DfT delays release of data on strategies to cut traffic

24 October 2007

The Department for Transport has yet to provide data on journey times that would provide a first indication of the effectiveness of urban authorities’ strategies to tackle congestion.

Ministers have also revealed that authorities outside the 10 largest urban areas will only need to reduce delays to private vehicles, providing no incentive to tackle bus hold-ups.

The Comprehensive Spending Review reaffirmed the DfT’s target to limit the increase in delays, first published in July 2006, as part of a new public service agreement to deliver ‘reliable and efficient transport networks’. But the DfT has yet to provide the data on journey times on key links in 2006/07, collected from satellite navigation systems under a contract with ITIS Holdings.

‘There’s a hold-up,’ said Ray Heywood, Leeds City Council transport policy officer. ‘We’ve conducted our manual counts of bus and vehicle occupancy, so know that in West Yorkshire, more people were travelling. But we don’t know what impact that’s had on journey times.’

The data is key to measuring whether the DfT is on track to assist the Treasury-set target ‘to support economic growth’. A spokeswoman for the DfT said: ‘All the data has to be thoroughly checked and validated before it is sent. We need to make sure we get this right.’

Councils would ‘get the first half of the 2006/07 data in the next couple of weeks. The second half by the end of February’.

The data on journey times and number of people travelling on 155 key routes will highlight whether authorities in the 10 largest cities and conurbations are on track to meet their 2010/11 targets. The information is also crucial for other authorities choosing to adopt the national indicator on reducing peak-time journey delay as part of Local Area Agreements.

The DfT has let a new contract for providing the data from 2008/09 onwards. The department has advised that authorities in the 10 largest urban areas will continue to need to measure delays in ‘person miles’, so as not to undermine strategies to increase modal shift. But other authorities adopting a target to limit the increase in journey time delays will not need to undertake manual counts of bus and vehicle occupancy crossing key cordons, described by Heywood as ‘resource intensive’.

The data available under the contract with ITIS Holdings, initially described by the DfT as ‘very sparse’ – obtained from 50,000 vehicles – has grown as more motorists fit their cars with satellite navigation systems.

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