In his report of December 2006 Sir Rod Eddington saw no alternative to a national scheme for road pricing, which would reduce the case for additional road infrastructure investment by 80%.   The Government broadly endorsed Eddington’s approach but has been equivocal about practical commitment to national road pricing.   This equivocation makes it difficult to prescribe an appropriate scale of road investment.

On 16 July the Department for Transport published its latest Roads White Paper.   This acknowledged Eddington’s thinking but stated as the priority over the next decade measures other than national road pricing, such as hard shoulder running and speed management on motorways.   So no clarity about the scale of road investment needed to manage predicted congestion growth.   What the Department proposes is investment of up to £6 billion over the next 6 years in ‘major improvements’ to the strategic road network, widening parts of heavily used motorways and trunk roads.

What precisely will be achieved by this investment programme is not made clear.   I would predict that road widening will increase traffic as people take the benefit of higher speeds in the form of increased access to desired destination.  The extra traffic will result in increased carbon emissions, with no improvement in overall congestion across the network as the extra carriageway is offset by the additional vehicle-kilometres.  Not good value for money from £6 billion.