A £75million fund made available to Highways England to cut pollution on the nation’s motorways over the previous five years was only half spent – and the Government-owned company failed to identify any ‘effective solutions’ despite the sizable financial outlay, according to an official review.
Some £38.7million has been squandered on a trial of pollution barriers designed to capture harmful emissions and a network of 60 roadside stations to monitor air quality levels.
With £36.3million of the available air quality fund remaining, the report claimed that Highways England was ‘unable to identify’ additional ways to disburse the fund and looks set to roll out speed limit reductions across the motorway network to tackle vehicle pollution.
Failed spending: A review of Highways England spending has found that it used just half of £75million air quality fund amounting made available to find new ways to reduce vehicle emissions on the motorway network
The revelation about the lack of progress to cut emissions on major roads was published this week by watchdog Office for Rail and Road, in its report assessing the organisation’s spending between 2015 and 2020.
It said in the review: ‘The underspend on air quality reflects that Highways England was unable to identify effective solutions on which to spend the funds, despite putting in significant effort.
‘Due to the lack of effective solutions, the company has moved its focus to reducing emissions at source.’
Highways England initially trialled ‘air quality barriers’ on the M62 near Simister, Greater Manchester in 2015, costing £2.5million.
These were four-metre-high structures running along either side of a 100-metre long stretch of the road. It was later increased to a height of six metres in 2016.
Further trials, which use a barrier coated in a mineral polymer material to absorb nitrogen dioxide, have also been put in place at various locations.
According to Highways England, the barriers, which have been trialled in other European countries work by ‘dispersing emissions and can act as an effective safeguard to communities near busy roads’ but their impact on UK roads appear to have been limited.
Reduced speed limit trials are already taking place on four sections of motorway to understand the emissions impact of slower-moving vehicles. More trials were planned for 2020 though have been stalled due to lower traffic volumes due to Covid-19
Highways England has been working with the Department for Transport and the Joint Air Quality Unit to support the Government’s air quality policies, which have a significant focus on curbing emissions from cars, vans and trucks.
It has reviewed 101 sections of the strategic road network and assessed their compliance with legal limits for nitrogen dioxide (NOx) – the harmful emissions linked to breathing problems and thousands of premature deaths.
However, the results of this review will not be published until next year, when the company will name which motorways need mitigation.
These potential measures are likely to include lower speed limits and what has been termed ‘additional traffic management solutions’.
There are already speed limit reduction trials in place on four section of motorway that have been identified among the sections where NOx levels are illegally high.
These are parts of the M32 near Bristol, the A1 at Blaydon, Tyneside, the M4 around Harlington, London, and the M621 in close proximity to Leeds.
Most of these sections have had speed limits cut by 10mph to 60mph.
The watchdog says a number of other proposed speed limit reductions are ‘currently paused due the decreased levels of traffic, and pollution, due to the coronavirus pandemic’ and that ‘further monitoring and analysis is required to better understand when measures will be delivered to achieve compliance in the shortest time possible’.
Highways England will next year publish the results of a review of 101 sections of the strategic road network that assesses their compliance with legal limits for nitrogen dioxide (NOx) – the harmful emissions linked to breathing problems and thousands of premature deaths
In the spending review, it added: ‘The resulting underspend [of the air quality fund] of £36.1million was balanced by overspends on other budget lines.
‘Highways England has asked the Department for Transport to consider if it can spend £21.2million in 2020-21 to deliver some of the air quality measures that could not be delivered in the previous year – the outcome of this request is pending at the time of publication.’
In general, the report claims that Highways England has delivered the majority of its commitments to improving the performance of the country’s motorway network, but the programme set out for major improvements was ‘too optimistic’.
It also found that motorway delays had increased from an average 8.9 seconds per mile five years ago to 9.3 seconds last year and called for more focus to improve safety for all road users, further involve its customers into planning and decision making, and work even more efficiently in the coming years.
ORR said further ‘hard work’ is required if Highways England is to meet its safety target for 2020, and that further investment is needed to meet its longer-term goal that nobody should be harmed on the network by 2040.
Highways England has the optimistic target of there being no individuals harmed on motorways by 2040 – an objective that has received plenty of criticism when linked to hundreds of miles being converted to ‘smart’ motorways without hard shoulders
Vast quantities of taxpayers’ money – amounting to billions of pounds – has already been spent by Highways England to convert stretches of the network into ‘smart’ motorways.
These have been heavily criticised by motoring groups and safety campaigners due to the omission of the hard shoulder on those with all-lane-running designs, leaving stranded motorists no way of escaping their vehicles.
A recent BBC Panorama investigation found that 38 people had died on these types of motorways in the last five years.
A Freedom of Information request sent by the programme to Highways England revealed that on one section of the M25, outside London, the number of near misses had risen 20-fold since the hard shoulder was removed in April 2014.
In the five years before the road was converted into a smart motorway there were just 72 near misses. In the five years after, there were 1,485 – a staggering increase of 1,963 per cent.
John Larkinson, Office of Rail and Road chief executive, said: ‘Over the last five years Highways England has made very good progress and we have seen it meeting almost all of the targets it was set.
‘We have pushed Highways England hard to deliver on safety, efficiency and meeting the needs of road users.
‘Highways England’s task is going to get bigger, as it needs to deliver a larger programme of works set out in the Government’s 2020 Road Investment Strategy, and we will continue to provide close scrutiny.’
A recent poll named the M20 as England’s worst motorway. This was due roadworks being in place for two years while Highways England converted it to an all-lane-running smart route
A report published by Transport Focus earlier this week named the M20 as England’s most hated motorway.
A poll of 8,000 drivers resulted in a satisfaction score of 62 per cent for the motorway linking London to Dover, which was 12 per cent lower than the much-loathed M25.
The reason it received such a poor review was due to a two-year conversion to a smart motorway long 6.5-miles of the road, which will see the hard shoulder become a permanent fourth lane.
Reduced speed limits of 50mph around roadworks on the section of motorway have been in place since July 2018, with the upgrade only completed in May this year.
It came at a cost to taxpayers of £92million, Highways England has confirmed.
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