap this is. Surely you must understand that the lesson of this is that road building can NEVER solve our transport problems since you just create more demand which can NEVER be satisfied just by building more roads. Or you could if you would be willing to concrete over the entire country. People have to learn that there need to be alternative forms of transport.
    If they are too thick to realise that, then tax them to kingdom come until they start to learn. If you really believe in lower tax then find a way to cajole them out of the cars without taxing them. But we need to cut our carbon emissions, unless you are of the ante-diluvian tendency that does not believe in climate change.
    Maybe the TPA motto should be “Because we believe, when it comes to the environment, you really CAN eat money !”

  • http://climateresearchnews.com/ Paul Biggs

    Road traffic levels are mainly related to economic growth and population growth, rather than road building. Hence the fall in traffic levels during the recession. CfBT are paid to be anti-roads/anti-car by the heavily taxpayer subsidised bus and rail industries. CfBT’s ‘views’ are paid for.
    I see Bedd Gelert is using the ‘straw-man argument’ of ‘belief’ in climate change. Everyone belives in climate change or global warming, or whatever it is called this week. The unsolved question is what are the causes of climate change or global warming? Certainly not a single small factor such as the essential aerial plant food gas known as CO2. Either way the current climate and temperatures remain well within the bounds of natural variability for the current intergalcial period known as ‘The Holocene.’ The CO2 scam is simply being used as an excuse for taxation and restrictions by the usual suspects, and a nice earner for the huge global warming industry. My views are unfunded – I give them for free.

  • Jennifer Dunn

    Hi Richard,
    Thank you for your comments on the blog. You’re right to say that smaller scale road projects are important to smaller communties and local economies. However you have still not addressed my main point, which was that increased traffic on major roads after road projects shows a pent up demand for the roads by car users. This underestimation should not be as an excuse to deny further plans to increase road capacity but should be a reminder that the vast majority of individuals use cars to get from A to B. Of course the HA should use an extensive system of planning based on evidence to make sure the taxpayer is receiving value for money (please see an early blog I did about efficiency savings in the HA http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/bettergovernment/2010/01/the-highways-agency-getting-to-grits-with-contractors.html). However the increase of road traffic on new road projects merely reinforces the fact that drivers are the major constituent within transport policy and that there is a lot of demand for new roads that should be provided for.

  • http://www.bettertransport.org.uk Richard George

    Hi Jennifer,
    I suppose the question I should be asking is whether you think it is possible to provide enough road space to cater for this pent up demand, and if so, what the cost to the tax-payer would be?
    Take the A14 Ellington to Fen Ditton. The Government is planning to spend up to £1.3 billion building a three-to-five lane dual carriageway to relieve pressure on the existing A14. It was first mooted to cost £195 million.
    However, even with this expenditure, journey times in 2015 are expected to be greater than they were in 2000. After spending over £1 billion of tax payers’ money, it’s still going to take longer to get from Cambridge to Huntingdon that it does today (source: Cambridge to Huntingdon Multi-Modal Study, chapter 5, table 5.1).
    The HA attributes this to an increase in traffic directly generated by the scheme; the pent up demand you refer to. But if spending over £1 billion on 21 miles of road does not provide enough road space to reduce congestion, how much would it cost tax payers to provide a road wide enough to ensure that all this pent up demand is catered for?
    Instead of pouring good money after bad, we’d rather the Government invested in smaller-scale schemes, which have excellent value for money. The Sustainable Travel Demonstration Towns (Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester) cost just £10m over 5 years, and reduced car trips (and thus traffic by 11-13% (source: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/demonstrationtowns/lettersustainabletraveltowns.pdf).
    At no point was anyone forced to give up their car at gun point. Instead, programme officers sat down with members of the public (who volunteered to take part) and worked with them to identify some trips they took by car which might be easier by bus, train, or even by walking or cycling.
    I haven’t seen the benefit cost ratio for these programmes, but I suspect that they are rather high. This sort of low-cost, high value project actually reduces congestion and gets drivers from A to B quicker… and unlike immensely costly road building like the A14 proposal.

  • AdrianS

    Before this report was issued I think you could have predicted what the CBT would say. Roads bad, Public Transport good, the same old tired message from people with no vision.
    If you build new roads , guess what people will use them, does that come as a shock to some of you?. People only generally travel around for a purpose eg to get to work. We dont spend hours driving along the roads we have already paid for just for the fun of it. If you supress people’s ability to be able to travel you will repress the economy and all that goes with it.
    If the goverment really wanted us to travel less by car why doesnt it shorten the working week. Many people in employment working very long hours and to then be faced with using time consuming public transport is too much to expect. Much off transport policy is made in London I suspect which has a very good underground system— but the rest of the country doesnt have this. Time we got less academic grant fuelled bullshit and more straight practical thinking, it doesnt all need to be so hard!

  • http://www.bettertransport.org.uk Richard George

    Hi Adrian,
    I’m not sure I should keep jumping to our report’s defence, but I urge you to read it.
    We looked at four reports by the Highways Agency. Those reports showed that the evidence base on which they were justifying significant expenditure of taxpayers’ money – around one billion a year – was congenitally flawed. They were backed up by a consutlant’s report which studies 28 examples, with similar findings. In other words, they were saying ‘can we have your money’ without knowing what would happen once they’d spent it.
    As I said to Jennifer, you don’t have to oppose road building to demand a solid evidence base for public spending. That’s why I was so surprised that the TPA came out against our report.

  • libertarian

    @Bedd Gelert
    What a nasty little name calling post you made. It is actually funny as you have displayed a complete lack of any scientific or technical knowledge. Traffic planning conforms to standard queuing theory models and is not open ended if done correctly ( which it currently isn’t in most parts of the UK).
    All you have displayed is your gullibility, believing anything you are told as long as it fits with your political views.

  • Trevor Wainwright

    After driving for over forty years now, I can assure you that congestion will only get worse. I started off driving across Manchester and over four years (even though new roads had been built and getting a better car) The homeward journey increased from fifty minutes to seventy. Twenty five years ago, I regularly travelled from Essex to Bristol and before the North section of the M25 was finished, I had to travel on Sunday evening going (you had to return when you could on Friday). Once the M25 was finished though, my company said we could travel on Monday morning, saving hotel bills but increasing travel at the rush hour, we also had a new idea of only going for half a week, going Monday and returning Wednesday or going Wednesday and returning Friday, all increasing the number of journeys. My very first journey on the North M25 saw me stuck in a traffic jam, and that was at the weekend! We also had pool cars introduced, the idea being that people could travel together. Good idea, except this only happened for a week and then everybody had their own pool car and travelled on their own, plus we had a new department solely for controlling pool cars!
    I also used the new Dartford crossing on the second day it was opened, how marvellous it was, now it is to be avoided, especially Northbound as the queue can start at Swanley! (queueing fourteen miles to pay £1).
    I occasionally get stuck in traffic in Colchester’s gridlock. The people around me, I can only assume, do that every day. So they can think of no way around it then? Having to move your car across a gridlocked town, every day.
    We should be asking people where they are going and why (is it really necessary or are you just being curious or lazy or both)

  • John W. Burley

    I do not wish to contribute to a section which obviously does not like anything written against the tide of lies with respect to the growing evidence that “Global Warming” and “Climate Change” are myths which need to be opposed.
    I suppose, when I click onto the “Post” button – this too will be rejected.
    Shame on you Tax Payers Alliance.
    John W. Burley, Retired lecturer.

  • Peter Eyres

    Obviously the reason full buses are welcomed is that they should then cover their costs, whereas full roads point to more problems, as others have pointed out.
    Why is driving around more a good thing? Studies have shown that people everywhere over many decades have made an average of 3 journeys a day and spent about an hour a day doing so. The result of more roads (or faster trains) is that we travel further to achieve the same objectives as before. To some extent, this implies more choice, but it is also a function of reduced choice because of centralised services, especially for those without cars.

  • Brian Smith

    Road usage cannot be considered on its own. There are very few truly elective or recreational journies as a percentage of total miles travelled and I don’t know anyone who bought a car because someone built a road. People use their cars in the main because they need to and because it makes economic sense to “sweat their asset”. Car purchase relates to overall growth in the economy and has no observable corelation with road miles built.
    Road building costs cannot be considered simply as the costs of building roads. Norwich is an underdeveloped entrepot because it has very poor road transport links. The same applies to mid Wales, the east Anglian coastal towns, Lincolnshire and so on. This reality has a social cost.
    The traditional reasons for building roads and bridging rivers never go away. Militarists like them because it means they can move their armies around more easily and quickly. For the long term, however, and this is why we, as taxpayers, have always been prepared to pay for them, they link centres of economic activity facilitating trade and thereby fostering economic growth and well-being. The Chinese, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, medieval kings and princes, Mussolini and Eisenhower all understood this. In many countries of the world, towns and villages organise themselves to oppose road building plans which do not include connecting them to the network.
    I am afraid that as with education, housing, health, social policy and the rest, transport issues are bedevilled by left-right politics.
    It must be conceded however, that all decisions – even when they are wrong – should be supported by accurate evidence. If this report is drawing attention to inbuilt discrepancies in the information transport planners are using then we should be grateful for the CBT putting it right.
    In that way we can at least look forward to being wrong for the right reasons!

  • John de Lange

    All I ask is that they make up their bloody minds. The North Circular Road in London was supposed to be a dual carriageway orbital road when it started in the 1930s. The Bowes Road – Silver Street section was going to be started in 1997 – the plansning done the land bought and then they stopped it with a stroke of the politicians pen. Millions wated, permanent traffic block as six lanes go into three. Only idiots could call this planning.
    Now they have a new, watered down, scheme because of the Olympics, but don’t expect anything to happen.