Traffic may never flow freely, says DfT
- DfT to spend £1.9bn on improving traffic flow
- Even so, traffic may never flow completely freely
- New benchmarks to monitor and cut congestion
New benchmarks for cutting traffic congestion have been set today, but motorists should not expect traffic to flow freely, even after billions of pounds of investment, says the Department for Transport.
The DfT says it will spend a record £1.9 billion in 2007/8 to improve traffic flow. It wants to cut the average delay on 103 of the UK's slowest motorways and trunk roads to less than 3.5 minutes per 10 miles when compared to 'free-flowing' traffic. Currently peak delays reach almost 25 minutes.
However, even free-flowing traffic doesn't reach the speed limit, according to the DfT, which also says that motorists should never expect to enjoy these relatively good conditions during peak hours.
'There is no case for providing free-flow conditions for all road users at all times,' a footnote to the DfT report reads. 'The cost of doing so would outweigh the benefits. It would be inefficient to build a road wide enough to provide free flow speeds during the peak hours, because for most of the day, most of the lanes would be empty.'
The DfT says it will spend a record £1.9 billion on improving traffic flow in 2007/8, and has also set aside £18 million for the development of pilot road-pricing schemes. Transport secretary Alistair Darling says nationwide road pricing is the only way to manage demand, and hopes that the first pilot schemes will be running within four or five years.
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