Eight professors speak with one voice about their concerns for the future of road investment in a new report published today.

We face a climate emergency. We face a nature emergency. We face social injustice. We have 190,000 miles of roads in England to maintain. In 2021, 1,558 people were killed on Britain’s roads. We need to open our minds to how best to address these issues when we invest in roads. We need to make robust investment decisions in the face of an uncertain future.

This is difficult territory & there is now an important moment to confront it. A new Road Investment Strategy is being developed for England’s strategic roads, in the shadow of last year’s COP27 (climate change), COP15 (biodiversity), a High Court ruling that the Government’s Net Zero Strategy is unlawful, & criticism from the Committee on Climate Change that the UK Government lacked specific ambition to limit traffic growth.

Steve Gooding & I as University of the West of England professors, secured a grant from the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund to convene what we have called the Road Investment Scrutiny Panel. Over a three-month period the Panel has sought to identify what aspects of future road investment & spending give us all cause for concern, & what we would like to see happen to address those concerns.

Our Panel members speak their minds & feel strongly about the views they contributed to the Panel’s work. That they are united in what is set out in the new report published today should therefore be taken seriously.

Here are the seven questions that reflect our concerns:

1. What would make us feel confident that decisions on future road investment, at both the scheme and aggregate level, are consistent with the legal obligation to deliver a credible pathway to the decarbonisation of the UK economy by 2050?

2. What would make us feel confident that the policy imperative & opportunities to promote biodiversity enhancement are being recognised & pursued on their own merits, as opposed to biodiversity being ‘accommodated’ in pursuit of other goals?

3. How can we be persuaded that the health & social impacts of road spending experienced by individual people & communities are well understood & given sufficient weight at all stages of decision-making?

4. What would give us confidence that appropriate financial provision is being made for operating, maintaining & optimising the performance of the existing road network?

5. What would persuade us that options for investing in improving road safety are being identified & weighed appropriately?

6. What would persuade us that road investment & expenditure decisions – at the scheme & programme level – are the result of serious consideration of a genuinely broad range of options & their merits?

7. What would persuade us that road investment & expenditure decisions are likely to represent value for money over the long term?

Find our report at https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10295773/