As you sit in another traffic jam, try to work your way around another road closure, follow a diversion or sit at home waiting for someone or some delivery that is late to turn up, do you ever ask if public sector roads are the best answer? How much of our lost productivity and squeezed small business sector is down to the costs and difficulties of getting about?
In my first roads article I looked at the stressed and delay prone nationalised strategic highways, our motorways and trunk roads,which cater for a third of our vehicle miles and two thirds of the truck miles on an inadequate 2.4% of our roads. My second promised article got delayed a week by a Burnham diversion and yet more government anti driver actions. Today I look at that cross roads of congestion, our major road network of A roads. These are nationalised under local authority management but often dependent on national government grants. A further 43% of our vehicle miles take place on these routes on just 4% of our roads. The remaining 93% of our roads are local and handle only 23% of total travelled miles.
The major Council A road network is crucial to productivity and jobs in the UK. It is the main means for people to get to work, the main way to get to shops, for service companies and deliveries to reach our homes and for children to get to school. It is sadly neglected by government, starved of cash for extension and improvement whilst millions more people in recent years come to live here needing vehicles and deliveries. Over 20 years only 600 miles of new road has been added to the major road network. Much more new road has been added by developers as they build new housing estates with plenty of local and estate roads to funnel more vehicles onto the overwhelmed major road system.
There are very few new road schemes planned for the A roads to improve capacity and reach with only a small national budget of £1.6 bn . Government’s priority is to cut vehicle use, so plenty of money is spent on anti vehicle changes to roads. Active travel’s new third strategy is backed by £4.5 bn to get 55% of all short journeys in towns and cities onto bikes or on foot. The government in its usual way has a popular success story of personal transport on its hands, so it does its best to throttle it. It turns to rationing and to offering very expensive less popular choices buttressed by public spending, tax breaks and over provision. We have plenty of near empty trains apart from some peak times and favoured routes, and many unused cycleways.
As a result we face an increasing array of measures to slow, impede or stop road vehicle use. There are the 20 mph zones taking over urban areas. 20 mph is fine near a school at times when children may be in the road, or on residential estate roads, but not on a major A road route needed for heavy traffic. There are a growing number of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods restricting access to and from residential areas altogether. There are chicanes and speed humps. On some roads now Councils have put islands or barriers on one side forcing traffic to stop and wait for a gap in traffic coming the other way, a particularly dangerous as well as vexatious intervention. Many new traffic light sets are introduced. Vehicle lanes are reduced or narrowed to put in bigger pavements and cycleways. Aggressive kerbs are popular to do more damage alongside the poor road surface so motorists sometimes swerving to avoid the potholes hit a new super kerb. Tyres and suspensions are hammered by bad roads.
Junction design is often changed to slow and delay traffic. Light phasings sometimes ignore the need to give priority to the main road. Too few light sets have traffic sensors to trigger timely changes of light phasing in accord with traffic demand. Drivers on the main road have to wait at red lights when little or nothing is using the green. Some light sets now have all red phases to allow the mythical pedestrian wanting to cross both roads at the same time to do so. There are too few roundabouts which usually flow better. Some highways Authorities seek to cut flows at successful roundabouts by narrowing the highway or by introducing traffic lights and stop lines.
So why are our main local roads so badly run? Some of the changes are made as so called green policies, yet they lead to more congestion and vehicles burning more fuel whilst making little or no progress. Some are made to improve safety, yet they often increase potential conflicts between vehicles , cycles and pedestrians by complex junctions, narrower lanes, and confusing instructions.Taking roadspace away from vehicles to create a little used cycle lane causes congestion and frustration, which some bad cyclists add to by riding on pavements or the vehicle lane and shooting red lights in unpredictable ways.
Good Councils should get to work to help drivers who pay so much tax for such a poor service. They should roll out traffic management schemes that improve flows. We need more roundabouts and fewer light sets. All A road traffic lights should give priority to the main road with traffic sensors to allow entry from side roads in a controlled way.They should pursue more small schemes to remove road blockages, allow selective widening and segregate A road vehicle traffic from bikes and pedestrians. They should not have 20 mph speed restrictions.
Each Council or Mayoralty should set out a local strategic road network of the main through A roads in their areas. There should be plans to dual heavily trafficked routes. The national government needs to provide a better financial balance between good roads for vehicles and good active travel alternatives away from the main strategic roads.
White van man and woman need a better deal .To save our High Steets we need decent car access. To have more choice of services and deliveries to our homes we need better roads.
Anyone wanting to grow this economy should want lower taxes and cheaper energy. They need to follow that up with better main roads as highways for trade, services and getting to work. We lose both productivity and business opportunity by sitting in traffic jams. Drivers pay far more in vehicle and fuel taxes than they get in road provision.The plumber, the Amazon delivery driver , the builder, the employees going to work and the families seeking entertainment all need to get there by road vehicle. Why does the miserable government road monopolist seek to delay them and lecture them on how not to bother? It even in some places spends money on expensive signs to tell you to expect long queues and bad service, as if proud of it.
August 4, 2026
The problem is that there’s too many cars – and not enough road. Why? the politicians and economists obsession with growth.
That’s why the Boriswave let in 1.5 million of them. It grows the GDP statistics, as well as growing the hours people have to wait in A&E or on trolleys in hospital corridors. Or for a GP appointment etc
All we are growing is the interest rate we have to pay to borrow the money to pay for them, currently ~4.95% on a 10year gilt
Nobody is mentioning this, but the next interest rate change (currently 3.75%) by the BoE is going to be upwards
August 4, 2026
Good morning.
In effect, they have Socialised the losses, and privatised the profits. And politicians think building more houses and Yoof Clubs is the answer.
August 4, 2026
If you reduce the congestion by supplying more road space you end up with fewer cars on the road as they spend far less time on the road getting from A to B. But for years road blocking and constriction (with environmentalist areas, bus and bike priority lanes, mad junctions and anti-car red traffic lights… has been the government policy – trying to force them onto far less convenient, more expensive, time restricted and less direct public transport or often impractical walking or bikes.
If you really have to deter cars at peak times this needs to be done charging road fees (then used to make more road and parking spaces) not through congestion – same principal with the NHS… These road fees to replace all the other car taxes and motorist muggings.
August 4, 2026
We’re only one government away from Zill lanes.
August 4, 2026
Dreadful to have lost the amusing lefty (but a rare lefty one who had some common sense) Rod Liddle. Similar depressed feeling I had when the amusing Auberon Waugh also died far too young. RIP Rod – amazing he got into the BBC with his often very sensible views. He must have sneaked through somehow I assume.
August 4, 2026
A good summery of all that is wrong with our roads and Government policy John, but then most of us out here have been aware of such for decades and have complained about it, but Government and Council policy with taxpayer funding continues the war against the motorist.
20mph creep is ongoing as it produces a huge number of fines due to cameras, and very few repeater signs to remind you.
Holiday in Wales in the last couple years, 20mph on one road for 4 miles, which had the same status and width as the local A329, (recently reduced from 40mph to 30mph) not a single repeater sign after the first one, only sign to show that it had changed was when entering a 30mph zone.
Fully aware that there are few repeater signs for 30 mph, but that is the National default speed limit in built up areas unless shown otherwise, so well known.
Whatever happened to white luminous painted lines, now white painted lines fading and impossible to see in the dark when its wet !