Better Transport

15 March: The Confederation of British Industry has published a report outlining its strategy for cutting congestion. There's some interesting ideas, but most of their solutions focus on clearing everyone out of the way while they drive ever further.

Unlike most transport commentators, the CBI should be applauded for speaking to IT companies about how new technology will change the way we travel. But their report (pdf) is too dismissive of modal shift and behavioural change strategies. There's plenty of evidence to show that these programmes are really effective. Amusingly, the CBI report ends up calling for a number of 'smarter choices' measures, like car pooling, teleconferencing and flexible working. Mainstreaming 'smarter choices' is clearly essential to tackling congestion, so why is the CBI so dismissive of these vital programmes?

The answer comes from the CBI's choice of solutions, which focus on clearing unimportant trips out of the way of important business people. Hence the suggestion of yellow school buses, which would certainly cut some congestion, but reads like an effort to clear the school kids out of the way of more important business travel. If businesses want congestion cut, then they should lead by example.

They also call for the Government to improve 'pinch points', a quasi-mythical construction which road builders think is holding back the natural flow of traffic. But as the Highways Agency's 'post-opening project evaluations' have shown, removing one pinch point just creates another a few miles further down the road.

85% of congestion is in urban areas, and no one is seriously suggesting bulldozing towns and cities to make way for more road building. Even if there were pinch points on trunk roads and motorways, removing them would just shift traffic to the really congested urban areas that little bit faster.

If the CBI was really concerened about relieving congestion, it would focus on reducing traffic in urban areas. The only way to do this is to give people alternatives to car use, and to reduce the need to travel through intelligent planning - two topics the CBI's report is all but silent on.