Kent County Council (KCC) have produced their fifth local transport plan (LTP). Due to expire in 2031, the previous plan was called Delivering Growth Without Gridlock but a new plan called Striking the Balance was drafted in 2023.
A common theme
It’s always good to have a plan. After all, we are often told that failing to plan means planning to fail but writing a plan is different to implementing it. It is pointless to continue writing plans with pie in the sky objectives that rely on the government to fund a project that is meant to deliver growth without gridlock but almost certainly never does. This is a common theme within all five previous transport plans. According to KCC, all that is necessary to solve our traffic problems is to allocate a load of cash, wheel out the bulldozer and concrete mixer and all will be well.
The Lower Thames Crossing features prominently in all of their plans, but like its counterpart – the tunnel at Stonehenge – it has rumbled on for years without implementation. Although the Stonehenge tunnel has been cancelled, the Lower Thames Crossing escaped the latest Westminster cuts in expenditure.
The Smeed Report
We have known since 1964 when the Smeed Report was issued that motorists are deterred if the average road speed goes below nine miles per hour and encouraged to use the car if that average speed rises above that. The Smeed Report advocated using road pricing to balance demand against available road space as a more economical way of managing road use rather than resorting to road construction.
The battle of the Newbury Bypass finally ended the motorway construction madness on grounds of cost and gave credence to Smeed’s contention of what is known as induced traffic demand where adding to the road space merely adds to the level of demand and does not improve traffic flow.
Recent KCC projects funded by the government
The last government funded several transport projects in Kent which either exceeded budget or have not achieved their objectives. Thanet Parkway station suffered quadrupled costs from £11mn to £44mn, has no connecting bus service and is difficult to access except by car. How about the delayed £34mn Dover Fastrack bus route that will not operate with the planned five electric buses at its commencement?
Finally, we have the Sandwich station platform upgrade at £4.3mn designed to handle 12 car trains, when apart from golf’s Open Championship which is held nearby every 10 years, all trains consist of no more than eight carriages because the other stations on the line can only handle eight carriages at a maximum.
Dover District Council called the project a sign of confidence in the town. All of these projects could have been replaced at a lower cost, and more efficiently, by a well-planned local bus network using the most up-to-date vehicles. KCC has spent nearly £90mn achieving nothing while at the same time watching the bus network decline and diminish.
Transport problems in Kent
This plan and all its predecessors are very accurate in describing the problems of traffic management in Kent which are:
- An underfunding of maintenance; for example, more potholes.
- Traffic congestion.
- Poor air quality and indications of poor outcomes on obesity and life expectancy in Kent.
- Declining public transport networks.
- Congestion and gridlock arising from problems at the Port of Dover that KCC say is beyond their capacity to fix.
- Carbon emissions from the transport network are not reducing sufficiently to meet the net zero objective required to mitigate climate change by the 2050 target date set by the government.
- KCC is underfunded and the funding is too short-term.
KCC is a conservative body in so many ways, but its principle failing is that it persists in believing that it can continue to apply policies that hark back over five decades when the car was king and you could build your way out of trouble. As I have shown, these policies lead nowhere.
Alternative transport solutions
Here is an alternative to Striking the Balance:
- Use the bus as a planning tool and increase the use of park and ride facilities by discouraging inner town and city parking, except for residents.
- Adopt cycling and walking as a strategy and stop the rhetoric about the war against the motorist.
- Spend more money on measuring pollution and carbon emissions because the current monitoring systems are woefully inadequate. We cannot mitigate something that is not accurately measured.
- Prioritise the bus passengers so that local bus services are comfortable, reliable and economical, thereby encouraging short urban journeys by bus instead of by car. Due to urban congestion bus average speeds in England are 11.7mph according to the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT).
- Bring road maintenance in-house and mechanise them by devices such as the JCB PotholePro. Outsourcing is costly, inefficient, and managerialist. KCC tries to cut costs while contractors try to maximise profit.
- Urban planning concepts need reform so that car-centric schemes are discouraged. This will require more bus lanes, cycle routes and pedestrian-only areas. Instead of being a cheerleader for the car, KCC will need to win the hearts and minds of the public and to persuade them that change is not only a good thing, but necessary. The war against the motorist sloganeering only makes the situation worse. It requires a new kind of local government leadership not bound by the past and chasing transient popularity in culture wars around car use.
- Poor health outcomes and low life expectancy rates are expensive to treat with medical interventions. Out-of-town shopping centres and drive-thru fast food outlets make people unhealthy from lack of exercise especially if they are sitting in traffic jams. KCC is guilty of joint enterprise with the districts and developers in making the problem worse by passing plans for more outlets. At least walking or cycling to the local fast food outlet would mitigate some of this. Kent has some extreme socioeconomic disparities in life expectancy and poor urban planning outcomes in socially deprived areas only make this worse.
- The motorways within Kent are becoming lorry parks by default because the government and Dover Harbour Board (DHB) have failed to manage the post-Brexit border problems. The government has made numerous promises on enhanced facilities at Dover and further inland, yet the people of Dover and Kent are still suffering intolerable restrictions in their lives that would not be tolerated elsewhere. This must change. A few million pounds spent on altering the gauge in the older rail tunnels would allow much more freight to be shifted by rail, thus lessening traffic on the M20. This might cost less than the proposed dualling of the A2.
Striking the Balance
Striking the Balance is a disappointing document which does not achieve balance because it is biased in favour of the car. Instead of looking at the problems with transport afresh, KCC has reverted to its old ways of promoting road building or highway engineering to solve congestion. Building more roads adds to long-term maintenance costs and the growth in potholes is the result. When will KCC realise that building more roads is not in the best interests of the county?
Bus services hardly get a mention, but if they are promoted and funded as part of a holistic approach to transport planning things might improve. In the past, concrete flyovers, road widening, and urban demolition were promoted as solutions and many of our towns suffered disfigurement as a result. The problem is extensive car use, especially in urban areas. This does not mean banning cars altogether but using them less by walking, cycling and riding the bus more frequently.
As we have seen with London’s Ulezs and congestion charges, road charging as a concept often creates a reaction from those who consider such measures unfair and a tax on freedom. Leadership means making difficult choices which is where the report is a failure as leadership by KCC is sadly lacking.
A lack of leadership
The structural weaknesses and lack of leadership in Kent’s local government are shown in the second Lower Thames Crossing proposals. I am sure everyone in Dartford and Gravesham wishes to use their cars constantly but they do not want to receive what they see as the downside of car use by others in their area.
Despite the claims by National Highways that the Lower Thames Crossing is the greenest stretch of highway ever to be built in the UK, not everyone seems convinced. At £9bn including an eye-watering £300mn in planning costs, the estimated cost is more expensive per mile than the cancelled HS2 northern extension. It may prove to be of transitory benefit in relieving congestion, as has happened elsewhere; traffic increased on the nearby M25 motorway as soon as it was widened.
Road pricing and better public transport links would cut demand and unlike the M25 would not increase traffic demand. If measures were taken to reduce the number of car journeys at Dartford so that the existing facilities could cope that would be a cheaper and more robust long-term solution. The Dartford Crossing does charge a toll but there is no public transport option therefore giving no short-term alternatives.
Change is inevitable and Striking the Balance ought to reflect changing circumstances of unresolved urban congestion and climate change rather than dwell in the past where every aspiring family had more than one car.
