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RAC FOUNDATION How do we keep traffic moving, even in extreme weather?
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IT SEEMS OUR changing climate is throwing up more extremes of weather, more regularly. With these come particular problems for our transport networks, whose stark vulnerability is frequently exposed. Take the Stonehaven train derailment on 12 August this year in which three people died, the result of landslip caused by heavy rain. The official response was, rightly, swift. At least five organisations started investigations – Network Rail, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, the Office of Rail and Road, British Transport Police and Police Scotland – while two independent inquiries have been launched to look at the wider impact of severe conditions on the railways. It is not just train tracks that are susceptible to the worst the weather can throw at us; roads too are in the eye of the storm. A day after the tragedy in Scotland, a section of the M25 was closed in both directions after a torrential downpour left it swamped. There were no deaths but one of the busiest roads in Europe was brought
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to a standstill, with all the economic and personal disruption which resulted. These scenarios are not a wholly recent phenomenon – indeed, a decade ago David Quarmby, then chair of the RAC Foundation, led a governmentcommissioned study into what could have been done better to keep the country moving after the chaos caused by snow and ice during the winter of 2009-10 – but the challenges appear to be multiplying and the weather increasingly unseasonal. That’s why the Foundation has written to the Office of Rail and Road – as the regulator – asking that it probes whether those in charge of keeping our most important routes open to traffic are doing enough in the face of the growing meteorological onslaught and if they have acted fully on the recommendations made in the Quarmby report, and others. Whilst it is important that we adopt the best design and construction practice for any new routes, the reality is that our road system is mature, and most resources need to be focused on looking after the 247,000 miles of road already in place in Great Britain. Part of the answer lies in the mundane: cleaning drainage ditches for example. Yet the scale of the task is immense. Highways England – which is responsible for the country’s motorways and major A roads – points out that it alone has a network of 24,000 miles of pipes and ditches, and 1.4 million chambers and gullies to keep maintained. If nothing else, this is another reminder that for all the welcome investment in shiny new transport schemes, we mustn’t stop spending on what we’ve already got: from filling potholes to painting the lines to clearing gullies to cutting the verges.
