Never waste a crisis: rethinking what we want our roads to do for us

By Professor Glenn Lyons, Rees Jeffreys Road Fund Trustee

So much has changed since 1950 when William Rees Jeffreys – a keen cyclist and successful engineer - founded the Road Fund in his name (a charity that survives to this day) eight years before the first stretch of UK motorway opened – a network now covering 2,300 miles.

To mark its 70th anniversary, the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund joined forces with PTRC to host the third in a series of Fireside Chats addressing the implications of COVID-19 for transport.

2020 marks the year that the Government announced its second ￡27bn 5-year Road Investment Strategy as well as the framework for its Transport Decarbonisation Plan. With the shock of a global pandemic added to the mix, a legal challenge mounted against the Road Investment Strategy, and the lockdown dropping road traffic back to 1950s levels, it seems a good moment to pose the question “What have the roads ever done for us, and what would we like them to do from now on?”.

This article provides the written account of the event which took place on 16 July 2020. The full recording of the 90-minute panel discussion, attended by over 100 people, is available to watch on YouTube. Included also at the end of the article is a selection of the comments from the audience during the live event.

The Panel

The Panel was chaired by Steve Gooding – RJRF Trustee, Director of the RAC Foundation and Vice President of CILT. Panel members were as follows:

• Natalie Chapman - Head of Urban Policy, Freight Transport Association
• Ginny Clarke – Trustee, Rees Jeffreys Road Fund and Trustee, CIHT
• Sujith Kollamthodi - Practice Director, Ricardo
• Rachel Skinner - UK Head of Transport, WSP and ICE Vice President
• Lynn Sloman – Director, Transport for Quality of Life

Jennie Martin in the event’s audience remarked, “congratulations to the organisers on achieving the most representative transport panel I have ever seen!”

Chair’s Introduction

Steve set the scene for what proved to be a lively session. While John Cleese in the Life of Brian was the inspiration for What have the roads ever done for us?, he invited us to cast aside that image from our minds and instead “imagine a keen cyclist, a lively young person, a live wire if you might, someone with a thirst for getting out and about who became so frustrated at the state of the roads on which they were travelling that they embarked upon a life's mission to do something about it”. That person was William Rees Jeffreys who went from being Honorary Secretary to the Cycling Touring Club in 1900 to become a widely recognised expert - perhaps globally the predominant expert - in the field of road design, construction and engineering. For Rees Jeffreys, the development of well-engineered roads was the key for a better quality of life for everyone.

Towards the end of his life as a successful businessman and connoisseur of the arts, he established a charitable fund to take forward his work in perpetuity after he'd gone - a fund that exists to this day. The Rees Jeffreys Road Fund (established in 1950) provides bursaries for engineering qualifications, gives grants for research, and funds projects relating to the improvement of roads and importantly to roadside facilities. “As trustees of his fund today, I and my fellow trustees are acutely conscious of the fact that Rees Jeffreys saw roads not just as a way of fuelling an economy but as giving people more opportunity to get out and about - to leave the towns and cities and enjoy the countryside” said Steve.

The lockdown brought about by the coronavirus took road traffic levels back to those that Rees Jeffreys himself would have recognised in the 1950s. For what may have turned out now to be an all too brief moment, we actually had the luxury of contemplating a reset to create a new normal – “maybe with traffic already rapidly returning, that moment has slipped past us. Let's hope not” he remarked. The aim of the event was not so much to discuss how we got to where we are but to consider where we could or should be going from here: what would we like our roads to do for us in future?

Steve’s scene setting concluded with a brief then-and-now comparison. 1950 was a world away from 2020. The UK population in 1950 was around 50 million compared to 68 million today and rising. The average cost of a new car in 1950 was in the region of one-third the cost of an average house. The number of licensed vehicles in Great Britain was around 4 million in 1950; today it's approaching 10 times that number with over 30 million cars. The technology of 2020 is also a very long way from anything that might have been applied or even perhaps imagined in 1950. “But our ambitions to promote a thriving economy and a happy, healthy lifestyle are still with us, so how on earth should we do it - what role should the roads play?”

The Panel set out their views

A new outlook on capacity

Lynn began a round of opening remarks from the panel. She had four things to say about enabling our roads to make a positive contribution to our quality of life: (i) stop building more of them, notably because road building increases carbon emissions while “we're going to need to cut total emissions from the strategic road network over the next decade by probably about 40 percent…so my number one priority is let's stop making things worse, let's stop building more roads”; (ii) meet the 21st century challenge of obesity and sedentary lifestyles and all of the ill health that follows, and build upon the reallocation of roadspace to (temporary) cycle lanes and wider pavements seen as a result of the pandemic – “I think we should be looking at Danish or Dutch-style cycle super highways on or alongside every A and B road in the country, radiating 15 miles from every settlement so that people can safely use an electric bike to get to work”; (iii) allocate capacity to enable a zero carbon high-quality public transport network on our roads to support the behaviour change needed to help meet the Paris Climate Agreement (she later stressed that it was not a lack of roads that was causing disconnected communities); and (iv) give Highways England the task of developing thousands of remote working hubs (super-fast broadband enabled) “so that a few days a week office workers can walk or cycle a short distance to their local hub rather than spending an hour sitting on the motorway just to get to the office… it would contribute immeasurably to a 21st century vision of a connected, convivial community”.

Diverse skills for a diversity of needs from our roads

Ginny wanted to focus upon Rees Jeffreys’ ambition for what roads could do for people – the connectivity for us to live our lives. There’s a need to be ambitious in terms of how we engineer the roads and take advantage of the ever-emerging technological innovations. This, she said, was not just about providing us with convenience in using either public transport or our own mode of transport but about helping remove the negatives of poor air quality, noise and congestion to make better connectivity a reality for us all. To deliver all of this we've got to train people to make sure that all those benefits are delivered, with training needing to span many areas including technology, environmental science, and behavioural insights. Ginny stressed the importance of roads catering for a range of modes and for society’s diverse needs across the age range – “let's try and make sure this is a future for every one of us rather than just some of us”.

Fulfilment of our need for goods in a changing world

From a focus on people movement to a focus upon goods movement, Natalie pointed to a reality that 90% of goods in the UK are moved by road. Yet while recognising the importance of roads for people and placemaking, logistics is often more of an after thought in debate and forward planning. “But we can't of course have that café culture unless we've got the coffee beans so we need to consider how freight is brought holistically into everything we're doing when we're talking about roads”. While roadspace during the pandemic has been prioritised for walking and cycling, and amid concerns that car traffic will return along with congestion, there is a need to cater for kerbside deliveries of goods in order to avoid more lorry movements on our roads. Natalie emphasised the need to support long-haul movements with overnight lorry parking – and of a much better quality if drivers, male and female, are to be attracted into and retained by the industry. “Freight is something that I think we all too often take for granted” she said, offering the illustration of the panic buying of toilet rolls as the pandemic took hold, “we don't move stuff for the sake of it, we move it because someone somewhere ordered it; and when we take the rubbish and recycling away it's because someone somewhere created it so as our population grows so does our demand for goods”. There is a need to forward plan for delivery needs and fulfilment.

The impacts of roads

Sujith referred to insights into how road schemes can improve accessibility for an area through reducing travel times and costs which in turn attract businesses to operate there and generates employment growth. He suggested also that “increasing accessibility can also lead to increases in local productivity”. Meanwhile there are negative impacts of roads, or road use, to consider. His company is involved in air quality monitoring and he pointed to the significant contribution of road transport in producing nitrogen dioxide emissions and particulate emissions - pollution very heavily implicated in respiratory illnesses and heart disease (with consequent economic implications). In short, not only is there a need for road transport to decarbonise but also a need to reduce its harmful health effects. Sujith referred to Cabinet Office figures suggesting that when accounting for air quality impacts, greenhouse gas emissions and noise, these equate to many billions of pounds of cost, without further consideration of congestion, road traffic accidents and physical inactivity. Echoing Lynn, he wants to see an emphasis on shifting the modal mix using our roads as well as a focus on “speeding up the transition to new technologies” to decarbonise road transport.

A note of optimism

Rachel began by noting the positives that roads have provided through the ages in terms of connecting people and places and enabling trade and movement of goods. Looking back at 6000 years of having roads in some shape or form, it is only in the last 50 years that private cars have become a dominant feature. “So it does feel like there's a massive opportunity right now to just have a bit of a reset and a rethink and recognize that these roads are far from perfect” she suggested. Achieving improvements ahead is partly about recognising the ‘competition’ from digital in the provision of connectivity. Rachel sees three important issues looking ahead: (i) making roads work for everyone so that (as has happened in the past) some people and communities are not left behind; (ii) the imperative of net zero transport or “maybe even genuinely zero carbon roads” as transport looks set to be accountable for a growing share of emissions as the world grapples with reducing them – and part of this is a combination of behaviour change and change in the vehicle stock using our roads; and (iii) making better use of the roads we already have in terms of who and what uses them at different times of the day and night. She suggested that we may already know what we want from roads and what we don’t want, “and we certainly don't need to stifle mobility in order to achieve something much better than we've already got”.

The wider discussion gets underway

With starting positions set out, Steve moved into further examination of some of the issues raised.

Who’s going to pay for all this?

Steve was keen to hear where the money was going to come from to deliver some of the technology-enabled changes the panel had been speaking about – particularly in relation to decarbonising road transport. Natalie explained that while it was clearer that for smaller vehicles, going battery-electric was the answer, it remains less clear for heavier vehicles (echoed later by Sujith as a concern). She suggested that while businesses are willing to invest, they really need to know that they will be backing the right technology. “We really urgently need to make that decision on what the technology is that we need to back” she says (Sujith later pointed out the need also to consider UK compatibility with international developments). As for who pays, it comes down to the business case – in a logistics industry that is operating with 1-2% margins. Meanwhile Government will be emerging from the current crisis with a very keen eye on getting returns from further investments. Larger players in the industry, with clarity over what the right technology is to back will lead the way where smaller players will then follow. Natalie pointed to the risks of inequity in the transition to cleaner transport, giving the example of London’s Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Task Force where early concern was raised about richer people in society becoming the beneficiaries of buying electric cars with the infrastructure funded by all taxpayers. Meanwhile Sujith later countered that for decarbonising freight, this would necessarily call for Government investment in pump-priming change but that tackling freight would benefit us all. With reference to a call, ultimately, on taxpayers to pay for change, Steve hoped there would be plenty of people in work this time next year.

Looking elsewhere for inspiration

Steve wondered if there were insights from elsewhere in the world that we could draw upon to progress the sorts of changes being called for. Sujith noted firstly that the problems of road transport are similar all over the world. Like Lynn, he pointed to Denmark from his personal experience and love of the cycling infrastructure; and the Netherlands too stood out in terms of how following a spate of child road deaths and public outcry, a trajectory of investing in cycling infrastructure was followed (though Tom van Vuren in the audience cautioned that the Netherlands was not a nirvana, having car ownership per 1000 population that was higher than the UK).

Do bus services need to be commercial?

Steve wanted to know whether it was possible to have attractive public transport on roads that was also commercially viable. Lynn was quick to challenge this. “I don't think we should think about our public transport network as something which is defined by whether or not it's commercial”. She is clear that “if we're going to act on our obligation to tackle climate change, we've got to recognise a basic right for people to be able to get around without having to own and drive a car and what follows from that is that we have to have if you like universal basic provision of a high quality public transport network”. Then comes the question of how to fund a non-commercial undertaking. Lynn sees the key being a need to devolve fundraising powers to a local level. It is at this level where people and businesses can more tangibly see the benefits from being asked to pay. She pointed to the public transport payroll levy in France that has been “responsible for the renaissance of trams in French cities over the last couple of decades and increasingly is the reason why French cities are moving to free public transport which is what Dunkirk's now been doing for a year and a half; Calais began at the beginning of this year. And they can do that because employers in those towns and cities recognize that it's in their interest to have a good public transport service so that their employees can get to work and so they can attract people from a wider area and so they put money into the public transport service”.

Lynn also considered capture of land value uplift from transport investment to be important as a means of funding public transport, comparing Germany and the Netherlands where 70-75% of uplift is captured to the UK where the figure is nearer 20%. When people compare fantastic public transport services elsewhere in Europe with what we have in the UK, they don’t necessarily consider how those services have come about in funding terms. “Giving more powers to local authorities to raise funding for excellent services would actually unlock an awful lot and would enable us to do a lot more than we are at the moment” Lynn concluded.

What do experts know?

Peter Molyneux in the audience was concerned that as (self-appointed) experts we may be at risk of suggesting solutions without really understanding what people want from our transport system. Steve invited Rachel to respond and she was very clear: it’s an engagement process in which expert view and public opinion both matter – “a mix of what people want and perceive they need versus the opportunity to provide something which actually in some cases might be even better than some of the thoughts they might have had to begin with”. Rachel stressed the importance of tailoring solutions to the places and communities concerned – something Steve suggested linked back to Lynn’s comments above about devolved responsibility. She also felt that the way potential measures are judged in terms of costs and benefits may be rather too narrow and by looking with a wider field of view we might encourage change for the better. What matters is setting a clear direction of travel in terms of the overall outcomes we are seeking.

Attracting the skills we need into the sector and getting the best from them

Steve was keen to understand more about the skills we would need to bring about change and how to attract those skills into the sector. Ginny felt that a key issue was perhaps not so much the lack of the skills needed but the joining up of skillsets we have. She suggested that across different institutions and disciplinary backgrounds “the one real benefit we've all found is that actually if we pull our skills together we are much better at finding the solutions”. “Let’s bring in the psychologists and the socialists” she added, hastily correcting herself as meaning the social sciences (to the amusement of the panel (and audience)). A Freudian slip perhaps?!

As well as making the most of the skills that exist, Ginny was also conscious of the need to get (new) people interested enough to want to be involved in the sector: “if Greta Thunberg has done one thing she has energized actually the belief that everybody can have a say about this, whether they're young, whether they're middle-aged, whether they're old… everybody has a right to have a view on this so how do we make sure that views are translated into skill training that are then translated into how you plan, how you design, how you execute, and actually how you operate transport?” She sees the need to attract diverse talent, nurture and develop that talent, and put it to use. The skills mix also involves helping bridge between local and national transport perspectives when it comes to highways.

Lynn followed up, remarking that “if what we want to do is to attract the youngest and most able and most imaginative and most ambitious young people to come into the world of transport planning and civil engineering, the way to inspire those young people to do that is absolutely by the professional institutions saying we have the biggest challenge of our lifetimes - here transport is the sector of the economy which is now the biggest carbon emitter somehow we have to get those emissions down dramatically in the next 10 years this is not a challenge for 2050 it's a challenge for 2030 and we need the best brains in the country to help us to do that”.

Road Reallocation Strategy

A question raised in the audience was whether temporary roadspace reallocations in response to social distancing and changed behaviours during lockdown could lead to ill-thought-out schemes being implemented to the subsequent detriment of changing attitudes and behaviours. Another audience suggestion was that perhaps the next Road Investment Strategy could be called the Road Reallocation Strategy. Steve was keen to get some reactions from the panel to the future prospect for roadspace reallocation.

Natalie recognised that some mistakes were being made in terms of (temporary) roadspace reallocations as circumstances change as we respond to the pandemic and social distancing. However, she pointed out that time criticality meant that the normal opportunity for more fully thought out planning was not available. As a result, it is important that “there is really good guidance for local authorities” she said. She expressed some disappointment that the first iteration of such guidance had little to say on goods deliveries, while “the reality is that most local authorities don't have freight experts in their transport planning teams”. The Freight Transport Association has, as a result, produced a note of its own to local authorities to try and emphasise the need to keep deliveries in mind to avoid complications due to roadspace reallocation and is encouraging ongoing dialogue.

Steve assumed that by virtue of rapid changes being necessary but those changes potentially being temporary, it was possible to rapidly learn from experiences and make changes – in short, a flexible approach. Sujith recognised this potential but also aired caution about damaging public trust where rapidly implemented measures are problematic. He pointed to an example where public and political pressure had been brought to bear on a roadspace reallocation that had then been ‘shut down’ within a few days.

Sujith went on to consider roadspace reallocation going further forwards – affecting inter-urban journeys as well as local journeys. He was keen to see how longer journeys by bike could be encouraged, noting in passing the role of the e-bike (mentioned earlier by Lynn) and contrasting currently low penetration in the UK with much higher penetration in mainland Europe where he understood around a quarter of people already own or are considering acquiring an e-bike. He also advocated consideration being given to how goods deliveries can be made in different ways, with a role for cargo bikes.

Rachel came back on the matter of hasty and problematic roadspace reallocations and wanted to challenge the implication that this was the norm as opposed to the exception. “I think it's fair to say that while there are some kind of ‘oops’ moments out there because I suspect things were rushed in without any real analysis or thought (it was just a case of right where can we put stuff), the vast majority of the schemes are getting really positive feedback and surprisingly positive feedback in some cases”. She pointed too to the rapidly emerging guidance to support effective roadspace reallocation. “There's a very steep learning curve being climbed here but it does feel like it's a pretty giant step in a direction that I suspect we didn't think we would otherwise be taking” she concluded.

Is the future about big infrastructure?

Steve offered the provocation that perhaps the civil engineers out there were really most interested in big infrastructure projects marking future change. Rachel acknowledged that the past 50 years has been characterised by infrastructure development but pointed out that “actually there are far more people who are genuinely engaged at a more local level… who actually get just as much satisfaction out of fixing a roundabout or sorting out a cycle way or putting in a park and ride”. She sees a place for both and recognises, in relation to the earlier skills issue, that part of the future agenda is ensuring new talent has the right impression of engineering such that it is seen as more than only the creation of big infrastructure.

Highways England driving flexible working

Steve invited Lynn to say some more about her suggestion at the start for Highways England spearheading the provision of thousands of remote working hubs. Lynn feels that a core objective for Highways England needs to become a need to reduce carbon emissions from the strategic road network by about 40-50% by 2030. If that objective were in place, she suggests the Highways England Board would likely want to consider: (i) an Eco Levy on the strategic road network; (ii) much better public transport; and (iii) enabling people to connect with each other and to do everything they need to do in their daily lives without even getting onto the strategic road network. She doesn’t feel that motorway service stations are the best places for the proposed working hubs given their lack of proximity to where most people live. “So Highways England might have to get a bit creative and they might have to start to think about buying up closed banks in town centres and suburban town centres which could be turned, without the need for planning permission, into remote working hubs so that people who live close to them could just pop in or cycle for five minutes to get to them instead of having to drive on their local road network and the strategic road network to get to their job”. Lynn imagined others might then follow Highways England’s lead.

Steve pointed to Ginny’s and his own significant insight into the Road Investment Strategy concept, recalling that “Highways England was absolutely told you are allowed to spend money off your own network in order to achieve the right outcomes on that network” - though he conceded that Lynn’s idea might not have been quite what was in mind there back in 2015! Ginny agreed, recognising that a system (whether the road network or the Underground) cannot operate properly if it is overrun with demand. Whether or not it would be delivered by Highways England or other (multiple) bodies, she rather liked Lynn’s suggestion, reflecting upon her own experience of doing things differently during lockdown. She was clear that change going forward “can't be exactly the same as the last 50 years - the next 10 years has to be radically different if we're going to find some solutions”.

Road user charging – inescapable?

What examination of the future of roads could avoid mention of road user charging? Steve asked whether road user charging’s time has now come. For Lynn, she totally agrees that it has to be part of the mix and suggests the Eco Levy offers a positive framing in terms of public acceptability. She offered a reminder that when (at a city level) road user charging has been introduced, people tend to rather like it because it offers better use of a limited resource. Sujith believes road user charging is inevitable as we move into an increasingly electrified fleet of vehicles using the road network, leaving a gaping hole for the Treasury in terms of fuel tax revenue. Given the possibility of a ban on sales of new carbon-emitting vehicles being moved further forward from 2040 to 2035 or even 2030, “we need to be thinking about this very soon”. Natalie too is in agreement: “the government is going to be looking at where its tax revenue is going to be coming from in the future”. However, she is reminded of how controversial pricing has been in the past when considered, “so we need to have a grown-up discussion about what we want”. Pricing was also seen as having a role in influencing the timing of use of the road network, something of particular significance for goods deliveries. Rachel agreed with the rest of the panel – road pricing is inescapable. As an electric vehicle owner, she is mindful of her mobility now being significantly cheaper but that this may not be fair for everyone else. Equity is an important matter to address with road user charging and Rachel sees lots of scope for flexible and effective system design.

Responding to the climate crisis

On the same day as this event, Greta Thunberg and colleagues published an open letter sent to all EU leaders and heads of state entitled “Face the Climate Emergency”. Within the letter is says “Net zero emissions by 2050 for the EU – as well as for other financially fortunate parts of the world – equals surrender. This target is based on a carbon budget that only gives a 50% percent chance of limiting the global heating below 1.5°C. That is just a statistical flip of a coin which doesn’t even include some of the key factors, such as the global aspect of equity, most tipping points and feedback loops, as well as already built in additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution. So in reality it is much less than a 50% chance.” In moving to draw the event to a close, Steve asked for a show of hands from the panel for who agreed that only setting a net zero carbon target for 2050 was aiming to fail. There was no doubt in their response:

Steve’s takeaway from the event was as follows. “I think our roads, I think William Rees Jeffreys would agree with this, need to be connected and convivial places. I think that, as people professionally involved in planning, managing and occasionally building our roads, we need to be ambitious but also optimistic. This is a moment of great challenge and endless opportunity, and the thing about a great challenge and the thing about a crisis is we don't want to waste it. We need to be more joined up across the professions”.

Extracts from the chat in YouTube

• Douglas Gilmour - Greetings from Scotland and from a grateful recipient of a Rees Jeffreys Road Fund scholarship to study at ITS Leeds (too) many years ago.
• Glenn Lyons - Greta's open letter published today says "Net zero emissions by 2050 for the EU ... equals surrender" - this means systemic change - is there a place within that for justifying new roads?
• Jennie Martin - Congratulations to the organisers on achieving the most representative transport panel I have ever seen!
• Graham Pendlebury - My worry is that Covid will revive car use and wipe out public transport due to perception that it is unsafe. Personal experience suggests we are reverting to the bad old days. Am I too pessimistic?
• Chris Yewlett - There is huge potential scope to shift Freight off the roads onto rail, as an essential component of decarbonisation. This will allow a refocussing of the Road network
• Robert Corcoran - is gender bias/discrimination currently an issue in the Logistics sector?
• David Tarrant - What do the Panel believe our roads WILL look and feel like in 20-30 years time and if it’s broadly the same what will it take to achieve something different.
• Tony Depledge - Capacity re-allocation in favour of efficient public transport is an important issue: this also means either giving highway authorities a clear duty to deliver this or putting the strategic network - both current HE roads and the local authority networks - into the hands of a body that has the delivery of re-allocation of space in its remit.
• Tony Depledge - At the same time, we have to persuade the public to vote for politicians who will commit to more efficient use of road space
• Phil Carey - What principles should govern the allocation of road space? Should we be steered by user views, and, more controversially, by those who pay most for the privilege?
• Peter Molyneux - very concerned that we are suggesting solutions without asking the users what they want to meet the needs of the travelling public, freight and business
• Myles Kidd - As covid has given us the rare and enjoyable experience of traffic free streets, how will we fund reallocation of road space to redefine how we travel and will we miss the opportunity for doing so?
• Robert Corcoran - The shortage of professional drivers was and continues to be an area of concern during the Covid 19 crisis. How can this be addressed? What can be done to attract women into the sector?
• Owen Wilson - Covid 19 has demonstrated the impact of a massive external shock, how do we ensure sustained change at scale and pace. What are the key levers and will they be acceptable to the public?
• Owen Wilson - Can free market capitalism deliver a sustainable transport system? Or do we need more government / local government intervention?
• Phil Carey - We can't afford to demonise private transport; it can be made as clean as public transport, and people of all income levels are prepared to pay for it, rather than expect others to pay.
• Peter Molyneux - as someone who pre CV19 used public transport everyday, the experience was a great advert for driving a car
• Tom van Vuren - Hi all. I love The Netherlands, of course I do, but it's not the transport nirvana sketched here. For example, car ownership per 1000 population is higher than in the UK.
• Simon McGlone - Agree - delivering solutions more via local intelligence provides increased overall national results
• Miriam Ricci - At no point in this pandemic were car drivers asked to consider whether their journey, on a finite road network, was essential, whilst public transport users were asked to make that judgement
• artem35 - There is also the notion to tax citizens for public transport which can be used as a monthly ticket. Is this perhaps a way forward to get everyone to apperciate public transport, or just a double cost?
• Chris Yewlett - Car ownership is also higher in Germany, I believe- but usage isn't! People use Public Transport where appropriate, and cars where PT is not.
• Transport Action Network - Private transport is a very inefficient user of road space - there is an equality issue in the current set-up which allows cars to dominate street space to the detriment of others
• Tim Gent - Re: Land Value uplift capture: I fear this could lead to a road-building boom due to the tax benefits! Unintended consequences?
• Manny Rasores de Toro - Does the panel agree we need to tackle inefficient car trips by introducing pay as you drive road charging looking at place, time, levels of journey congestion with discounts for passengers travelling
• Glenn Lyons - Does the panel imagine that the next Road Investment Strategy might be called the 'Road Reallocation Strategy'?
• John Carr - At local council level the decisions by members are based on their perceptions that car ownership and access whenever, wherever is good. We've not learned how to educate our politicians!
• Jennie Martin - Absolutely, Lynn. The only place in the UK I can think of where a car owner could claim to be disconnected are a few city centres where the congestion would disconnect them.
• Phil Carey - Remember that the Road Investment Strategy is currently paid for by drivers through VED; if rebranded, you might need to find someone else to fund it!
• Aditya Tafta Nugraha - how do we as transport planners address the need for cultural changes in enabling sustainable transport? We may be good in building infrastructure, but what about the marketing side?
• Douglas Gilmour - The problem with the suggestion of a Road Allocation Strategy is that it is not really be problem for HE to solve. Freight Reallocation (to rail perhaps). But a RAS for LHAs would make more sense.
• Glenn Lyons - Phil - if we internalised the external costs of transport I'm sure we could find the money!
• Peter Molyneux - glenn - if the public says it still wants to drive as cycling walking or PT doesn't work for them all of the time - would you support it?
• andy graham - Road charging for cars is a challenge. But most of Europe already has distance based truck charging or thinking of it (even NL)
• Stephen Joseph - Phil, I think if you ask motorists what the priorities should be for the "roads fund", they will demand funding for local road maintenance not smart motorways!
• Glenn Lyons - Peter - I think the challenge is that the public may want to have its cake and eat it - a convenient, sustainable (equitable) future - can car dependence really deliver that?
• Transport Action Network - What people say about how they want to travel depends on the options offered to them
• Andrew Hugill - As CIHT said in its Review of Local Highways we need to reconsider how to define the different purposes of the LHR and provide appropriate infrastructure that meets the needs of all its users....
• Tim Gent - Q: Of the quick schemes implemented, how many had to be removed? We may hear too much about those ones.
• Tim Gent - Also - doing the wrong thing quickly and removing it is a GREAT way to learn and show we are responsive. We should celebrate.
• Peter Molyneux - Glenn - i think people want choice - an integrated transport system that includes the car - without the emissions - that meets the different needs of the different journeys they make
• Tim Gent - Possible downside of HE workplaces: delivers DRIVERS to meetings avoiding urban congestion. Like edge of town business parks.
• Phil Carey - I agree, Peter; as long as the population, and economy, are spread across the country, the car has to be part of the solution.
• andy graham - Aren't there remote working hubs already - called Costa? Dont try and let HE do coffee and buns...
• Tim Gent - Big businesses have also started asking employees whether they would like to work in local 'remote hubs' ... invest in your independent village cafe now!
• Jennie Martin - I think we already have a form of motorways working hubs - I have taken taxis from train stations to meet people who apparently hold all their meetings in service areas ...
• andy graham - We could call them "transport cafes" ...
• Manny Rasores de Toro - No matter what we think, surely the optimum way to tackle congestion & major effect on pollution is by making it much more expensive and difficult to own and use a private car. Does the panel agree?
• Owen Wilson - Agree we should support more remote working, but also need to consider the % of the workforce who still need to physically attend work. Healthcare, manufacturing etc..
• David Tarrant - Great discussion with lots of fascinating thoughts/ideas - thank you to all involved.