Global Traffic Scorecard: London

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moylan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by INRIX 2021 Global Traffic Scorecard, published on 6 December; and in particular, its findings (1) regarding the number of hours UK drivers spent in traffic, and (2) that London is the most congested city in the world in terms of traffic congestion.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, although officials have noted the INRIX report, the department makes its own assessment of congestion using the metric of average delay based on seconds of delay per vehicle per mile. This is generally a more accurate way of estimating congestion in contrast to grossing up the total hours lost from a small sample to total driver population, as INRIX has done.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I assume the implication of that Answer from my noble friend is that there is no congestion for us to worry about. I was going to ask her whether the Department for Transport still holds to the assumption that vehicular traffic congestion has an economic cost, or whether it has, since Covid began, altered the methodology by which it applies that assumption, so that it is much less concerned about it.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I reassure my noble friend that we still believe that vehicular congestion has an economic cost; this can be a personal economic cost and a national economic cost. But we do not estimate a total cost of congestion on the road network as a whole; that is not routinely assessed by the department. We look at things such as journey time savings on road schemes appraisal, alongside many other impacts, be they economic, social or environmental, to make the right decisions.