A tale of two tolls. Why Severn Crossing charges could go on and on and on. #Wales @davidtcdavies

Two tolled river crossings are in the news this week. On Tuesday the Department for Transport launched a consultation on an additional crossing of the Thames at or close to the existing bridge and tunnel at Dartford.

One of the big question marks, over and beyond the exact location of the new infrastructure, is how it will be funded. The presumption is that it will be through direct charges to users. After all that is what was used to pay for the QEII Bridge built in 1991 to augment the tunnel. The big grumble as regards that project has been, despite what drivers were led to believe, the government’s failure to remove tolls even after though the bridge has long since been built and paid for.

Which leads us on to the Severn Crossings. At first glance the situation is markedly different here.

The first road link between Wales and England was opened in 1966, but as traffic volume increased it became necessary to build a second bridge and that opened in 1996.

Today crossing operations are run by the Severn River Crossing PLC. As it stands this company has the concession to collect charges until it hits a certain amount of revenue, currently in the order of £1 billion, a figure likely to be reached (traffic volume, corporation tax etc. allowing) in around 2018. At the point the bridge reverts to public ownership with an expectation that the regulated tolls (price £6.20 for a car) will be removed.

Except they won’t, certainly not for a couple of years afterwards. Why? Because even though the Severn River Crossing company runs the bridges the government has somehow managed to incur costs of £88m in relation to the links and this money also needs to be recouped through tolls before they are scrapped.

In a letter to David Davies MP, chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee in Parliament, the transport minister Stephen Hammond MP explained how the costs had arisen:

“The concession agreement and Act was structured so that certain risks were borne by Government rather than SRC, for example, costs relating to latent defects on the first Severn Crossing. By bearing these risks the government was able to finance the construction of the second crossing and maintenance of the crossings at a much lower cost. If these risks had been included in the concession arrangement the end date of the concession would have needed to be extended to allow the concessionaire to recover its costs or the tolls would have needed to be set at a higher level. It is also likely that a private company would have required a substantial risk premium in order to take on these risks.”

Of course, there will be the strong suspicion that, against the wishes of road users and public bodies such as the Welsh Affairs Committee, the toll will never be removed, even after the extra £88m has been found, and instead will go up further still. After all, that is what happened at Dartford.

 

 

Road trip to the 4 corners of Britain: by bike not car. In aid of @brakecharity @gbextremetour

So here’s a road trip and a half. Travelling to the four corners of the British Isles and some. It would be a long enough venture by car, but Graham Brain, isn’t on four wheels but two. He will cover some 1,500 miles over the next 35 days to raise money for the charity Brake.

According to Graham’s JustGiving page these are the points of particular geographical interest that his trip will take him to:

[1] John O’Groats – Lands End (the furthest distance between two settlements).

[2] Dunnet Head – The most Northerly point.

[3] Ardnamurchan Lighthouse – The most Westerly point.

[4] Ben Nevis (climb) – The highest point.

[5] Whalley – The most central point.

[6] Church Flatts – The furthest point from the sea in any direction.

[7] Holme Fen – The lowest point.

[8] Lowestoft Ness – The most Easterly point.

[9] Lavernock Point – The highest tidal flow.

[10] The Lizard – The most Southerly point.

Good luck on the expedition.

PS Though a car was once taken to the top of Ben Nevis – a Model T Ford in 1911 – Brian will be relying on his feet rather than his wheels to ascend the 4,409 feet high mountain.

God bless #Europe? One EU move few will moan about. #oilprices @halfon4harlowMP @catherinemep

Another day, another fuel price story.

The news late yesterday that European Union anti-trust regulators had raided offices of energy giants BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Norway’s Statoil firmly took the spotlight off the pricing of petrol and diesel at motorway service stations and placed it further up the supply chain, looking at allegations of oil price fixing going back more than a decade.

In theory, this was an area which the Office of Fair Trading in the UK should have considered as part of the terms of reference in its call for evidence into the road fuel market, the results of which were published earlier this year.

In fact the OFT report did pass comment on the matter, but only briefly:

“We also asked for information on whether speculation or manipulation of oil spot and futures markets or inaccurate oil or wholesale road fuel price reporting could be leading to higher pump prices. While these issues could potentially raise serious concerns, we have not received any credible evidence to suggest that such concerns are arising and therefore do not propose to carry out any further investigation at this time.”

And this is the nub of the matter. Given that the oil industry is so fiendishly complex, involving billions of dollars, millions of trades, hundreds of thousands of people and scores of countries, it is, in short, an opaque operation, at least to the outsider. Trying to elicit information and ‘evidence’ into its finer workings are no small matters. Suspicion of wrong-doing or manipulation is one thing, but gaining proof of misdemeanour is quite another. And of course we do not know whether these companies have actually done anything wrong – let us not forget that oil firms are not charities. They invest huge sums of money in what they do and rightly expect a return on that investment.

But that return can only come from activity within the rule of law. And it is imperative that those who enforce the rules fully understand what is happening. If nothing else this investigation should provide some transparency into this area of business and show companies that the regulators are on top of their game. It might also – assuming nothing untoward is going on – rebuild some trust between motorists and the firms which supply the fuel they fill up with.

The OFT’s January report concluded:

“Overall, on the basis of the evidence collected, it appears that competition in the UK road fuels sector is working relatively effectively. The significant rises in petrol and diesel prices that have occurred over the past 10 years have largely been caused by higher crude oil prices and increases in taxation. We have not found any evidence that competition problems have led to increases in pump prices and the margins being made by UK refiners, wholesalers and retailers do not appear to have contributed as significantly to increases in pump prices.”

Yet the reassurance that pump prices are the subject of competitive retail pricing will be of little reassurance to millions of drivers if the underlying components of those prices – the cost of oil, but also tax – are excessive and, potentially far worse, illegally inflated.

Robert Halfon MP said this morning:

“Last year, in a debate that I pressed for, Parliament voted unanimously for an investigation into the oil market. These latest allegations underline why that must happen urgently in the UK. High oil prices are crushing families across Britain. Motorists are being taken for a very expensive ride.”

He, and others like Fair Fuel UK and the RAC, are right. There needs to be more investigation, even if only to offer reassurance. Perhaps this move by the EU – and for all the bad press Europe is getting at the moment there will be few who will complain of this continental intervention – will galvanise those at the OFT to reconsider their earlier conclusions, though it is would seem likely that action this side of the Channel will very depend on action on the other side.

Motorway #fuelprice policy hits headlines (again) @halfon4harlowMP @FairFuelUK

Clearly if a policy is good enough to be announced once, it is good enough to be announced twice.

I would not want to be dismissive of the stories in the media about the government looking at ways of making data about fuel prices at motorway service stations more transparent to drivers i.e. putting up signs with the information before drivers pull off the carriageway. Indeed, that is very positive. But why, one wonders, is there all this fuss today, because this is not just old news, it is positively ancient.

The announcement actually came in the Budget back on 20 March when the Chancellor, or at least the Budget document, said:

“In response to OFT recommendations, the Government will work with motorway service areas and other relevant bodies to improve the availability and visibility of motorway fuel price information for motorway users.”

The Office of Fair Treading reference relates to the organisation’s report, published at the end of January, into the workings of the petrol and diesel fuel sector which concluded that overall the market was working well but raised concerns about the gulf between high street fuel prices and those found on the motorways:

“While these differences may be explained to some extent by the higher costs associated with running motorway forecourts, the OFT is concerned that drivers are not able to view prices until they have pulled into the service station. It has therefore asked the Department for Transport to consider introducing new road signs that would display service station petrol and diesel prices for motorway drivers.”

The conclusion must be that this matter has become news again today because a) at Budget time there were plenty of other stories vying for headlines and b) this latest announcement is being pushed by the Number 10 policy unit and hence the Prime Minister.

Here at the RAC Foundation we would like to think that we – alongside campaigners like Robert Halfon MP and Fair Fuel UK – helped push fuel prices up the political agenda through our transport poverty work and this is part of why the PM is making a song and dance of the matter now (that and the realisation that drivers have about 35 million votes between them).

Of course, there are only so many times the same policy can be announced before drivers demand to see the outcome. Time for words to be turned into action.

Remember the icy winter? Drivers who were stuck in snow in Kent can blame the French.

For hundreds of drivers who were trapped in nightmare weather conditions earlier this year it will be hard to believe, but the conclusion of a new report for the RAC Foundation is that when it comes to dealing with snow and ice, by and large the authorities here have significantly upped their games in recent times.

The report also warns that the climate is an evolving beast. No longer can we regard periods of severe weather as isolated incidents. They seem to be getting more frequent and more extreme and the impact of one compounds the effects of another.

When we are warm and snug in our modern cars it is tempting to think we are immune from the elements and have the technological resources to deal with whatever nature might throw at us – but the experience is that we do not. We need to consider revising our view of what is ‘normal’. As the climate appears to change we should not confuse extreme weather with rare weather.

A combination of more frequent and more extreme weather events will mean drivers having to change their habits and expectations.

Ploughing On says that although councils and the Highways Agency responded well to the periods of snow and ice, changing weather patterns mean strategy will have to shift from one of trying to change the conditions to one of coping with them.

The review also suggests that despite common perceptions, much of continental Europe also suffers disruption from snow and ice. It cites evidence from northern France in the second week of March where the authorities banned heavy lorries from the roads, effectively stopping Channel crossings for freight vehicles and creating major difficulties and traffic backlogs in Kent.

The report was written by Brian Smith, a former director of Environment and Transport at Cambridgeshire County Council and member of the government-commissioned Quarmby Winter Resilience Review in 2010. It explains how the official response to the extensive ice and snow seen in England and Wales in January 2013 (and again in parts of the South East of England in early March) was generally good and reveals there was no repeat of the shortage of salt seen in recent years.

However the report notes that at temperatures of -7C and below, the effectiveness of salt decreases and high winds mean snow drifts faster than it can be cleared. Problems were exacerbated by the heavy rainfall of 2012. Surface water and field run-off quickly froze as temperatures dropped. Then as the snow melted there was flooding as a result of the already saturated ground.

The report also concluded that:

• Highways authorities (local and also the Highways Agency) were generally well prepared for the onset of winter
• The authorities had broadly implemented the recommendations outlined in the Government-commissioned winter resilience review (and subsequent audit) carried out in the wake of the bad winters of 2008/9 and 2009/10
• There was no shortage of salt
• Uniformly, local authorities had not cut back on winter services spending despite overall reductions in their budgets
• Drivers need more advice on the potential benefits of winter tyres and ‘add-ons’ such as snow socks and snow chains
• Drivers also need to be reminded of the importance of simple measures such as maintaining adequate tread depth on their normal tyres
• As part of its review of the winter weather the Highways Agency should consider the case for more removable sections of central reservation barriers to enable snow ploughs and gritters easier access to the points where they are needed
• While there is evidence many drivers change their travel plans in the light of weather warnings, there are still many who do not

Ploughing On was commissioned to study the response to the extreme weather that hit much of England and Wales in the last two weeks of January 2013. Brian Smith then carried out further work – which is included in the report as an addendum – in light of the severe conditions that hit parts of the South East around 11 & 12 March. The report does not include analysis of the extreme weather events that were experienced in the run up to Easter.

The report took evidence from the Highways Agency, 32 local authorities in England and Wales, Boots, Asda, the RAC breakdown business and 13 motoring clubs across Europe.

@car2go – but where? (@carplustrust)

This week, car2go – Daimler’s one-way car club using Smart cars – launched in Birmingham.  This is the second UK city to see these “Boris cars” on the roads, after London.

Last year, the RAC Foundation published Car Rental 2.0 which demonstrated what impacts adoption of various kinds of car club might have on traffic in London.

However, when that report was published, there wasn’t a single working one-way scheme in place in the UK.  All the car clubs required users to return cars to the parking spaces they got them from.

That’s now changed, and I recently had a chance to try one out in one of the three London local authorities where they currently work.

Car2go works via a website and mobile phone app.  I was at a CarPlus – the car sharing trade body – event near Old Street, and when I left for the day I easily managed to locate one around the corner.

After checking the condition of car on the outside, I swiped my car2go card (a bit like an Oyster card) and the vehicle unlocked.  Once in, the screen on the stereo has instructions to guide you through getting on the move (a PIN code, and then the ignition key is released).  Type your destination into the satnav and off you go.

This was a rather contrived journey (Old Street to St Pancras) because I needed an excuse to have a go in one, but the scheme allows you to park for free in any legal space in Newham, Islington or Sutton.

Once on the go though, the scheme does raise some questions:

• Although the user interface is neat and tidy, it is slow (much slower than any stereo or satnav anyone would be willing to buy nowadays).  As you pay for car2go by the minute, you are in effect paying extra because the interface slows you down.
• Is the minute the most appropriate unit to pay for travel?  The scheme made me feel a bit like I was being timed.  Did this have an effect on my driving?  What if I got stuck in traffic?  Maybe distance travelled is more appropriate.
• The current London scheme is only a tiny fraction of the centre of the city – a tiny patchwork of coverage.  So you need to know exactly what borough you are driving in.  Not until you drive one of these vehicles will you realise how often you don’t know that, and the satnav only helps to some extent.  At least the coverage map of Birmingham looks good.
• What’s the trip?  With such limited coverage, good quality alternatives of every mode and limited space, what person/trip purpose/trip distance combination is this aimed at?

I parked up near King’s Cross, amazed at how easily a very small car fits into a parking space.  The car does give you an eco-driving score at the end, but timed-by-the minute isn’t the best for encouraging one’s eco-driving.

In the end, the journey cost me about £8 – that’s for about 24 minutes.  Other firms are moving into this field, including BMW with their “premium mobility service”.  The question is: over that distance, could it be matched by that other premium mobility service – the black cab?

Drivers distracted more by mobile phone use than drugs and alcohol

92% of all adults in the UK own and use a mobile phone. For the first time ever in the UK, mobile phone usage has outstripped land line use, with over half of all calls being made by mobile phones. The average Briton now sends 50 texts per week. The younger generation significantly more.

In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in the extent of texting whilst driving. Despite the dangers, 48% of UK drivers aged 18 – 24 admit to using short message services (SMS) whilst driving – a group already at much higher risk of being involved in a crash. This fact led the Foundation to commission a simulator study on ‘The Effect of Text Messaging on Driver Behaviour’, which concluded that texting behind the wheel impairs driving skills more than being drunk or on drugs.

Texting whilst driving – impairment to reaction times in comparison to previous studies:

Source: Reed, N. and Robbins, R. (2008) The Effect of Text Messaging On Driver Behaviour. A Simulator Study. Published Project Report PPR367. TRL

This was the first study in the UK of its kind. In all the key measures of driving performance assessed, young people who were texting were badly affected:

• reaction times deteriorated by over one-third (35%). This was worse than alcohol at the legal limit (12% slower) and driving under the influence of cannabis (21% slower);
• drivers drifted out of their lane more often. Steering control was 91% worse, compared to 35% worse when under the influence of cannabis;
• the ability to maintain a safe following distance fell; and
• TRL’s experts concluded that ‘In real world traffic situations, it is suggested that poorer control of vehicle speed, lateral position, and increased reaction times in this situation would increase the likelihood of collision dramatically.’

The best estimates are that around 1% of the total fatalities on the roads each year are related to mobile phone use. This data is not without its limitations, in particular under reporting, but it gives some indication of the consequences associated with this type of distracted driving. The use of mobile phones is not the biggest killer on the roads but today’s news that ministers are considering stiffening the penalties for the offence show that it is one being taken seriously in Whitehall.