Cycling UK Forum

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17423693

David Cameron has called for an "urgent" increase in private investment to improve England's road network.

He argued it was clear there was not enough capacity on the roads in busy areas.

"There's nothing green about a traffic jam - and gridlock holds the economy back," he said.

I quite like the idea of roads being privately funded and paid for. But I have my doubts that this will happen, truly. Will the private sector accept all the costs and risks associated with the building?

Or we will pay for most of it handing the contractor a massive profit?

I suspect the latter.

It's well known that traffic expands to fit the road space anyway....

Toll roads are avoided by many motorists, so that the traffic on adjacent roads will increase, creating 'rat runs' where cycling is fairly safe at present. The M6 Toll road has no congestion, at £5.50 per car!! This is obvious in other countries, too.

There are still some people who believe that building more road capacity will decrease congestion. There are still some people (mainly young children but some sad adults too) who believe in Father Christmas. After 90 years of roadbuilding to relieve jams you would think that they might have learnt. Unfortunately they are like First World War generals who believed that failure on the Western Front was due to not having sent more young men to their deaths. Actually I don't even think that Cameron himself believes this - he is pandering to the marginal-voting nutters out there and to pay off the roadbuilding contributors to Tory party funds. It is even more sad that we have to destroy a lot more of our land to prove to them that it doesn't work. All the academic studies say that road building increases congestion. All the academic studies say that petrol price increases or recession reduces it. There are probably some people who believe that when sitting in a traffic jam on the M25 they are not really in a jam - they cannot be according to their theory. Enough said - what a sad world we live in.

It's all part of the plan. If private funding is brought in for roads then terms and conditions for workers go down (see Home Care, Nursing Homes etc) and the extra profits generated goes into the pockets of shareholders perhaps even taking a trip off shore. I know I'm cynical but is it really anything to do with investment and improving the infrastructure?

Has privatisation helped the railways, the water industry? I remain to be convinced.

I remain to be convinced too.

I doubt I shall ever be convinced.

Water companies have done nothing for the water industry. There are more leaks and more wastage now than there was pre-privatisation. Railways? They are a joke - and you need a degree in high finance to work out their ticket pricing policies.

Typical Tory stuff. Trouble is, when they get voted out - and if you remember, the majority of the country didn't want them in anyway! - the damage will be done. Forget Thatcher, Cameron and the rest of the bunch, are just as bad.

Mr Cameron specifically mentioned the A14.

The DfT held a consultation on what to do about the A14 bottleneck between Huntingdon and Cambridge, which is clogged up with east coast shipping traffic as well as local traffic. In my submission, I suggested they block the road from local traffic, making it more like a motorway, and massively improving conditions for local cycling, including measures to reduce permeability by motor vehicles.

They haven't come back to me to say what a wonderful idea this is. I expect they will do what they always wanted to do: build a brand new road costing squillions of pounds, financed in some creative way, inevitably increasing levels of medium- and long-distance traffic.

snibgo wrote:Mr Cameron specifically mentioned the A14.

The DfT held a consultation on what to do about the A14 bottleneck between Huntingdon and Cambridge, which is clogged up with east coast shipping traffic as well as local traffic. In my submission, I suggested they block the road from local traffic, making it more like a motorway, and massively improving conditions for local cycling, including measures to reduce permeability by motor vehicles.

They haven't come back to me to say what a wonderful idea this is. I expect they will do what they always wanted to do: build a brand new road costing squillions of pounds, financed in some creative way, inevitably increasing levels of medium- and long-distance traffic.

To be fair that section of road was always a temporary measure.

The A14 should run straight over Cambridge (RED), way north of the A428 which should actually skirt the top of the city (YELLOW, possibly joining the A11 for the end bit).
The M11 should actually run all the way up to the A1. (BLUE)


What I thought they needed to do (when I used to commute to the Milton Road Science Park in Cambridge) was to actually finish the A14, stop diverting traffic down the M11 and up the A48 (both of which are currently labelled as the A14 for these stretches) and run it stright east from Peterborough to join up where it actually belongs (i.e. complete the (rough) triangle)


This wouldn't actually be the right solution - The right solution is to restore the rail links and use them for the freight traffic. I've been narrowly missed by a tyre taking it's own route away from it's lorry, seen a number of mostly lorry related crashes on that stretch and called in a lorry fire.

I see what you mean. It struck me that many solutions are available, but relieving congestion by increasing capacity is my least favourite. They are already going to remodel the Girton interchange where the A14, A428 and M11 meet. In this particular case, it is clear that increasing capacity will increase traffic: the 10,000-home Northstowe development is on hold because there is nowhere for the traffic to go.

I wanted to approach the problem from the opposite direction: relieve congestion by reducing traffic.

I imagine a DfT person took one look at my scheme and muttered "Stupid boy" in imitation of Mr Mainwaring before consigning it to the circular filing bin.

EDIT: More accurately perhaps: "the Northstowe development has been delayed". Another planning application has been submitted and they hope to start building next year. The financial interests behind the project are too strong for minor hurdles like lack of roads or water.

thelawnet wrote:It's well known that traffic expands to fit the road space anyway....

Not necessarily. There are plenty of examples all round the UK where a new road or motorway has left the old road running parallel carrying only local traffic and in many cases becoming an excellent cycling road. The old A30, the old A9, the old A8, the old A74 etc.

Traffic should expand with a better road system that is the idea. Cart tracks have their limitations. Outside major cities it is perfectly possible to build a motorway system to cope with existing and planned traffic levels. It just hasn't been tried in many areas. There is not yet a continuous motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh for example, 60 years after the start of the motorway system.

irc wrote:Not necessarily. There are plenty of examples all round the UK where a new road or motorway has left the old road running parallel carrying only local traffic and in many cases becoming an excellent cycling road. The old A30, the old A9, the old A8, the old A74 etc.

But only for a few years, 10 to 20 at the most.
Look at the A38 between Bristol and Gloucester. Dead quiet when the parallel M5 was built. Not so now. Similarly the old coastal road between Havant and Chichester (was A27) now bypassed by a huge dual carraigeway. It too was quiet for the first 10 years or so but no longer.
Traffic on both these roads might or might not be "local" but there's a heck of a lot more of it now.

Mick F wrote:I remain to be convinced too.

I doubt I shall ever be convinced.

Water companies have done nothing for the water industry. There are more leaks and more wastage now than there was pre-privatisation. Railways? They are a joke - and you need a degree in high finance to work out their ticket pricing policies.

Typical Tory stuff. Trouble is, when they get voted out - and if you remember, the majority of the country didn't want them in anyway! - the damage will be done. Forget Thatcher, Cameron and the rest of the bunch, are just as bad.

My dear old Dad would be spinning in his grave had he not been cremated. He would be telling me that people died to win greater freedom for the working man and it's all going back again; the wealthy are becoming more so whilst those at the bottom are getting left with less. The older I get the more I turn into my Dad. He didn't trust politicians one iota, Tories even less - I'm geting that way.....

I live down the road from what ought to have been the flag ship model for this 'solution', the M6Toll.

Yes, it has taken a little traffic off the M6 through Birmingham but so little as makes no difference - it basically added another three lanes in each direction, so one has to ask why, if the M6Toll is so great, are they now looking at turning the hard shoulders into additional lanes on the M6?

The new dual carriageway Weeford-Hints A5 (which runs parallel to the M6Toll) managed to take, maybe 99% of the traffic off the old A5, so why didn't the M6Toll do the same....could the difference be the £5 charge per one way use?
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My fear is that if we get toll roads then the lesser roads around them, as preferred by cyclists, will be deliberately left to degrade so that more traffic is forced onto the tolls so that they can try to make back so of the monstrous investment in them. So, we as cyclists are left with crapper roads with more traffic on them.

Si wrote:I live down the road from what ought to have been the flag ship model for this 'solution', the M6Toll.

Yes, it has taken a little traffic off the M6 through Birmingham but so little as makes no difference - it basically added another three lanes in each direction, so one has to ask why, if the M6Toll is so great, are they now looking at turning the hard shoulders into additional lanes on the M6?

The answer is the word "toll". I used the M6 toll a couple of years ago. The traffic on it could have fitted comfortably in one lane. When we pay for the roads through general taxation why should we have to pay again to use them?

irc wrote:

Si wrote:I live down the road from what ought to have been the flag ship model for this 'solution', the M6Toll.

Yes, it has taken a little traffic off the M6 through Birmingham but so little as makes no difference - it basically added another three lanes in each direction, so one has to ask why, if the M6Toll is so great, are they now looking at turning the hard shoulders into additional lanes on the M6?

The answer is the word "toll". I used the M6 toll a couple of years ago. The traffic on it could have fitted comfortably in one lane. When we pay for the roads through general taxation why should we have to pay again to use them?

Because we didn't pay for that one - or did we? I don' know

[XAP]Bob wrote:

irc wrote:

Si wrote:I live down the road from what ought to have been the flag ship model for this 'solution', the M6Toll.

Yes, it has taken a little traffic off the M6 through Birmingham but so little as makes no difference - it basically added another three lanes in each direction, so one has to ask why, if the M6Toll is so great, are they now looking at turning the hard shoulders into additional lanes on the M6?

The answer is the word "toll". I used the M6 toll a couple of years ago. The traffic on it could have fitted comfortably in one lane. When we pay for the roads through general taxation why should we have to pay again to use them?

Because we didn't pay for that one - or did we? I don' know

We didn't pay for it. My point is though that if roads are needed they should be publicly built and available to everyone at no additional costs. Exceptions being congested city centers where (as there isn't the space for new roads) some method of rationing road space is needed whether it is tolls, congestion charges, or limiting parking.