£300m traffic jam-busting scheme made journeys longer, Highways England admits

RAC describes findings as ‘very disappointing’

A £317m project designed to tackle bottlenecks has actually made traffic jams worse on dozens of major roads, a government-owned company has admitted.

Highways England revealed the pinch point programme often resulted in benefits for rush hour journeys after one year but they were outweighed by delays at other times of day.

Longer journey times during off-peak periods cost £5.6m in the first year, compared with shorter journeys at peak periods which had a benefit worth £5.1m.

The RAC described the findings as “very disappointing”.

Nearly half of the schemes with an objective to cut journey times failed to achieve that goal.

The location of projects which resulted in increased congestion with the most expensive economic costs include:

* The junction of the A5 and A49 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (£2.5m)

* M6 junction 23 in Newton-Le-Willows, Merseyside (£1.5m)

* M40 junction nine in Wendlebury, Oxfordshire (£1m)

Highways England published the figures in a recent report after evaluating the first-year impact of nearly half of the 119 schemes, which were carried out on England’s motorways and major A roads.

The organisation believes the negative impacts were predominantly caused by the introduction of traffic lights.

The report concluded it must consider the impact of projects “across all 168 hours of the week, not just the 10-30 peak hours”.

Future schemes must “better consider how to mitigate the downsides while maintaining the upsides”, the document added.

The pinch point programme was established in 2011 to relieve congestion, stimulate growth in local economies and improve safety.

Small-scale projects generally costing up to £10m were chosen, with work often involving junction modifications, adding traffic lights, widening slip roads and new signage.

The programme was largely delivered by Highways England’s predecessor, the Highways Agency, and was completed by March 2016.

RAC head of roads policy, Nicholas Lyes, said: “It’s very disappointing that Highways England’s work to tackle pinch points on its road network has not been as successful as had been hoped.

“While congestion has been reduced at peak times of the day, unfortunately many schemes have seen increased traffic at off-peak periods, mostly due to traffic lights being introduced.

“Luckily, it seems as though there are some simple steps that can be taken to improve the worst of these new off-peak traffic flow issues, such as changing signals to work part time instead of full time.

“It is also important to realise that this work was not just about reducing congestion, and that many schemes have seen small reductions in the number of road casualties.”

Additional reporting by Press Association