In a climate crisis thinking about roads

On Wednesday 20 July 2022 I travelled to an event to discuss roads and future investment in them. I was one of the invited speakers. Luckily I was late preparing my slides and only finished the day before. The news coverage for the preceding 48 hours more or less did the job of my presentation for me, as you’ll see.

Just Stop Oil protestors forcing sections of the M25 to close on the day. Record breaking temperatures the day before. The stage was set for my presentation.

It can be challenging to know your audience but my job was to situate road transport and future investment in the context of climate change. I took an early straw poll in the room – how many answered ‘yes’ to the title question? Most if not all in the room. Phew. But am I now the mad guy trying to remind people the house is on fire, or will I be well-received with open, concerned minds? That I can’t share here. But let’s press on with what I had to say.

The first of my scene-setting slides – Thanksgiving in LA – there is something perversely beautiful about the image but it cannot possibly be a poster child of success, can it? One is bound to ask: If this is the answer, what was the question? For me it is always a stark reminder of a point I made in my inaugural lecture as a young professor 20 years ago: transport does not merely serve society (as the transport sector has often liked to assumed), it shapes society, as in turn society shapes transport. Travel is a derived demand – and we need now more than ever to lift our gaze to look beyond only transport solutions to transport problems.

This is my village – dear God. Can we not move on from tethering our horses? But I can rest assured that this will – eventually - be resolved because the UK’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan, published a year ago, promised world class walking and cycling networks by 2040. But as we will see, promises are not enough to meet the Government’s legal obligation.

Now to a final scene-setting slide. I’m extremely proud to be a member of the Wales Roads Review Panel. It’s worth reading out the statement on the Review’s website about why it is being done: “In accordance with the Wales Transport Strategy we want to reduce Wales’s carbon footprint to protect people and wildlife from the climate emergency. To do this we need to reduce the number of journeys taken by private cars and increase the number of people walking, cycling and using public transport”. Can this really be that controversial in the times we are living in? The Review is a chance for a clear-headed and thorough reflection on transport investment plans that affect 3 million people.

A bit also about the messenger for this presentation: I am a car driving, civil engineering graduate; during my thin-sandwich course at university I spent six months with Balfour Beatty as a setting out engineer helping construct the Frome bypass in Somerset, and six months with Arup in the design office in a team drawing up plans for by-passes in Wales. Careers can be strange journeys, don’t you think?

Ah, my apologies but we must interrupt this presentation for The News – in fact news from only the last 48 hours. In passing I should point out that the colour scheme of my slides is not BBC branding but rather a signal of Code Red for Humanity – and also the colour depicting 40C+ in the weather forecast.

Any Daily Mail or Express readers in the audience? I’ll come back to that. But this was yesterday morning’s weather forecast for the day. In line with what others have said - including the fantastic Giulio Mattioli - yesterday may have been one the coolest heatwaves we’ll experience in the rest of our lives.

Alarmingly the forecast on this slide bore close resemblance to a recent Met Office mock-up of a weather forecast set in 2050. Oh dear, tick-tock. How many of you travelled into work yesterday? If you did, maybe you saw the smoke and flames on your way, or way back as parts of the country were on fire? “Only travel if absolutely necessary” – sounds like a pandemic, doesn't it? At least some of us had the choice to work from home.

Plainly our transport system, like the human body, works within certain boundaries. Go beyond those boundaries and things start to break down. Both aren’t necessarily ready for increasing extremes of weather. The Secretary of State for Transport admitted yesterday that our transport network cannot cope with extreme heat. As these different articles highlight – “UK infrastructure isn’t built for soaring temperatures”.

But don’t worry, the UK has said it will have a net zero economy by 2050 and this is written into legislation. What could go wrong? It should be noted that the UK is only responsible for 1% of global emissions (in terms of territorial emissions) – so the future is not only in our Government’s hands. However, our Government has committed – in legislation – to take a global leadership position which it must uphold.

However, on Monday this week, the High Court found the Government’s Net Zero Strategy wanting. It ordered the Government to “prepare a report explaining how the policies outlined in the net zero strategy would contribute towards emissions reductions, and to present it to parliament by April 2023”. Much as I love the Judas Priest track ‘Breaking the Law’, this is not (I think) acceptable for our Government (Hmmmmm….). Legally, we need to pull our socks up. And perhaps this will mean taking a hard look at road investment (as Wales is already doing).

Now it’s unlikely Daily Mail and Express readers will be aware of such law breaking.?Naturally some media mogul puppeteers can still be found encouraging voters not to look up. I mean, what was the Secretary of State going on about referring to our infrastructure not being up to it? You’re just a bunch of snowflakes. And perhaps Jacob Rees-Mogg would be proud of the focus from the Express on lazy homeworkers at the beach yesterday (I didn’t see anyone else I knew there by the way!). What a bind for vote-chasing politicians.

The insidious information war rages on. Which side of history do you want to be though? Ignorantly lapping up mainstream media or listening to the Secretary General of the United Nations this week? I suppose some may have decided he has gone all leftie-woke and can be ignored but, come on, are you really going to ignore him? This is what he had to say on Monday - “humanity faces ‘collective suicide’ over climate crisis”, indeed “collective action or collective suicide – it is in our hands”. This is not a game or a dress rehearsal. I hear what he says and it alarms the hell out of me.

Now for my Greta moment. It’s much cooler today isn’t it? Maybe the last two days was just a dream or a blip? Anyway, let’s turn our attention back now to immediate priorities shall we? Like leading a strong and stable government or addressing a catalogue of economic and social concerns. But wait! This emergency is not going away – and having just over 1% of cars on our roads today in the UK being battery-electric isn’t going to cut it alone.

In case you were in any doubt, let’s just underline the gravity of our situation. I’d like to focus on this quote, again from the Secretary General of the UN: “To keep the 1.5 degree limit agreed in Paris within reach, we need to cut global emissions by 45 percent this decade”. It’s a powerful quote but let's unpack it.

What is our benchmark for cutting global emissions? It is cutting emissions by 45% below 2010 levels. OK, that's a bit clearer. So, how far towards the 45% cut have we got so far, bearing in mind the end of the decade is only 7-8 years away? Oh sorry, haven't you heard, global emissions have not yet peaked. I'll say that again, GLOBAL EMISSIONS HAVEN'T YET PEAKED AND YET WE HAVE TO REDUCE THEM BY 45% BELOW THE LEVEL 12 YEARS AGO IN 7-8 YEARS. So what happens if we don't? Well we head north of 1.5C temperature increase (above pre-industrial times). At this rate, considerably farther north. And where are we already? According to the IPCC, "emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900". So what does going beyond 1.5C for society really mean, what does that look like? Well, here's an 'in a nutshell' explanation: "at 2 degrees, we start getting into scenarios that make most dystopian horror movies look like children's colouring books".

I'll ask you again, does it feel like we are in a crisis?

So, back to the UK, where are we now? We have world-leading promises and legislation. And that is not to be sniffed at. However, that is not enough, as the High Court has ruled. The Government "needs to include real-world policies that ensure it succeeds, Anything less is a breach of its legal duties and amounts to greenwashing and climate delay". Meanwhile we are in the midst of a Conservative Party leadership contest to pick the next Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak has said progress on pursuing Net Zero shouldn't be 'too hard and too fast'. Liz Truss has said it shouldn't harm people and business. Candidates did, nevertheless, confirm - reluctantly though it may seem - their commitment to Net Zero.

So, we can say that the next Prime Minister is not set to try and roll-back the Net Zero legislations. This means they will need to more tangibly determine what to do, when the public coffers have been significantly emptied by the response to the pandemic.

Only three weeks ago, in an effective endorsement of the High Court ruling, the UK's Committee on Climate Change reported on the Government's progress with decarbonisation of the UK economy. Notwithstanding some bright spots of achievement, such as the transition of electrification of the car fleet, it found that "tangible progress is lagging the policy ambition". While it pointed to the Government's acknowledgement of the need to limit traffic growth, it also stated that "it has not set a specific ambition or used all its available levers".

One might ask, what's the hold up here? Scotland has set a specific target of not only limiting traffic growth but of achieving a 20% reduction in total car kms by 2030 compared to pre-pandemic levels. Wales has set a target of a 10% reduction in car kms per person by 2030. London has in its sights a 27% reduction in traffic by 2030. New Zealand is intent on a 20% reduction in total kms by 2035. Admittedly all these examples align with the political colour of my slide deck but surely this must transcend party-political differences?

In better news, we should now be able to think and act differently about the place of roads and road traffic in the economic and social activity of society in the UK.

An ITF report last year considered transitions in travel behaviour before, but also disrupted by, the pandemic. It also addressed the need for a change in how we approach strategic transport planning, As one of its co-authors, I produced graphs like this for several countries - countries who perhaps will also find themselves considering road traffic reduction, or already are. While the matter of correlation or causation may be up for debate, the graphs all show a weakening link between economic activity and traffic - i.e. the traffic intensity of the economy is lessening. This has been happening concurrently with the penetration of widespread internet access in the countries concerned.

It's worth noting that internet access here is just a binary notion of having it or not having it. Yet in reality the quality of access continues to change over time. I can recall having a 56k modem. I had internet access. This is a world away from the 100Mbps I have today. Digital connectivity and accessibility are not synonymous. Digital connectivity is like there being a car and a road to drive upon. In principle that gets you from A to B. Digital accessibility is equivalent to being able to afford the car, knowing how to drive it, and having a destination worth visiting in terms of the economic or social activity to be engaged in.

This brings me to what is proving to be a very popular model depicting the world we live in - one we call the Triple Access System. It highlights a system of systems in which the access needed or desired for economic and social activity is fulfilled in three inter-connected ways: the transport system allows us to gain access through physical (motorised) mobility; the land use system allows us to gain access through spatial proximity (and active travel); and the telecommunications system allows us to gain access through digital connectivity.

Thank goodness we have this system. The pandemic reminded us of how important it is for the resilience of the functioning of society - coupled with the human capacity to adapt to changed circumstances. Imagine for a moment it had been 1989 when the Web was invented and we had a pandemic - COVID-89 instead of COVID-19, how would our economy have coped?

I'm a member of the UK Department for Transport's Joint Analysis Development Panel that examines modelling, forecasting, appraisal and evaluation, and someone who has scrutinised the history of road traffic forecasting with Greg Marsden . I'm therefore well aware that population has been and is seen to be a major input to forecasting and determinant of future demand. However, I would suggest it is a determinant of demand for access, not (necessarily) car travel.

The absolute demand for access will change over time - and likely grow. But the access mode-split (including the mode of ICTs - information and communication technologies) in absolute and relative terms changes and can be changed. When considering roads and car use, the prospect of road traffic reduction is not about reducing the provision of access to support society. It is about redistributing access provision and fulfilment. This also means redistributing investment.

I've always been fascinated by the talk of 'revolution' in the transport sector when it comes to technology. A recent quote was 'we will see more change in transport in the next 10 years than in the last 100'. I'm not seeing it, even if there are significant evolutionary developments such as the move to electric vehicles. Where I think use of the term 'revolution' is more appropriate is when it comes to digital connectivity and accessibility. This is a favourite quote for me from 22 years ago. Indeed the effects of the Internet and its use on transport have been profound but, no, we didn't really monitor (or at least try to understand them) closely. When we are thinking about the future of access, don't underestimate the scope for further changes in digital accessibility in the next 20 years.

So, now to a rethink to finish up the presentation.

Firstly, in terms of road transport investment, we would do well to focus our attention on maintaining our existing infrastructure. We already have an extensive road network in the UK. More than an ample contribution to meeting access needs in modern society in the face of a climate emergency. The report ARP3 is a sobering read. National Highways is expected to assess the risks posed by climate change to the roads and associated structures it is responsible for. The report sets out an assessment of risk and adaptation requirements to prepare for a global temperature rise not of 1.5C but of between 2C and 4C. Dystopian! It also notes that the CCC considers we are on course for being somewhere between these two.

Maintaining the road network we already have is very worthwhile and may be a tall order. And maintaining our roads needs to consider all roads, not just strategic roads.

Here is my closing proposition - a strategy on a page. We need to step back from our demand-led supply mentality in strategic planning and investment. This is a supply-led demand strategy - it's an application of Decide and Provide not Predict and Provide and is centred upon triple-access. For me, this is the context for future road investment considerations.

And before you look past this presentation, thinking you can now relax and enjoy the rest of the event with the madcap presenter behind you, I leave you with this cartoon published in The Times this week. As a devout metalhead I first mistook it for an album cover for a new band I hadn't come across. Please don't sit too comfortably. This. Isn't. Going. Away.

Thank you for reading this far, if you have. I'd love to hear your own views.