Context and challenges

Context

• Traffic congestion, will cost an extra £22bn in wasted time for all of us, especially business, by 2025
• Congestion on the road network would be worth some £7-8 billion of GDP per annum
• Improving gateways, or links between the UK and the countries with which we trade and do vital business.
• Delays and unreliability on the network have direct costs to people and businesses
• Human factors to travel and road congestion
• Climate change - increased CO₂ through congestion and poor planning

 Our challenge  

• Support innovative solutions to major policy and societal challenges.
  
• Bring together Government officials (policy and funding) across Whitehall, Research Councils and regions.
  
• Enable business and Government to work more closely together.
  
• Align policy, regulation and Government procurement in support of.
  
• Innovative solutions to societal problems.
  
• Align funding streams from separate sources.
  
• Link research to market through procurement opportunities.
  
• Deliver a step-change in UK performance, in the quality of public.
  
• Services and the ability of UK businesses to provide solutions for personal travel.

Some of the factors to be considered

Poor traffic management
Where traffic is dense and road capacity stretched, delays are sometimes said to occur if junction arrangements are ineffective, if there are too many traffic lights, if lights are poorly co-ordinated, or if lane markings are unclear.

Bus and cycle lanes
It is sometimes argued that these dedicated lanes increase congestion by reducing the road space available to other types of traffic.

Traffic calming
It is designed to slow traffic down, but may therefore incidentally reduce road capacity and can has been accused of adding to congestion.

Holiday traffic
In peak public holidays, the density of traffic increases, but tends to vary from area to area.

Roadworks
Sometimes roads are blocked altogether, throwing all the traffic on to neighbouring routes. Single carriageway roads may have alternate lane working, which can cause considerable hold-ups. Larger roads may have one or more lanes closed, creating bottlenecks.  

Driver behaviour
Sometimes local congestion is discovered to have been caused by inappropriate driver behaviour for example sitting on yellow box junctions, hogging the outside lane on motorways or parking obstructively.

Causeless congestion
Sometimes drivers feel they sit for quite a while in jams, but cannot see any reason for the hold-up when they finally move on.

Accidents, breakdowns
If traffic is light these would sometimes cause only short delays, but when the vehicle count is high even a short breakdown can build up to a major hold-up. They can be aggravating because they are essentially unpredictable, so there is no way of making allowances for them.

The school run
This is at its worst close to schools (which are sometimes sited in areas not designed to cope with a lot of traffic), but it is also seen to have a general effect on traffic levels over a wide area. The effect would be most marked if your journey takes you near a school at the affected time, but even in general driving, people often say they notice a significant increase in journey times when the children go back to school to the extent that many consciously leave earlier during term-time.

Mental and emotional effects
As well as some of the sort of areas for congestion as above, congestion can provoke a series of mental and emotional responses for individual drivers. These include the following:

• Congested conditions are generally unpleasant and hassling to drive in as well as inconvenient. Driving in congestion puts some people in a bad mood.
  
• Congestion "stresses you out" often a major contributor to the stress which many complain about as a feature of driving.
  
• The delays and pressures of driving in heavy and congested traffic make many people feel frustrated at having to cope with the conditions, frustrated at not being able to get quickly to where you want to be, and frustrated at being late for work or having to waste your time.
  
• Sometimes frustration and stress boils over into irritation, anger or even rage. Although most people attributed road rage to other drivers rather than themselves some did nevertheless confess that serious or continual congestion can have this effect on them.
  
• Congestion can provoke a sense of insecurity in less confident drivers, which easily breeds anxiety and confusion. Some people avoid driving in places or at times where they expect congestion, simply because the prospect frightens them, and they are nervous about being able to cope.