Written evidence submitted by Action for Yorkshire Transport (SRI0004)

About us

  1. Action for Yorkshire Transport is an independent group campaigning for better public transport and active travel. We cover West and North Yorkshire.
     
  2. Given the nature of our group we are only answering the penultimate point: Whether the Government’s roads investment programme aligns with other policy priorities, such as decarbonisation, levelling up, productivity and growth.

    Productivity
     
  3. Traffic levels have increased significantly over the last 100 years leading to congestion on our road network which results in our bus services unable to run in a reliable fashion. Bus operators have the option of increasing the scheduled journey times of services to counter traffic delays and either adding buses to the operation or reducing the frequency of services to accommodate the additional time needed for the longer journey time. For passengers this means a poorer service that takes longer and either is less frequent or more expensive or both. Passengers are deterred to use the service by this and many opt to drive a car, so adding to the congestion problem. No driver or bus passenger is able to complete their journey efficiently. This is a vicious circle that cannot continue.
     

We can increase capacity on the road network, but in the long term this does not work.

Any new road built generates additional traffic, which in turn will lead to more carbon emissions. The SACTRA report ‘Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic’ (SACTRA, Department for Transport, 1994) said in its Executive Summary in para 10 “Considering all these sources of evidence, we conclude that induced traffic can and does occur, probably quite extensively, though its size and significance is likely to vary widely in different circumstances”. They estimated an additional 10% of traffic is generated in the short-term and 20% in the long-term. More recently, the Department for Transport published “Latest Evidence on Induced Travel Demand: An Evidence Review” (WSP and Rand Europe, Department for Transport, May 2018) which endorsed the conclusions of the SACTRA report and pointed out that induced or generated traffic was more likely in situations where congestion was currently prevailing.
 

  1. The benefits of road building are stated by National Highways as being around £2 for every £1 invested. We have used evidence from the United States, for the economic benefits of public transport, as they have a larger number of examples to examine. The Impact of Transportation Investment 2020 report from the American Public Transportation Association looked at two investment scenarios. https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/APTA-Economic-Impact-Public-Transit-2020.pdf

    …the impact of an increase in public transit funding on U.S. annual GDP can exceed $14 billion by the year 2040 in the increased funding scenario and is nearly $35 billion in the higher increased funding scenario. In both cases, that is approximately five times the increment in annual investment in that year. The impact will be smaller in earlier years and potentially greater in later years.

    Assuming the economic background is similar to that in the UK, for every £1 spent on Public transport investment, there are benefits of £5. We are not impressed by the claims of increased economic benefits through road building and would like to see a greater emphasis on investment in rail and light rail and also waterways and bus lanes.

    Decarbonisation
     
  2. Decarbonisation is not helped by road building.

    We endorse the report published in July 2020, “The Carbon Input of the National Roads Programme”, by Lynn Sloman and Lisa Hopkinson. This report discusses how road building contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. It starts with the carbon embodied in the materials used to build roads, such as the steel, concrete and asphalt. It goes on to consider any land clearance of mature trees for a new road, which means a carbon sink is removed. The resultant new road can lead to higher speeds of travel causing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. It is likely to also lead to induced traffic, that is extra traffic demand as a result of the enhanced road network. This also will increase greenhouse gas emissions and is a concept we understand the Department for Transport is familiar with. This Road Investment Strategy is estimated by the report to increase carbon emissions by about 20 MtCO2 during a period when we are hoping they will decrease by 167MtCO2. They conclude that the Road Investment Strategy is not in line with the UK’s legal obligation to cut carbon emissions as per the Paris Climate Agreement. 

    We note the ambitions of National Highways to construct net zero roads by 2040 and the paucity of published details behind this aim.

    Levelling Up
     
  3. We welcome the recent opening of the Elizabeth line in London and the benefits it will bring. We consider it absolutely right that London has had this investment. In the House of Commons Briefing Paper, number 8130, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8130/CBP-8130.pdf overall transport funding is much better for London than Yorkshire and Humberside based on population. But the funding on local public transport is even more focussed on London. Much of the road funding is focussed outside London. London is therefore, getting more investment and also the more productive public transport investment than elsewhere. This is not helping levelling up.

    Clashes with Other Policy Priorities
     
  4. There are many areas where road building proposals contradict other policies. An example is in North Yorkshire where the Local Enterprise Partnership in York and North Yorkshire Routemap to Carbon Negative says: Reduce private car usage by 48% by 2030. Yet the following road schemes are planned that will induce further traffic: the A64 East of York, A59 at Kex Gill and the A1237 York Outer Ring Road. Why would you invest in road building when you intend to reduce car use by 48%?

    Conclusion
     
  5. We see no reasonable argument for further road building unless it is for new access roads or bus lanes to improve the reliability of buses. We cannot keep adding yet another lane to “fix it” as this leads to induced traffic that will impact on the next weak point in the road network. We consider the expansion of the existing road network capacity to be a waste of public money and would prefer some of that money spent on repairing the existing infrastructure and on public transport investment, such as the proposed West Yorkshire Mass Transit scheme.

 

January 2023