Build more motorways
This would increase economic growth and save lives
I have written before about a high quality recent summary of the transport literature. The authors find that, on average, returns to investment in roads are 6.5x the returns for rail. Investing in new roads is typically economically far, far superior to investing in new rail lines, station improvements, and so on. HS2 is not only absurd because of the cost, but because spending so much money on a short railway line used up money that could have transformed our road network.
The UK should build a European standard motorway network. It is not straightforward to compare networks, of course. A country like France, with more land per person will need more miles of motorway per person. But equally a country like the Netherlands, which has less land per person needs fewer motorways per person. As you might have guessed, both countries have far more motorways than we do.
In fact, if we rank countries on the average of the amount of motorways relative to area, and relative to population, the UK ranks 15th within Western Europe. The only country we beat is Iceland (I am excluding tiny countries such as Andorra, Luxembourg and the Vatican). The Netherlands has four times as many motorways as we do, while Germany, France and the majority of other countries have at least twice as many.
Nor is this just a happenstance of history. Countries that are far ahead of us are building more motorways at a rapid rate. In contrast we have almost given up. Over the last 35 years we have built, on average, 12 miles of new motorways a year, largely in Scotland. In contrast, Germany has averaged 40, France 85, and Spain 200 extra miles. That means that, over those 35 years, Germany has built about 1000 miles more than we have, France 2500 extra miles, and Spain 6500 miles more.
Nor is it just Western Europe: Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary have more than doubled their motorway networks in the last twenty years, and all outrank us. No wonder we are struggling to attract investment.
A map of the UK suggests many plausible motorways. Felixstowe, a major port for imports and exports is far from the motorway network. There is no continuous motorway between England and Scotland, while Wales and Northern Ireland have only a token amount of motorways. We should build a motorway from Southampton port to the Midlands and North, extend the south coast M27 motorway to Exeter and Dover, upgrade the A66 and A69 trans-Pennine roads to motorway standard, and so on. There are also many journeys that should have sensible motorway options so people do not use smaller roads instead. For example, the usual google directions from Heathrow to Cambridge involve 13 roundabouts on the 70 mile journey between the airport and the edge of Cambridge. This is not good infrastructure.
Building more motorways would have other benefits. They are already our safest roads by a long way - three times less deadly than other types of roads. Replacing inter-urban A roads with motorways would save lives. Bypassing smaller towns and villages would improve urban air quality and the health of the nation (no-one should build motorways through towns and cities, of course). The rise of electric cars means that motorways and car travel are much less bad for the environment than used to be the case.
If the government or any opposition party is serious about economic growth it should propose a major road building programme, with the aim of closing the gap with our European neighbours.
Not sure I agree with the logic in here. Despite poor road infrastructure, Felixstowe and Southampton would benefit much more from dedicated freight railways to Daventry/other 'inland ports'. Part of the problem there is single track freight lines where freight trains are slow and cannot easily pass other freight or passenger services. Of course, large parts of Europe are building more motorways and faster, but our definitions of motorways are also quite specific - rarely in Poland do you see motorways with hard shoulders and more than two lanes, it just happens that they've been built recently with extensive EU funding to upgrade single-lane roads.
One factor in road construction that needs much further inspection is land prices. Does land, per hectare, cost more in Britain than it does on the continent? The ability of both commercial and residential developers to extract unsually tough terms from occupiers may well play a role in land prices. Tackling this imbalance may make road construction more affordable in Britain.