Spending on #roads and #rail

It can be a nightmare trying to come up with a reliable and consistent number for how much money is spent by government on managing, maintaining and building roads. We were asked the question again today. Our answer – £9.4 billion – came from one of the tables in the Transport Statistics GB series (which was last updated in November 2011). Of course this does not provide the full breakdown of to whom the money is allocated and how it is spent. For that you really do need to enter the murky world of national and local government finance.

Department for Transport statistics
Modal comparisons
Table TSGB0118
Public Expenditure on Transport by function1: 2005/06-20010/11
				£ million (outturn prices)
		2008/09	2009/10	2010/11
National Roads		3,624	4,311	3,753
	Capital	1,557	2,549	2,198
	Current	2,067	1,761	1,554
Local Roads		5,572	5,776	5,696
	Capital	3,330	3,340	3,425
	Current	2,242	2,437	2,271
Local Public Transport		3,579	3,944	4,914
	Capital	589	1,080	1,880
	Current	2,990	2,864	3,034
Railways		7,018	7,626	7,606
	Capital	6,033	5,630	5,687
	Current	985	1,996	1,920
Other Transport		1,033	1,037	932
	Capital	292	249	250
	Current	741	787	682
UK total		20,827	22,693	22,901
	Capital	11,801	12,848	13,440
	Current	9,026	9,845	9,462
1. Figures taken from Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis, HMT see
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pespb_natstats_oct2011.htm
These include public spending by central and local government as well as capital spending by public corporations in the UK. There
are some slight differences between these figures and those from the downloadable HMT tables referenced in other tables due to
differences in the timing  of the data collections.

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M20 accident on Saturday. The road to nowhere but why didn’t the @highways_agency tell drivers?

Of course it would happen when we were in a rush, the children were hungry and desperate for the loo. There’s never a good time to be stuck in a stationary jam on the motorway, but some occasions are more bearable than others.

Early Saturday afternoon on the London bound carriageway of the M20 in Kent was not one of them.

We were almost at J8 when we came to a standstill, the reason for it a long way ahead and out of sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The appearance of numerous emergency vehicles – ambulances, police cars, fire engines – overtaking us up the inside along the hard shoulder made us fear the worst, both for the unfortunate people who were inevitably involved in the accident and for our ability to get to our destination before the time came when we would have to be leaving to return home.

As it turned out, our discomfort only lasted about an hour before we were on the move again, the carriage-way being completely clear by the time we reached the point where things had gone awry. Thankfully there were only a couple of vehicles on the shoulder and neither appeared too badly damaged. According to the news on the local radio – which we heard as we sat waiting to get going – two people had been taken to hospital. Fingers crossed neither were too badly hurt.

What was disappointing was the lack of information on the Highways Agency website. As far as I could tell, from two visits to their website on my smart phone during the first 35 minutes of my enforced halt, there was no official mention of the tailbacks. Why not? It is their road. One of their vehicles was in attendance and a matrix sign warned of closed lanes (so someone back at base in front of a computer clearly knew what was going on). And the disruption was all over the local news.

If the HA desires to be a source of data for drivers wanting to make an informed decisions about when and where to travel then the info needs to be available and up to date.

I stand to be corrected, but as far as I could tell on Saturday it wasn’t.

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