Gardiner V., Matthews H. The changing geography of the United Kingdom

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In terms of vehicle km all traffic increased by 36 per cent over the decade 1986–

96, with cars and taxi traffic rising by 37 per cent. In 1996 there were 21.17 million

private cars registered in Great Britain, and trips made by car drivers and their

passengers accounted for 84.7 per cent of all journeys made by road and rail transport

(Tables 6.7, 6.8). There has also been a 32 per cent rise since 1986 in the average

distance travelled by car by each person per year, whereas the distances covered by

bus, motorcycle and cycle have all fallen. Data from the 1993/5 National Travel Survey

also indicates that car travel now accounts for 81 per cent of all road traffic and for 94

per cent of all national passenger traffic. Large increases have also taken place in

road freight transport, with a 46 per cent rise in the amount of roadborne freight

traffic since 1986 and a 30 per cent increase in the distance travelled by commercial

vehicles.

These increased flows are carried on an infrastructure which has been progressively

improved in terms of new and upgraded trunk and principal roads, but congestion remains

a serious problem on both urban and national highways. The rate of motorway construction

has gradually declined since the ambitious building programmes of the 1960s and 1970s,

and in the 1986–96 decade only 306 km were added. Completion of the M40 between

London and the M42 orbital road around Birmingham in the early 1990s marked the end

of the major phase of inter-urban motorway building and recent additions have been

confined to branches linking towns to the national system (Figure 6.2). Motorways now

account for 20 per cent of the national trunk road network, but by 1996 just over a half of

all trunk road traffic was making use of them (Table 6.9).

Motorway traffic is still frequently impeded by chronic congestion however,

especially on the approaches to London, on the M25 and on the M6 around Birmingham,

and there is now ample evidence that the major road investment programme published

in 1989 will not meet the demands of traffic levels in the twenty-first century (Department

of Transport 1989). In early 1994, however, it was announced that forty-nine of the

major road schemes contained in this programme were to be abandoned and 242 further

projects were to be suspended as part of a new policy initiative designed to encourage

the use of alternative means of transport and reduce road-building expenditure. The

inadequacy of the existing road network was admitted by the Department of Transport

in evidence to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 1996, and since

1993 the government has been actively encouraging the involvement of the private

sector in new road construction and, where appropriate, operation and maintenance

(Department of Transport 1993). To date the only significant results of private investment

have been the Queen Elizabeth II bridge carrying the M25 over the Thames to supplement

the capacity of the earlier tunnel, and the second bridge over the Severn, opened in

mid-1996 and linked with the M4-M5 motorway network in this area. In the early 1990s

it was proposed that a 43-km privately funded toll road to relieve congestion on the

Birmingham section of the M6 should be built to the north of the conurbation as a

three-lane motorway. Traffic volumes of up to 50,000 vehicles per day were forecast

and could yield a daily income of £100,000. This route is still under consideration, but

if completed it would be the longest privately financed road in the United Kingdom.

The summer 1998 White Paper on transport indicates that efforts to expand privately

funded and operated toll roads will be continued, but it is unlikely that such routes will

provide an effective solution to congestion. Proposals for the introduction of tolls on

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FIGURE 6.2 The motorway and principal road network in 1998

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the national motorway system have also been considered, and if these were to be

introduced it would bring about a system of road pricing similar to those which have

operated for many years in France, Spain and Italy.

Urban transport

During the 1990s there has been a continuation of plans introduced in the 1980s designed to

combat congestion on urban roads by improving public road and rail transport and

discouraging the use of private cars in inner cities. This has involved the deregulation of bus

services in order to promote competition and thus lower fares, investment in new public

transport modes, such as light rail, and experimenting with physical and fiscal restraints

upon cars in urban areas.

Journey-to-work traffic is one of the principal contributors to daily congestion on

roads and on public transport, and in the large provincial conurbations most trips are still

reliant upon the private car (Table 6.10). Patronage of public transport (buses, surface rail

and light rail) is highest in Tyne and Wear, where the Metro was opened in 1984, and lowest

in Greater Manchester, where the Metrolink was completed in 1992. Walking still accounts

for between 10 and 15 per cent of all journey-to-work trips, a share that reinforces the

current campaign for improved facilities in towns for pedestrians and cyclists. However,

non-mechanised transport in towns is unlikely to become more popular unless the present

levels of atmospheric pollution caused by motor vehicles can be reduced and safety levels

improved.

The deregulation of bus services which came into effect in 1986 was intended to

promote competition between urban bus companies, increase the quality of service and thus

attract car users back to public transport. Trends since then indicate that the aims of the

1986 Transport Act have been only partially realised in terms of urban bus services.

Competition between bus companies already operating in the 1980s and the new

undertakings, attracted to the market as a result of deregulation, has produced higher service

frequencies on many routes, reversing a pattern of declining frequencies that began in the

1950s. However, the number of passenger trips carried out by bus in the metropolitan areas

outside London fell by 35 per cent in the period 1986–96, with an average fares rise of 17

per cent between 1987 and 1994, so that the only real change in service quality offered to

TABLE 6.9 Changes in traffic distribution by types of road, 1986 and 1996

Source: HMSO, Transport Statistics Great Britain (London, 1997).

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the urban traveller has been an increase in frequency (White 1995). Bus operations in urban

areas, excluding London, as measured by annual bus km, increased by 21 per cent between

1986 and 1996 so that the resultant pattern is one of more buses providing more services for

a declining market. However, there is no firm evidence to date that the increased level of

service has succeeded in encouraging more use of urban buses by members of non-car-

owning households.

Investment in new urban rail systems as a means of revitalising public transport in cities

was pioneered by the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority in 1984 with the opening

of the Metro, followed in 1987 by the Docklands Light Railway serving the redeveloped

dockland area of east London. Plans for similar light rail networks were actively considered

by many other towns and cities in Britain, but the only systems to be opened to date are in

Manchester and Sheffield (Figure 6.3). The Manchester Metrolink was opened in 1992 and

makes use of the former British Rail suburban routes between Bury and Exchange Station and

Altrincham and Deansgate station, with a new link along city-centre streets and a branch to

Manchester Piccadilly station. This 31-km network will eventually be extended to serve Oldham,

Rochdale and the Dumplington retail complex to the west of the city centre (Knowles 1996).

The Sheffield Supertram network was opened in stages between 1994 and 1997 to link the

city centre with the Meadowhall retail park and the south-eastern and north-western suburbs.

The traffic on these new systems in Manchester, London, Tyneside, Sheffield, and on

the older but modernised Glasgow underground, shows a varying pattern of ridership.

Passenger traffic on the Tyneside Metro has declined by 14 per cent since 1986 and risen

only slightly on the Glasgow system. On the Docklands Light Railway traffic grew by 168

per cent between 1988 and 1996, but the network was extended east to Beckton during this

period. Both the Manchester and Sheffield systems recorded substantial increases in traffic

during their first few years of operation, but a longer time period is required before more

informed judgements on their success in promoting public transport usage can be made.

TABLE 6.10 Commuter traffic in major conurbations, 1996

Source: Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics (1997).

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Many of the plans for light rail transit in other major cities such as Edinburgh, Nottingham

and Bristol are in abeyance pending guarantees of funding from a combination of private

and public sources, and the only new project to be completed (in mid-1999) will be the first

route of the Birmingham network between Wolverhampton and the city centre.

In London there has been a decline in the volume of daily commuters since 1986 and

corresponding falls in the numbers using suburban rail, London underground and bus services

during peak hours. However, there is still an urgent need to augment the present central area

rail system, which is severely overloaded, and several schemes are nearing completion

involving the extension or upgrading of existing railways. In east London an extension of

the Jubilee underground line from the city centre at Green Park station to Stratford via the

docklands development at Canada Water will probably be completed in 1999. This will be

complemented by a southward extension of the Docklands Light Railway under the Thames

to connect with the surface railway network at Greenwich. Many of these new lines will

FIGURE 6.3 Light rail transport systems in major cities

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relieve chronic congestion on the existing Underground network and possibly attract car

drivers and passengers back to the train.

Strategies to contain and eventually reduce the volumes of cars entering city centres

have involved both physical and fiscal restraint measures. Progressive increases in car-

parking charges as the centre is approached, coupled with priority for buses in these

areas, have been combined with an extension of pedestrianised shopping zones in an

effort to discourage access by car. Many towns and cities, such as Oxford, Shrewsbury

and Chester, have introduced permanent park-and-ride facilities on their margins, enabling

low-cost car parking to be combined with the efficiency of the bus for those wishing to

use city-centre facilities. Partial restrictions on private cars are also imposed within traffic

calming schemes in residential areas, whereby through traffic is discouraged by means of

speed control humps and other devices (Tolley 1990). In early 1998 the government

approved the setting of speed limits lower than the standard 30 m.p.h. within urban areas

where buildings of historical and architectural interest are prone to damage by motor

vehicles.

Fiscal constraints upon urban traffic include tolls on vehicles entering defined inner

zones or a premium tax payable to enable cars to use such areas at any time. Recent

experiments in Leicester indicate that a daily toll of £3 per vehicle could reduce car

commuter traffic by 20 per cent, but that a £6 toll would only effect a further 5 per cent

fall. Many other urban authorities are actively considering these schemes as part of a

combined strategy of improving public transport with income from the tolls obtained

from car restraint schemes, although electronic tolling may not be available until about

2003. If a policy of car restraint, combined with the upgrading of public bus and rail

transport, is successful the current vehicle congestion in inner cities may be reduced to a

more acceptable level. The experience of light rail transit in many European cities indicates

that the expense of such systems can eventually be justified in terms of a greater use of

public transport, but the United Kingdom has yet to adopt light transit on the scale displayed

by many European countries.

Air traffic and airports

Congested runways and passenger terminals, and the lack of adequate high-speed connections

with city centres, remain the principal problems facing British airports in the 1990s. The

steady growth of air passenger traffic that began in the early 1950s continued into the 1990s,

with rises between 1986 and 1996 of 84 per cent in international traffic and 74 per cent in

internal flows. Charter flights, operated on behalf of the major holiday tour companies, now

account for 41 per cent of all international traffic carried on United Kingdom airlines

compared with 29 per cent in 1976. Heathrow and Gatwick airports continue to handle over

two-thirds of all international traffic, and Stansted, opened as London’s third airport in

1985, has seen its annual passenger totals rise from 500,000 in 1986 to 4.8 million in 1996.

The largest increases at provincial airports were recorded by Birmingham, Edinburgh,

Newcastle and Manchester (Table 6.11).

The improvement of terminal facilities for handling passengers is seen as an essential

objective in both the London area and at principal regional airports, but no major projects

have been completed since the opening of Manchester’s second terminal and the Eurohub

facility at Birmingham, which has increased capacity for passengers on short-haul flights to

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Europe. Heathrow, which currently is served by over ninetey airlines and is linked to 200

destinations worldwide, is one of several leading hub airports in Western Europe which act

as transfer centres between short- and long-haul flights. Competition between these hubs

for passengers is intensifying, and the British Airports Authority is determined to maintain

Heathrow’s status as a leading airport. The addition of a fifth terminal would increase the

airport’s capacity by 30 million passengers per annum and would make the requirement for

a third runway less urgent. The Authority would like to see this new terminal open by 2015,

TABLE 6.11 Changes in air traffic, 1965–96

(a) Scheduled services operated by United Kingdom airlines

(b) Changes in passenger traffic at United Kingdom airports, 1986–96

Source: HMSO, Transport Statistics Great Britain (London, 1997).

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when London’s four major airports will need to cope with an estimated annual total of 160

million passengers, but the proposal has been strongly opposed on environmental grounds

and no decision has yet been reached. However, the first high-speed rail link between

Heathrow and central London was completed in summer 1998 to relieve pressure on the

Underground and road links. At Manchester the demand for additional capacity created by

the 68 per cent rise in aircraft operations between 1986 and 1996 has been met by the

construction of a second runway, due to be completed in 1999, and links with Manchester

city centre have been improved with the opening in 1993 of a branch from the main rail

network.

The extension of high-speed rail services on the electrified east coast main line

between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh has produced some competition for domestic

airlines operating between these cities, but air traffic is still increasing in this corridor. In

the South East the air passenger market between London, Paris and Brussels has been

substantially challenged with the introduction of the high-speed Eurostar rail expresses

through the Channel Tunnel, which have reduced the rail timings between these cities to

a level which is offering strong competition with overall flight times. Elsewhere in Britain,

however, domestic air services can still offer the shortest journey timings between major

cities, and seasonal holiday traffic between the mainland and offshore islands is still

important.

Seaports and international trade

Maritime traffic patterns and the distribution of trade by ports during the 1990s confirm and

strengthen the trend for continuing growth of the east coast ports trading with the European

Union. In addition the initial effects of the opening of the Channel Tunnel upon the Channel

ferry ports were felt in the period after 1994.

During the period since 1979 British ports have undergone several changes in terms

of ownership and organisation. These have been made in order to improve the performance

of a port system, which in the late 1970s was seen as possessing excess capacity and

perpetuating several inefficient cargo handling practices (Bassett 1993). The 1981 Transport

Act led to the privatisation of the British Transport Docks Board and the creation of the

Associated British Ports company which now controls over twenty-six ports. In 1991

legislation was passed requiring the leading trust ports, which each had an annual turnover

of at least £5 million and were owned and operated by various types of local boards, to

prepare for privatisation. The majority of larger British ports are therefore now within the

private sector, but the pattern is still subject to take-overs and mergers as trading fortunes

vary from port to port.

Other states in the European Union now receive 70.5 per cent of all United Kingdom

exports by tonnage (63 per cent by value), and account for 37 per cent of all imports by

tonnage and 64.5 per cent by value. Trade in bulk fuel, principally petroleum, has stabilised

following the rapid rise in oil exports in the period 1965–85, but the tonnage of all incoming

and outgoing trade has risen by 15.8 per cent in the decade 1986–96 (Figure 6.4). The most

significant trend has been the steady rise since 1986 in the volume of unitised traffic to and

from continental ports, including containers and roll-on/roll-off commercial vehicles. Of

the total increase in port traffic of 78.25 million tonnes over the decade, 24.3 million tonnes

were containerised and 20.7 million were carried on roll-on/roll-off trucks.

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During the 1990s the fastest-growing ports continue to be those associated with

European trade, and particularly those specialising in container and roll-on/roll-off traffic.

Tonnage handled at Felixstowe and Harwich rose by 69 per cent between 1986 and 1996,

and Portsmouth and Southampton recorded increases of 29 per cent. The group of ports

between the Medway and Southampton Water account for one-third of all unitised traffic, a

share unchanged since 1986. Stability is in fact a feature of most ports in terms of their

shares of total overseas trade during the last decade. Of the deep-sea ports concerned more

with long-distance traffic, the largest increase has been at Liverpool, whose total tonnage

has risen by 73 per cent since 1986.

The period since agreement to build the Channel Tunnel was reached has been

marked by a vigorous programme of investment by port authorities and ferry operators

in the English Channel corridor in order to compete with the new fixed link. Large

ferries in excess of 20,000 tonnes have come into service between Dover and Calais

and vehicle handling facilities have been upgraded at port terminals in order to reduce

overall transit times. In 1996, two years after the Tunnel opened for traffic, 25.5 million

passengers used the Channel ferries between Britain and France, with 18.8 million of

these passing through Dover. Ferry ports along the Thames estuary and west to Weymouth

now account for 80 per cent of all seaborne passenger traffic between Britain and

European destinations, and within this group the flows are dominated by Dover (68 per

cent), Portsmouth (11 per cent) and Ramsgate (10 per cent), the latter offering links

with Dutch and Belgian ports.

The Channel Tunnel was opened in stages to passenger and freight traffic in 1994 and

the annual traffic totals for 1995 and 1996 indicate that this addition to cross-Channel capacity

has already had a significant impact upon the established traffic patterns. In 1996, 12.79

million passengers were carried on the shuttle service between the Folkestone and Calais

terminals and on the through Eurostar express trains, compared with 19.69 million using

the ferries on the short sea crossings. A total of 2.13 million passenger vehicles used the

shuttle, whereas 3.15 million were conveyed on the ferries on the Straits of Dover routes

and 1.29 million on other English Channel crossings to France.

FIGURE 6.4 Changes in maritime trade, 1986–96

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The former British Rail undertaking and the French SNCF have negotiated a

concession with Eurotunnel to operate up to thirty-five trains per day through the Tunnel,

although this capacity is not always fully taken up. In 1996 freight trains carrying 2.33

million tonnes made use of the Tunnel, connecting freight terminals in Britain with those

in Europe. The freight shuttle trains carried 51,900 vehicles in 1996 but the Tunnel was

closed in the later part of the year following a fire. Examples of traffic on the through

trains includes cars from the Rover plant in Birmingham to northern Italy, Fiat vehicles

from Turin to Avonmouth, and various Ford vehicle parts and sub-assemblies from

Dagenham to destinations in Spain.

Insufficient data are available to date on the market served by the Tunnel to discover

the extent to which traffic has been captured from surface modes and from air services

between London and Paris, but the new fixed link has established itself as a strong competitor

with the ferries, even if its financial viability gives cause for concern. There is at present

excess capacity on the corridor between Dover and northern France, but if traffic using this

route continues to rise at the rate displayed in recent years both the Tunnel and the ferries

will continue to generate business.

Transport and the environment

It is inevitable that almost all new transport infrastructure projects will involve disruption in

terms of visual intrusion on the landscape, an increase in noise levels and, in many cases,

severance of communities and natural habitats through which a new road or railway has

been designed to pass. In the United Kingdom and other European countries the late twentieth

century has seen an increased recognition of these problems by governments and a widespread

and strengthening opposition to the more controversial schemes by environmental protection

groups.

The implications of the damaging impact that transport has upon the environment

have been investigated by many different government and independent organisations.

Royal Commissions have reported upon the major problems associated with consumption

of energy by the major transport modes, and the atmospheric pollution caused by motor

vehicles has also been the subject of several enquiries (Royal Commission 1994; Banister

1996). In the case of landscape impacts the public responses to proposed new road or

airport runway building proposals have ranged from reasoned discussion in the media to

the more vigorous demonstrations mounted by groups opposed to particular schemes

such as the M3 Winchester bypass, the Newbury bypass, or the second runway at Manchester

Airport.

The amount of disruption caused by new projects has to be measured against the

perceived social and economic benefits of the proposed scheme; taking the example of an

urban bypass, these benefits would include reductions in travelling time and accident

rates and an improvement in the quality of life of the town from which through traffic is

to be diverted. This process of measurement is the basis of the cost-benefit analysis used

by the Department of Transport to compare the relative merits of different variants of a

proposed road scheme. With a recognition and acceptance of the need to include

environmental factors in this analysis, the technique of environment assessment has been

adopted in Britain, following its initial application in the United States (Farington and

Ryder 1993). This form of appraisal attempts to quantify a wide range of environmental