Transport Crucible . com

There are two fundamental reasons why prevailing trends in UK traffic management fail to deliver improvement in solving the many problems arising from congestion, and increase costs in time and money for the majority of road users. The commercialisation of traffic regulation enforcement is one. That source of policy-shaping rot began with the ‘decriminalising of parking enforcement’ in 1991, as the DfT explains here. Before then, the only goal for policing roads was to deliver tangible improvement in traffic flow and/or safety. Now, a primary driver for parking regulation enforcerment is to make sufficient profit from that activity to sustain a privately owned business – and provide a sufficiently high revenue stream to local government for the service provider to continue being the preferred contractor. The other is the redirection of aims for traffic engineers and highway designers away from optimising flow of the most widely used road modes – and towards prioritising movement by modes that facilitate the minority of movements for people and goods. And, as the former Vice Chair of TfL, Dave Wetzel reveals in LM’s research, the pivotal moment in that change of direction was when he and Ken Livingstone first took control of London’s government in 1981, and set up a “Sin Bin” for planners who persisted in trying to maintain or improve traffic flow. Up until then, throughout the 1970s, traffic volume increased dramatically in London but flow rates were maintained by the successful efforts of transport planners to improve the efficiency of the existing network. And, coincidentally, according to Wetzel, the ‘sin bin’ strategy was re-established during the second round of power for Livingstone and him when they took charge of TfL in 2000…
Frankly, if you can’t see how this has skewed the primary aims and objectives for UK traffic management away from improving transport for the majority of road users, and create a fine mess instead – you probably need more help than TransportCrucible.com can offer.