Eight in ten British people would prefer the U.K. government to fill the country’s potholes rather than build new roads, finds a new survey conducted by YouGov.
This comes in the same week that Transport Secretary Louise Haigh will reveal whether the new U.K. government will rein back its road-building program to save money and help the environment. At the end of July, Haigh commissioned an urgent review of the U.K. Department for Transport’s (DfT) infrastructure capital spending portfolio following the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves revealing a $29 billion gap in the public finances during the current year.
Shortly after the new Labour administration came into power in early July, the DfT canceled the A303 Stonehenge and A27 road schemes.
63% of those surveyed in the new YouGov survey expressed dissatisfaction with U.K. driving conditions and 81% would rather that cash be diverted to councils to repair potholes over new road infrastructure projects. The nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 people was conducted on behalf of the US-headquartered peer-to-peer car rental service Turo.
Transport Action Network (TAN), a campaign group, says the $39 billion roads program for England left behind by the Conservatives is “unaffordable” and, further, is “an outdated relic of mid-twentieth century thinking, not least in the vast carbon emissions it will generate from both construction and extra traffic.”
TAN argues that sixteen proposed road expansions should be canceled outright or paused for further scrutiny.
Among the projects to be green-lit, canceled, or delayed by the end of this week is the $12 billion Lower Thames Crossing.
TAN urges the government to divert some of the savings from canceling new roads into fixing the existing pothole-pocked network. Indeed, this was a pledge from Labour’s General Election manifesto. Funding could also be diverted to boosting rail freight as well as public transport and active travel.
Jen Craft, the Labour MP for Thurrock, said: “I am deeply concerned that the proposed Lower Thames Crossing will fail to deliver on its goals. Rather than easing congestion on the existing crossing, research suggests that it will simply increase traffic and exacerbate already high pollution levels in Thurrock, which already has very poor air quality.”
“In my view,” she added, “investing billions in road expansion is not the answer. Instead, we should focus on improving other forms of transport by expanding bus services, enhancing rail links, including freight to take lorries off the road, and delivering on cross-river public transport solutions. These options collectively offer cleaner, longer-term solutions to congestion while benefiting local communities.”
Silviya Barrett, Director of Policy and Research at Campaign for Better Transport, said: “Instead of spending on unaffordable and unnecessary road building, the government and local authorities should be improving our existing roads and expanding public transport and rail freight networks as a way to grow local economies and reduce traffic. We cannot build our way out of congestion.”
Induced demand
New roads begat new traffic, suggests the theory of induced demand. A 2018 DfT report commissioned by the then Conservative government evaluated 25 studies into induced demand and found that the phenomenon—that new roads quickly fill with traffic and are, therefore, congestion bringers, not relievers— was proven.
“The evidence reviewed in this study supports the [finding] that induced traffic does exist,” concluded the report.
The Turo/YouGov survey also found that a quarter of respondents stated the high cost of car insurance as a key reason for not owning, leasing, or financing a car, while one in five called out the high cost of maintenance and repairs (21%) and the high cost of fuel (20%).
The survey also found that 55% of those surveyed oppose further expansion of ULEZ, which is London’s clear air emissions zone. 39% of 18-24-year-old respondents support the reinstatement of the 2030 ban on the sale of new internal combustion cars, with only 19% of those aged 65 and above holding the same opinion.
YouGov’s sample size was 2,193 adults, with surveys completed online in mid-August.
YouGov conducts its public opinion surveys using what it calls “active sampling,” which prioritizes the quality of the sample rather than the number of respondents. The company selects respondents from a panel of over two million British adults covering a wide range of ages, genders, social grades, and ethnicities.
Haigh is scheduled to decide on the future for the U.K.’s road-building program on Friday.
Should she decide that the Lower Thames Crossing can go ahead only with funding through private investment, with investors recouping their costs from tolls, there’s likely to be fresh legal challenges to the scheme.
Leigh Day, acting for TAN, has written to Haigh to warn her that turning to private finance would invalidate the scheme assessments done so far for the government.
“TAN does not know whether the secretary of state is minded to grant development consent,” said a statement from the group, “but she would not lawfully be able to do so if the funding position were to change.”
