Image: Highways England
The RAC says it’s a case of ‘short-term pain for longer term gain’ for drivers in England after new figures show an increase in delays on major A-roads and motorways in 2018.
Figures published by the DfT on 28 February show ‘average delay’ on the Strategic Road Network (SRN) rose by 3.9% to 9.4 seconds per vehicle per mile last year.
Average delay on local ‘A’ roads is also up, by 0.8%, to 47.3 seconds per vehicle per mile.
In terms of average speed, there was a year-on-year fall on the SRN (down by 0.6% to 59mph) and on local ‘A’ roads (down 1.3% to 24.9mph).
The RAC says while added congestion is ‘clearly bad news’, drivers should take into account ongoing work to improve capacity on motorways.
Nicholas Lyes, RAC head of roads policy, said: “More congestion means more wasted time and money, which is clearly bad news for drivers, but it may be a case of short-term pain for longer term gain.
“Much work is being carried out on our motorways to improve capacity by upgrading them to smart motorways, but this inevitably causes delays.
“Nonetheless, extra capacity is badly needed as Britain now has around 38m vehicles registered for use, and in the 10 years from 2007 more than four million extra vehicles came on to the road – that’s a 12% increase.”
Just a bye the bye…if there has been a large increase of some 4 million vehicles on our roads in the last 10 years or so. An increase of some 12% then maybe, just maybe, that may possibly be the reason that stats have flatlined and not shown any particular decrease possibly due to that increased traffic and risk.
With an extra 4 million vehicles on our roads its bound to increase the level of incidents and collision but maybe instead of the stats increasing they have just remained at a consistent level instead without showing any lowering. We may believe that things have not improved over that same period of time but maybe they have as we have the same stats with 12% more traffic.
R.Craven
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