Sector: Transport

Business organisation the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is calling for a ‘radical overhaul’ of UK road travel to avoid gridlock in the future.

The CBI insists that rising road congestion is costing the UK economy up to £8 billion per year, and it warns that this burden could more than double by 2025, unless action is taken. What’s more, the business body reports that a survey of firms finds an overwhelming 96 per cent want the next government to adopt a new approach to road transport and prioritise the tackling of rush-hour congestion.

Measures that might be explored, the CBI believes, include increased car sharing, more home working and even staggered work commuting.

Road investment should focus on congestion ‘pinch points’, it opines, and there should be greater use of private investment to help finance road improvements. Furthermore, the CBI moots the idea of using more yellow school buses (as seen in the US) to pare levels of congestion during the school run, while tolls on new motorway lanes and A-roads might also be thought about.

‘Now is the time for fresh thinking on the roads,’ argues CBI deputy director general John Cridland, adding that for too long ‘Britain’s roads have been a cause of frustration and delays for our businesses and commuters’.

Issuing a call for a ‘radical overhaul of how we travel and manage our road system if we are to do more than simply tinker at the edges’, Cridland pleads that ‘merely slowing the endless rise in congestion is not enough’.