Infrastructure obsession ignores optimising condition and capacity

GOVERNMENTS and political leaders like talking about infrastructure — most specifically new infrastructure. This Government in particular seems to want almost to be measured in terms of the quantity of infrastructure it can get delivered during its term — housing, roads, power stations, and airports, to name some obvious examples. It says all this is in the name of increasing economic growth and improving the overall economy for working people. But those people, of course, have other concerns, many related to the way that the nation’s existing infrastructure is being looked after.

Infrastructure projects are appealing to politicians as a form of ‘getting things done’. The sprawling construction sites that infrastructure spending creates are a visible reminder to voters that the government is making things happen, sometimes irrespective of the benefits of the end products that they produce.

Less attention is generally paid to the maintenance and use of infrastructure we already have, and the economic cost of its failing condition, although the state of the water supply and waste water sector and the condition of the highway system, notably potholes, have become unavoidable high-profile issues. This is obviously especially the case when elections are looming, as now, in respect of local and mayoral polls. Posing with potholes is becoming a new populist political act.

The electorate is being peppered with photocalls, reannouncements of spending allocations and pledges of new initiatives to deal with the plague of potholes, including a new pressure on local highway authorities in having to account the number of potholes they are filling with consequences for their Government funding provision.

The extent of potholes affecting the road system has been said to be costing £14.4 billion a year in economic damage in England alone, according to an analysis looking into the full cost in damage, accidents (especially to cyclists), time wasted and higher emissions, published by the The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), last year. The economic damage done by potholes is in three areas: damage to vehicles; accidents; and reduced speeds due to congestion that is pothole related.

CEBR used RAC data suggesting there are 6 potholes per mile for the million estimated potholes in England, clustered in a way that means 20% of segments of non-motorway road are impacted by potholes. Using the DfT webtag values of time, this implies that nearly 1.3 billion hours are added to travel time because of potholes, costing £12.7 billion using a weighted average cost of time. This excludes time lost from added congestion and from delayed freight.

Alongside this, emissions are worsened by cars slowing down and speeding up. In total this study suggests that emissions are about 0.5 tonnes of CO2 higher because of potholes. Using a shadow price for CO2 emissions of £50 this gives a cost range of these of £25 million. KwikFit has meanwhile prepared an annual Pothole Impact Tracker which estimated the annual cost in damage to vehicles in 2023 as £1.49 billion, seemingly consistent with data from AA and RAC on pothole related damage for their service users.

Evidence on pothole related accidents is less easy to find, but applying official valuations to the damage from accidents and scaling up from an earlier estimate suggests a likely human cost of £0.2 billion per annum from pothole related accidents, deaths and injuries. In addition local authorities in England have paid out £22.7 million in compensation for pothole related damage to vehicles.

So the total annual cost of potholes in England amount to that £14.4 billion. CEBR then points out that the cost of rebuilding the roads to clear all the current potholes and make it harder for new ones to appear, as estimated by the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance and Repair (ALARM) Survey, is not far from this figure at £16.3 billion.

This means, said CEBR, that were every road in the country rebuilt for the cost of the economic damage that current condition causes, a positive payback would be achieved in under fourteen months. “It looks like a no brainer. But no brainer cost benefit analysis rarely guides policy decisions in government…” it observed.

The National Audit Office highlighted DfT’s 2020 estimate of the benefit-to-cost ratio of local road maintenance that one of its funds (Highways Maintenance Block) could deliver. It set out that, for every £1 invested in local road maintenance, the government should achieve around £7 in benefits - mainly from improvements to vehicle operating costs and journey reliability through enhanced road condition.

It may be relevant to note that a less convincing economic case has been made for the construction of the Lower Thames Crossing, just given planning approval, at what is expected to be a rather similar outcome cost, now approaching £16 billion.

In its recent report on the condition and maintenance of local roads in England The National Audit Office meanwhile noted that the Department for Transport had told it that poorly maintained local roads can be dangerous to the people using them, lead to congestion and longer journeys, and cause people to avoid some types of travel, such as cycling or walking. It considered that well-maintained local roads are vital for the economy and the social wellbeing of communities-and also necessary for DfT’s objective to improve transport for the user, as well as delivering specific policy areas such as increasing active travel.

Alongside this the NAO referenced DfT’s 2020 estimate of the benefit-to-cost ratio of local road maintenance that one of its funds (Highways Maintenance Block) could deliver. It set out that, for every £1 invested in local road maintenance, the government should achieve around £7 in benefits - mainly from improvements to vehicle operating costs and journey reliability through enhanced road condition. DfT, not surprisingly, categorises this as “very high” value for money. In 2021, DfT’s spending review submission set out that improved maintenance of the local road network could also reduce disruption following extreme weather events. Wider research undertaken by the UK Roads Leadership Group in 2021 identified possible benefits for individuals’ health and the environment – for example, through improved safety and reductions in the costs to health associated with poor air quality and with physical inactivity through increased active travel.

An additional more detailed Evidence Review on the BCRs of local highway maintenance conducted by Atkins Realis for the Department for Transport and published last September again showed an overall BCR of well over 6. The BCR for the Lower Thames Crossing is barely above 1.

A critical dimension to the argument being examined here is the proper identification of the effect on the wider economy of the failing quality of the nation’s transport asset base. Generalised points are frequently made about this in terms of user experiences, for instance, the comments made in the past week by the Prime Minister about both potholes and the legacy of the unmodernised Victorian rail system in the North of England. The business sector, meanwhile, often identifies the costs and impacts on service quality in logistics and distribution from delays on the road network.

There is a further very interesting comparative point to be made here. Whilst on rail, it is clear that the movement of rolling stock is dependent on the rail lines being open and conflicts and disruptions being kept to an absolute minimum, on the highway system, in contrast, the users are a random selection of vehicles, including private passenger cars, freight trucks and vans, and buses and coaches, all competing for space. As a result all suffer in economic and wider efficiency and service quality terms when journeys are interrupted and delays occur, though little specific information is collected about such externally-imposed costs.

Of course, from time to time, calculations are made about the extent of such delays and their cost to the general economy but one significant element is probably not as well understood as it should be. That is the impact of not only road condition, but the interruption to traffic flow caused by the often unprogrammed character of roadworks themselves. This is an issue that is not limited to actual maintenance work to the carriageway, but the intervention of utilities and other service providers when they are working on or alongside the road. Not to mention the disruptions caused by developments adjacent to the highway, for example, the construction of new buildings, the demolition of others, the parking of skips, and the unloading and loading of building lorries and vans.

Little information seems to be collected about these impacts — not only how, where and how frequently they occur, but what their implications are for general traffic flows and in particular for timetabled bus and delivery services, and the consequential problems and disbenefits.

Credit should be given here to some ground-breaking and detailed work undertaken nearly a decade or so ago by Professor David Begg, and published in 2016, looking at the impact of disruption to the road network on the reliability of bus services, which concluded, rather dramatically that ‘traffic congestion is a disease which if left unchecked will destroy the bus sector’.

The work by Professor David Begg concluded ‘everyone in industry, local government and Whitehall knows we have a problem’. It was just that until then it had not been properly quantified, and not carefully enough considered to link cause and effect, and learn the important implications for overall management of the highway system.

He based this dire prediction on the evidence he presented in this research that there is a distinct trend across most urban conurbations in the UK of bus journey times rising by – on average – almost 1% per annum, and over the last 50 years by almost 50% in the more congested urban areas.

Already in London some buses on some routes were running at close to walking speed when Begg undertook his work. The situation has not improved since, with bus speeds — and patronage — declining faster in London than anywhere in the UK. This comes after decades of relative success in relieving bus passengers from traffic congestion through effective bus priority measures, and the congestion charging zone introduced in 2003. Recent events that have interrupted this progress have included more invasive streetworks and other uncontrolled traffic behaviour, but sadly also an ill-considered direct intervention by TfL in the reallocation of substantial amount of road space to cycle lanes, with buses being substantially disadvantaged as a result.

Even before this self-induced harm by TfL, Begg concluded ‘everyone in industry, local government and Whitehall knows we have a problem’. It was just that until then it had not been properly quantified, and not carefully enough considered to link cause and effect, and learn the important implications for overall management of the highway system.

The economic consequences Begg found were serious, with slower speeds leading to increased journey times and greater unreliability, higher costs, higher fares, fewer passengers due to the reduced quality and then further service reductions and the downward cycle continuing. Organisations like TfL know that every 10% decrease in operating speeds leads to an 8% increase in operating costs and if this is passed on to passengers through higher fares, it results in a 5.6% fall in patronage using the DfT fares elasticity of 0.7. The net result is a direct correlation between operating speeds and patronage: a 10% decrease in speeds reduces patronage by at least 10%. The figure could yet be higher because congestion puts pressure on punctuality and reliability which can increase waiting time at bus stops. Passengers place a value two to three times as high on waiting at a bus stop as they do for in-vehicle time.

Conceptually, a version of this situation can be applied to the impacts of highway system failure on other commercial services- including freight and delivery journeys. They too suffer from longer and unpredictable journey performance, and the requirement for more vehicles to perform a given level of service quality, further increasing cost.

One matter worth particular reflection is that by using the terminology for this condition as ‘chronic traffic congestion’, it tends to suggest that the issue is one of inadequate capacity - which governments, national and local, are very likely to assume means we need more roads. But the congestion is not a simple matter of too many vehicles queueing to use a particular section of road or junction, but of which overall allocation of capacity is most efficient in both economic and social terms and achieves the best outcomes for society as a whole.

Despite the arrival of smart technology in many forms — from traffic signal control to digital information and IT systems that allow prioritisation to be provided to different types of vehicles — capacity management of the highway is still mainly in the analogue dark ages compared with air traffic control and railway signalling. That’s why ambulances, fire engines and police cars still need flashing lights and sirens and Grand Prix level drivers to weave their way through the general traffic flow to assert their priority in dealing with emergency calls. The priority that is thus effected is, interestingly, achieved by the recognition and collaboration of other road users. It would be a challenging, but not impossible, task to create a parallel dispensation for buses and commercial vehicles.

Intelligent highway management systems are now available — not just on the trunk road system but for local roads. UTMC does exist in London and some conurbations, but for vast parts of the local road network no one is seemingly in overall charge. The police were once more interested in traffic management and control, and local authorities may have had teams responsible for different sections of their network, and how they were operating. Regrettably, a new generation of management thinking and harnessing supportive technology does not seem to have emerged.

The prize from a suitable approach would be a much higher level of awareness of what is going on across the highway system, a greater understanding of what incidents and circumstances are most damaging and disruptive, proper grasp of the implications for businesses and the economy of disruption, and new types of intervention to tackle problems as they occur and take preventive action based on experience and predictive knowledge.

We must surely conclude that Government-level concern for our highway system seems to be missing an incredibly important dimension. Yes, road condition, including potholes, is crucial, and allowing it to decay seems a really neglectful approach. Yes, too, in some circumstances additional capacity is needed, though perhaps not to the extent that current arguments suggest, in believing that more roads by definition equal more economic growth. But the best possible management of the existing network is surely as important as both of these other highway-related issues, though not anywhere so clearly set out as a policy priority. National Highways do have a system management capability, but not the discretion to prioritise different types of traffic. Some urban areas have smart urban traffic management systems able to offer some priorities at junctions, but not for the general use of the carriageway. Our only real congestion charging scheme, in London, has a crude flat rate for the whole area, and the Government still shies away from any kind of road user charging system to replace the fast declining income from fuel duty.

Meanwhile, when new capacity is proposed and appraised, only assumptions of which traffic needs it, and which will use it in what ways, can be made - without any guarantee that the intended purpose will be achieved, as general traffic has every opportunity to use the system in any way the user wishes.

Against this landscape, exploring proper highway capacity management is surely a great opportunity to find a far better way to achieve the maximum overall benefit of a very expensive resource.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTT magazine, LTT912, 2 April 2025.