Written evidence submitted by the Local Government Technical Advisers Group (RSM0059) The Local Government Technical Advisers Group (LGTAG) thank the Select Committee for the opportunity to give written evidence and are more than willing to discuss our submission further if required. 1. About us, Introduction and Summary 1.1 The Local Government Technical Advisers Group (LGTAG) is an Association of Technical Officers providing public services in and for Local Authorities. Our officers deal with public services like waste, recycling, street cleansing, parks, recreation, Planning, Council property (including housing) design, construction and maintenance, roads and transport, flooding and coastal protection etc. Our raison d’etre is to share best practice and advise central and local government bodies and representatives on problems and solutions relevant to these subject areas. Our membership is mainly senior staff in London and Metropolitan Boroughs, Counties and Unitary and District Councils as well as Consultants and Service providers where such services are outsourced to the private sector. 1.2 Local Government have statutory responsibilities for Road Safety and for managing nearly 98% of the road network but unfortunately have very little say on the remaining just over 2% of the road network and how Highway’s England’s road network affects the planning, transport, environmental or economic aspects of our towns and villages. 1.3 Of particular relevance to this Select Committee inquiry - we recently submitted evidence to the Inquiry on Major transport infrastructure projects: appraisal and delivery and have in the past submitted evidence to this committee on Road Safety Issues, The Strategic Road programme and on the effects and consequences of induced traffic from capacity increases on Strategic roads over several decades. 1.4 In this evidence we give a response to all five issues raised by the committee. The main themes of our evidence relate to the fact that the Smart Motorway programme is unlikely to provide anything but a short term solution to the congested part of the motorway network and will exacerbate congestion problems on the rest of the road network (98% of the total). Consequently, there will be adverse environmental and health consequences. Furthermore, we are concerned with the high speeds on the motorway network, safety both on and off the strategic network is/could be worsened. We believe there needs to be a much better joined up policy and delivery mechanisms for roads and overall transport policy involving all transport authorities. 2. Responses on issues identified by the Committee On the detail issues included in your invitation to submit evidence we have the following comments: 2.1 The benefits of smart motorways, for instance to reduce congestion on busy sections of motorway, and how necessary they are: 2.1.1 We note that in the introductory comments of the call for evidence on the stated rationale for Smart Motorways and All Lane Running of the objective (of the DfT/HE) to reduce congestion. We have consistently disputed that such Smart motorways would normally reduce congestion overall, certainly anywhere near large cities or near ‘busy sections of motorway’. We have provided hard evidence to demonstrate our position to the DfT and indeed this Committee on many occasions - at least dating back to 1988. We recognise that this fact is counter-intuitive especially from the position of behind a steering wheel in congested conditions. 2.1.2 If the committee needs further evidence of this situation, we can provide it as well as links on the LGTAG website to many related matters and submissions. In the meantime, we attach as an Appendix a peer reviewed technical paper which describes how the Smart Motorway programme is very unlikely to reduce congestion overall after a few years of extra induced traffic resulting from the increased capacity. (We would normally have provided a link to this and the more extensive work on the subject, but the World Transport Policy and Practice (WTPP) technical journal is not at present live on the web). 2.1.3 We are particularly concerned about the consequences of the hard shoulder and all lane running on the Strategic Road network on the local authority road network. It is not realistically possible to redesign and develop the rest of the road network (nearly 98% of the total) to cope with the extra generated or induced traffic from the expanded capacity and traffic volumes using the Strategic roads to reach the actual trip destinations nor is it easy to develop necessary policies and strategies to abate/reduce such other traffic as it comes off the motorways. 2.1.4 Furthermore, the extra capacity being added to already high capacity routes makes the whole network rather more sensitive in reliability or resilience terms. Anything going wrong on the motorways or immediate approaches means even more traffic has to use alternative routes which will have an even smaller fraction of the capacity to cope. It is also harder for the emergency services and motorway operators to reach the problem area and sort it out without a continuous hard shoulder. Reliability of the road network, or indeed any transport system, is far more important to industry and individuals than speeding up traffic. 2.1.5 Despite our very strong reservations about the general use of Smart motorways as an attempt to reduce congestion we do recognise that in certain limited locations it may be desirable to add to the capacity of some links. The practicalities of traffic flow for instance with an over or under bridge it may be cost effective to remove a hard shoulder for a short distance. 2.2 The safety of smart motorways, the adequacy of safety measures in place and how safety could be improved: 2.2.1 We are concerned about the extra traffic on the motorways as described above and the potential to increase accidents resulting from the extra traffic. Stopped vehicles in running lanes are extremely hazardous and we are sure other organisations will be discussing this aspect in their evidence. Similarly, for the automatic detection and warning systems, we are also nervous about the reliability of such warning systems and the notice drivers may take of such systems. Any regular motorway user is aware that some of the other warning systems in use at present get ignored by many drivers and often the incidents needing such warnings are often historic before the warnings are turned off. 2.2.2 We understand that at least some Smart Motorways were introduced with variable signing for use of the hard shoulder only during congested periods and that they were normally signed with 40mph or 50 mph speed limits. We believe the DfT/HE has generally revised the speed limit to 60 mph during all lane running and variable hard shoulder use. A 60 mph limit is potentially 44% more damaging on impact than at 50 mph (from the kinetic energy) and 125% more damaging than at 40 mph (at 70 mph the kinetic energy is over three times that at 40mph). Furthermore, if it is desired to increase capacity, the maximum stable and reliable capacity of a dual carriageway road is likely to be at about 40mph rather than any faster. We also believe part of the rationale for the decision to increase speed limits on such roads is the ‘economic appraisal’ from predicted and calculated travel time savings based on a number of assumptions. Our evidence to you on the other live inquiry - ‘Major transport infrastructure projects: appraisal and delivery’ casts grave doubts about the methodology and meaningfulness of such economic assessments. 2.2.3 Finally, while on safety issues, while local government is not really or directly responsible for improving safety on the Strategic Road system, a common safety problem we experience is that drivers coming off high speed roads find it hard to adapt to the rest of the road network quickly. Hence many authorities experience excess accidents on their networks in the vicinity of the end of ‘motorways’. We are therefore even more concerned about further increase in traffic volumes or speeds using the Strategic road network. 2.2.4 Whether All Lane Running is the most suitable type of smart motorway to roll out or if there are better alternatives: 2.2.5 As mentioned above and in other submissions to this committee, the DfT and other organisations on numerous occasions, LGTAG is not generally in favour of increasing road capacity on the strategic road network. This is especially if such increases in capacity allow increased car commuting, extra CO2, pollution or other health problems (e.g., obesity) arising from excessive car use. We need other strategies and close working across all highway and transport authorities and providers to provide the best system for the public and industry. Any such strategies must include managing our towns, where most trips end, in the most effective manner. 2.2.6 We recognise that it would be difficult to close down quickly and almost completely the present HE program of design and construction of schemes but we would like to see the minimum further damage to our Transport system done by the present programme. In the first instance there are many locations in the country that are not well served by high quality routes and many small towns and villages with major roads flowing through them. Transferring road building resources to such problems would be a significant improvement, produce a finer network which would also improve reliability and resilience. 2.2.7 If we must increase the capacity of existing motorways the hard shoulder running in peak times only with maximum speed limits of 40mph would be less inappropriate and safer.