Are road hogs killing off hedgehogs ? Why fewer dead animals on the roads might not be a good sign

The sight of dead hedgehogs used to be a regrettable feature of driving on rural roads in the early morning. The animals were often highlighted from a distance by foraging magpies and crows and were a common enough phenomenon that a road safety campaign for children was designed around a hedgehog family. But in recent years, the sighting of a dead hedgehog has become a more rare event .

 

According to a report, Living with Mammals, published last week by the PTES (People’s Trust for Endangered Species) the numbers of hedgehogs killed on our roads has been dropping since 2001 –  and not because motorists are exercising more care when driving on rural roads.  The reduction in the percentage of hedgehogs in overall road kill figures probably means that the hedgehog population is being affected by other factors too.

 

The State of Britain’s Hedgehogs ,published last year, drew together the findings of several surveys by PTES and others to build a picture of how hedgehog populations are changing. And this year’s report from the PTES, Living with Mammals, says nothing to allay concerns about a declining hedgehog population in the UK.  

Hedgehogs like a number of other British mammals are having a tough time. In April last year, across the UK as a whole, 80 per cent more rain fell in April than the average for the month, and areas in eastern and southern England and Wales, and eastern Scotland, were flooded. Extraordinary weather events like this, as well as general trends in climate change are having a noticeable effect on animal populations. The use of insecticides and slug pellets in suburban gardens may have contributed to the fall in hedgehog numbers, according to Living with Mammals. The use of these substances means that there is less food available for hedgehogs and it is important that they feed well before winter in order to build up their body fat to enable them to hibernate through the cold winter period. Further, the ongoing use of once natural countryside for housing and other development, the tidiness of the urban garden, and the reduction in hedges across rural land may all be driving numbers down.

Those hedgehogs that do manage to survive in an increasingly difficult environment are still threatened when they are on or near roads. The hedgehog’s natural reaction to roll into a ball when threatened is no defence against an oncoming car and significant numbers are killed on the roads. Only rabbit road kill exceeds that of the hedgehog.

So what can drivers do, if anything?

It turns out that rural roads are not only a life threatening place to be for hedgehogs but they rank amongst our most dangerous roads for humans too. Government statistics show that in 2011 (latest figures) more than 50% of road deaths on British roads occurred on rural roads. 

The Highway Code advises motorists to take extra care on country roads and reduce speed at approaches to bends, which can be sharper than they appear, and at junctions and turnings, which may be partially hidden; to be prepared for pedestrians, horse riders, cyclists, slow-moving farm vehicles or mud on the road surface and to make sure you can stop within the distance you can see to be clear. It also states that motorists should reduce speed where country roads enter villages.

It doesn’t specifically mention hedgehogs but perhaps it is time all road users thought more about the outcome of inappropriate speed in the countryside and the effect it can have on soft-bodied creatures.

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Getting closer to real-world fuel economy @TRBofNA

One of the biggest challenges – and cause of much frustration – for many drivers is to try and match the real-world fuel consumption performance of their new car with the official figures used in the sales literature. 

Research (see: ICCT, EU) has shown that the discrepancy between the published data and the on-the-road reality is even higher for the latest generation of low- and ultra-low carbon cars.

Partly the gulf between expectation and actual experience is down to the habits of the person behind the wheel. Driving style is central to the amount of fuel we consume. Behaviour like over-revving, idling at traffic lights, and sharp acceleration and deceleration can all contribute to wasting petrol and diesel.

However, the discrepancy is also due to the fundamental difference between the standard, pre-determined test cycle (in the case of the UK, the new European drive cycle, or NEDC) and the myriad journeys we make ‘in the wild’ none of which are likely to met the strict criteria of the laboratory. Unsurprisingly, automotive engineers design vehicles precisely to suit these official trials, but it is equally unsurprising that most motorists have to fill up at the pumps more often than they might have been expected to believe.

All of which makes work being done at the University of Toronto of potential interest to those people buying the two million new cars sold in this country annually. At the Transport Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington DC last week, Canadian researchers described how they have created a computer microsimulation which allows the generic test data to be adjusted in light of the real journeys we all make.

Their work offers up the possibility of vehicle buyers being able to walk into a showroom and tailor the official figures to the type(s) of journey they make most often be it motorway, urban or rural. Suddenly the NEDC figures aren’t just abstract numbers which have little in common with everyday driving experience but instead they are the basis for carefully crafted individual calculations which are unique to the lives we each lead and the specific trips we take and much more meaningful because of it.

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West Coast Main Line confusion: just who should run our rail and road services? Copy of Guardian article

By Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation.

This decision (like all rail franchising decisions) was always going to be subject to fierce scrutiny. Officials knew that the stakes were high and any weakness would expose the decision to judicial review. Equally, they must know that we all make mistakes, so a rigorous system of internal scrutiny and audit ought to have been in place to weed out the errors.

What is this episode going to do to the Department for Transport’s credibility over the planned new high speed line from London to Birmingham and beyond? Its route is similar to the west coast mainline. The commercial and economic justification for spending £20bn of taxpayers’ money on HS2 (for the full scheme to Manchester and Leeds) depends critically on a view of the passenger traffic it will carry up to 2026 and beyond. Several judicial reviews of the government’s decisions on HS2 are due to be heard soon.

Assessing commercial risks over 13 years is fundamentally difficult, especially in passenger rail markets. These have shown themselves to be sensitive to the state of the economy, the size and location of the population and changes in industrial structure. This is a disadvantage of the government’s recent decision to increase the terms of rail franchises from seven years.

Risks and uncertainties are intrinsic to all infrastructure investments however they are procured and funded. Dealing with this in a sensible manner is the bread-and-butter of the task facing the UK utility regulators.

So if, as seems to be the case, governments are going to continue to take a strong hand in the planning of our roads and railways they need to recognise this. They need strategies that are long term enough to reflect the fixed nature of these investments (ie decades) and which are resilient to the unexpected.

The government does have the basics of a five-year plan for the railways (not long enough) and it is currently developing a strategy for the strategic road network. This is overdue and most welcome. An important test will be its sophistication in dealing with risk and uncertainty.

But this does pose the question of whether the DfT has adequate professional and administrative resources.

Wednesday’s hitch is not the first. The public-private partnership for the London Underground was a catastrophic and hugely expensive failure. It was due to a toxic mixture of technical failures in contracting; inadequate appraisal of engineering, commercial and political risks; unrealism about the ability in practice to transfer those risks to private investors; all overlaid with political directives made in the face of evidence that they were a bad idea.

The DfT once had a world-leading reputation for the quality of its analysis. White papers used to be serious documents with supporting evidence. It is increasingly looking as though decades of running down of the quantity (if not the quality) of professional and administrative resource, together with an increasing reliance on external consultancy and a culture on the part of ministers and others to find evidence-based analysis “unhelpful” may be taking its toll.

Arguably, the transport secretary and the DfT now has more direct, administrative and policy responsibility for running Britain’s railways than in its whole history. Civil servants are purchasing trains, designing and procuring services, setting fares and determining investment. The failure of this procurement certainly does not lead to the conclusion that government should become even more directly involved: rather it reinforces the old adage that governments are not good at running railways.

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Latest figures highlight #greencar sales challenge as part of #climatechange fight.

Yesterday the SMMT announced that 59,433 cars were sold in August this year, the seventh month of consecutive growth, albeit from a recent low base.

As interesting as the headline figures are, the breakdown of vehicle type is equally revealing.

Small cars dominated sales, and overall diesel and petrol-powered car sales were neck and neck at just over 29,000 each. But the number of alternatively fuelled vehicles – hybrids, electric etc. – was a relatively low 655, just 47 more than the same month in the previous year.

The figures go some way to reflecting the overall UK car parc which comprises: 20 million petrol cars, 8 million diesels, 82,000 hybrids and a little over 2,000 fully electric vehicles.

While many internal-combustion engine cars could be described as good (and getting better) in fuel efficiency terms they do not yet fall in to the low carbon (less than 100 gCO₂/km) or ultra-low carbon (less than 50g CO₂/km) categories.

Those interested in, and charged with, helping the UK meet its objective of cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels) will not yet be unduly worried for the take-up of the greenest cars was always going to start with a trickle before – hopefully – becoming a flood in the next ten or fifteen years. But nothing is guaranteed and it is worth remembering that for all the hype about battery and hydrogen powered cars we have a long way to go.

The latest RAC Foundation factsheet – Cars and the environment – brings together some of the numbers and challenges to help illustrate what lies ahead.

One of the big issues is what targets there should be for the future. There is already a binding EU target in place which means that the average new car sold on the continent must produce 130 gCO₂/km by 2015. The debate now is what the 2020 target should be and how it should be achieved. The RAC Foundation supports the current proposal from the European Commission of 95 gCO₂/km but there are plenty of others who say this figure is either too high or too low.

On 3^rd November the RAC Future Car Challenge takes place once again, showcasing the very latest in environmentally friendly vehicles on a run between Brighton and London. Many will already be available in the showrooms. But as the SMMT figures demonstrate, just because they can be bought doesn’t necessarily mean that they are.

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#Road #tolls. The public business of getting more private investment in infrastructure

By Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation,

The Government is clearly convinced of the need for more infrastructure to help deliver the growth agenda. They are right.

But it is unwilling or unable to increase public borrowing in order to finance it so, as the Prime Minister has said, he is looking towards pension funds and other investors at home and overseas (including the Chinese) to step in.

So far, so good.

But private investors rightly insist on a return on their investment and the ability to reclaim what they have invested: they have to fulfil their obligations to those who have trusted them with their money.  Pension funds and many others are cautious investors. They will not accept high risks of losing their capital; by the same token they realise that they can only expect a relatively low return.

Investing capital in an operating infrastructure utility with the assurance from an independent regulator that charges to users will be sufficient to give a reasonable return (providing the asset is efficiently run) does create the ideal home for these investors: low and easily understood risks and steady returns. Sure enough, for decades pension funds and international investors have been financially backing these utilities on a massive scale.

But there are schemes that might produce sufficient financial returns—and more—to pay back private investors which the more conservative pension funds etc. will not touch because they cannot stomach the risks. An example is the so-called green field project; a brand new scheme which starts with a sheet of blank paper, as opposed to an established cash-generator. It is these projects which the financially nervous shy away from, wary of construction costs, planning hold-ups and forecast levels of customer demand.

The fast rail link from London to the Channel Tunnel (now HS1) was an example. In the mid 1990s this was offered to the international capital market as a fully privately financed venture. The markets were quick to say no.  So the taxpayer promoted the project and took the risks. It turned out that the markets had been quite right and billions of pounds of public subsidy were needed to complete the project. However, once completed and operating as a going concern with a proven market, things looked more rosy, hence the thirty year concession recently sold to a Canadian teachers’ pension fund for £2.1 billion.

So yesterday’s announcement by the government that they will start to underwrite some of the infrastructure investors’ risks may help and is welcome.

But there are dangers. Risk transfer—that is, ensuring private enterprises offering public services really do face the consequences of their actions—has been the most difficult single issue since 1980 when governments started to create partnerships with the private sector. As Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England repeatedly warned in respect of the banks, if investors come to expect that they will be bailed out if things go wrong but will be allowed to keep the benefits if things go well then they have every incentive to charge into the one-sided bet and no incentive to be prudent: it essentially crates a moral hazard.

Things will go wrong and the taxpayer will be liable. We have seen it repeatedly.

John Prescott rescued HS1 by underwriting a bond issue and promising that Railtrack would eventually buy phase 1 of HS1. Things went badly wrong, the guarantees were called and we know from the recent Public Accounts Committee report just how dearly it cost the taxpayer.

Another cautionary tale was the Public Private Partnership (PPP) for the London Underground. The contracts that were signed guaranteed most of the investors that they would get their money back whatever happened. So their bids grossly overestimated what they could deliver and there were inadequate incentives to be efficient. The contracts failed, the responsibilities fell back on the taxpayer and the full story of the cost to the taxpayer has yet to be told.

None of this is to argue against well-constructed, transparent contractual relationships between state and private enterprises: the allocation of risks must be clearly defined and enforced in practice, and the incentives must be carefully though through.

There are more than ten shadow tolled Private Finance Initiative (PFI) road schemes in the Highways Agency’s portfolio, some going back to the 1990s. The National Audit Office seems reasonably happy with most of them. Portsmouth, Birmingham and the London Borough of Hounslow have seen fit to sign long term contracts to maintain their local roads.  And all of London’s bus services are provided by the private sector under contract to the Mayor of London, a system that has worked brilliantly since the late 1980s.

But there is another fundamental problem. This Prime Minister said in March, “We need to look urgently at the options for getting large-scale private investment into the national roads network; from sovereign wealth funds, from pension funds, from other investors… we’re not tolling existing roads; it’s about getting more out of the money that motorists already pay.”

However if there are no explicit charges then it is unclear how new investment is to be repaid: there is nothing to invest in.

Many transport infrastructure schemes are not financially viable: HS2 is officially estimated to need over £20 billion of taxpayer support, while an untolled road generates no visible cash flow. For such projects it is not a matter of financial risk: the losses are certain! Underwriting risk will not help.

Unless, that is, the taxpayer makes a credible, enforceable, promise to put in enough money to create a residual proposition that does have a chance of  being financially viable.  That is a genuine partnership and it is common overseas. It is in the event what happened with HS1, though not by design. It is how a number of successful private finance initiative, shadow tolled roads have been working since the mid 1990s.

The simple arithmetic dictates that the nation can have more financially unviable infrastructure if, but only if national or local taxpayers pay more—this is securing the funding.  Once that is in place, the financing by pension funds and sovereign wealth funds will follow easily.

That is the package now in prospect with the announcement for the A14, a road of international importance, vital for the East Anglian and UK economies, a scheme that was unwisely withdrawn in the 2010 Spending Review.  Tolling is likely to be expected to make a contribution.  So will local taxes on the strength of the value it will create for local development and industry. The gap will have to be filled by the national taxpayer.

This is a good way forward; it’s just a pity that so many years have been lost with the to-ing and fro-ing. That has to stop. If this kind of sensible funding and financing package cannot be brokered—and quickly—for the A14, then it is not likely to succeed anywhere else.  But if it can be made to work today’s announcement could be the beginning of many successes. For instance the nightmare that is the A303 from the M3 to Exeter and beyond could be brought up to a uniform good standard and then tolled for the immense benefit of industry and the holiday trade in the West Country.

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Planning to drive to the continent? Check out EU #fuel prices.

Good news for drivers with diesel cars heading to the continent. Not so good news for owners of petrol cars. Data is mainly from Europe’s Energy Portal, plus DECC, with some of our own exchange rate calculations based on Post Office tourist rates.

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DVLA Scam

The Driving Standards Agency drivingstandardsagency@service.govdelivery.com is alerting drivers to a scam asking people to verify their licence details online.

People who receive an email like the one below should delete it. The DVLA http://www.dft.gov.uk/dvla/  has confirmed it has not sent out any such email.

“From: DVLA
Subject: Update Your License Details

We are currrently upgrading our database and all drivers are required to update and verify there driver’s license details.To complete your license verification with us, you are required to fill out the form in the link below.

{Fake link}

Drivers that refuses to upgrade his or her details within two weeks of receiving this verification email will lose his or her driver’s License and will have to take a fresh driving test.

We sincerely apologise for any inconviniences this might have caused you.

Thank you for your co-operation.

(c) Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency Swansea SA6 7JL”

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#Skoda salesman. Probably the easiest job in the world?

Interesting to hear from a colleague about his experience of visiting a Skoda dealership in a quest for a new car. Impressed by the Fabia Greenline’s long list of attributes – plenty of space, frugal nature, very reasonable price – he called a dealer to see if he could arrange a test drive. He couldn’t.

The salesman said the previous demonstrator had been sold and the next one wouldn’t be in for several weeks, after which it too would probably soon sell, such is the apparent demand for these vehicles. My colleague was therefore invited to buy ‘off-plan’ and get his order in now for delivery well into the future.

The second Skoda dealer he rang said the best he could do was let my colleague visit the showroom and sit inside the petrol version of the car, have a drive in another model fitted with the diesel version of the engine he wanted and make a judgement based on that. If on the basis of that he wanted to buy the car then he could sign on the dotted line. The salesman said the Fabia was essentially selling itself.

The popularity of Skodas was underlined in the latest Auto Express Driver Power survey which put three Skoda models in the top five (including at number one) with the Fabia at number 23.

Thus far my colleague has yet to decide on what he will buy, though he was at least thankful for one aspect of his Skoda experience: the complete absence of the hard sell. There was no need for it.

 

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You think #petrol prices are high here? Fuel price shock awaits holiday drivers heading to the Continent

Despite soaring fuel prices at home, UK drivers are in for an even bigger shock as they head to the Continent over the Easter break.

Several European countries have higher petrol prices than here even though many are in the midst of a severe economic downturn.

Denmark has the highest petrol price (£1.59 per litre) followed by the Netherlands and Italy (both £1.58), Greece (£1.56) and Sweden (£1.51). Portugal, Belgium, France, Finland, Germany and Ireland also have higher prices than the UK which is at number 12 in the list.

The cheapest petrol in Europe is to be found in Romania at £1.12 per litre.

Country	Unleaded	£	Diesel	£
	Consumer price		Consumer price
	inc tax/duty Euros		inc tax/duty Euros
Denmark	€                     1.86	£   1.59	€                      1.64	£   1.40
The Netherlands	€                     1.85	£   1.58	€                      1.51	£   1.29
Italy	€                     1.85	£   1.58	€                      1.74	£   1.49
Greece	€                     1.83	£   1.56	€                      1.59	£   1.36
Sweden	€                     1.77	£   1.51	€                      1.71	£   1.46
Portugal	€                     1.75	£   1.50	€                      1.55	£   1.32
Belgium	€                     1.75	£   1.49	€                      1.55	£   1.33
France	€                     1.73	£   1.48	€                      1.55	£   1.33
Finland	€                     1.70	£   1.45	€                      1.56	£   1.34
Germany	€                     1.70	£   1.45	€                      1.53	£   1.31
Ireland	€                     1.65	£   1.41	€                      1.58	£   1.35
UK	€                     1.65	£   1.41	€                      1.73	£   1.48
Slovakia	€                     1.57	£   1.34	€                      1.48	£   1.26
Hungary	€                     1.52	£   1.30	€                      1.52	£   1.30
Czech Republic	€                     1.50	£   1.28	€                      1.50	£   1.28
Spain	€                     1.50	£   1.28	€                      1.39	£   1.19
Slovenia	€                     1.49	£   1.28	€                      1.37	£   1.17
Austria	€                     1.48	£   1.26	€                      1.42	£   1.21
Malta	€                     1.45	£   1.24	€                      1.36	£   1.16
Latvia	€                     1.44	£   1.23	€                      1.39	£   1.19
Luxembourg	€                     1.44	£   1.23	€                      1.29	£   1.11
Lithuania	€                     1.43	£   1.23	€                      1.35	£   1.15
Estonia	€                     1.40	£   1.19	€                      1.41	£   1.20
Poland	€                     1.39	£   1.19	€                      1.39	£   1.18
Cyprus	€                     1.38	£   1.18	€                      1.39	£   1.19
Bulgaria	€                     1.38	£   1.18	€                      1.37	£   1.17
Romania	€                     1.31	£   1.12	€                      1.34	£   1.15
EU Average	€                     1.58		€                      1.49

Note: the table above is ordered by highest to lowest petrol prices in pounds. The data for European prices comes from www.energy.eu where everything is quoted in euros. These have been converted to pounds using today’s tourist exchange rate of £1=€1.17

Drivers heading for the Continent should not be under any illusion that they will find cheaper fuel in many of the popular holiday destinations. Even if you allow for the hike in prices seen here over the last few days caused by the tanker drivers’ dispute, petrol prices will be eye-wateringly high in several countries. While petrol might be easier to find across the Channel, motorists are still going to need deep pockets to buy it.

However the picture is different when it comes to diesel with UK pump prices second only to Italy, with cheaper diesel to be found in the remaining 25 countries of the 27-member European Union (EU).

Compared with the other 26 countries in the EU, the UK is the only one to have the same level of duty for both diesel and petrol. Everywhere else the rate of duty for diesel is less than that for petrol and this is reflected in the price of diesel which is almost universally cheaper across the Channel. With about 30% of the UK’s car fleet now diesel-powered this will be good news for many of the hundreds of thousands of drivers travelling abroad this summer.

UK fuel prices were taken from the Department of Energy and Climate Change website:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/publications/basket.aspx?filepath=statistics%2fsource%2fprices%2fweeklyfuel.xls&filetype=4&minwidth=true
 

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Green Bankers?

City Spy in the Evening Standard asks, ‘Are bankers becoming greener or just poorer?’ as Canary Wharf takes out two floors of underground car park to convert them into shops and bars.  At the height of the financial boom in the late Nineties, a staggering 12% of Canary Wharf workers demanded a car parking space, and the property group created 6000. Today the demand has halved to 6%, and several firms now have more parking spaces than their employees want.

Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturer and Traders   show that in 2011 sales of many luxury car marques fell, with an overall fall in new car sales of around 4.5%. But if bonuses are no longer running to a Porsche 911, what are our future Michael Bloombergs spending their money on?  Are they becoming committed to travel by public transport and splashing out on the increasing number of apps available to ensure a seat near the exit from the tube or the quickest route by bus to the City?

Not a bit of it. Expensive racing bikes are now being sold faster than ever and people are living the Bradley Wiggins fantasy.  But like all dreams, even this one will come to an end when the Olympic memory fades, the British winter returns and bankers feel rich again. A new generation of desirable low carbon vehicles is already hitting the market with cars like the Aston Martin Cygnet and the Tesla Roadster. Such cars will enable bankers, and many others, to be green but to continue to use cars for all they can offer our economy and society.  And those cars will need spaces to park.

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