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Road Safety

UK's New Road Safety Strategy: Ambitious Targets, But Will Actions Match Words?

The UK's progress in road safety has fallen relatively over the past decade, with twenty-two European countries having made more progress in reducing road fatalities. It has now issued a new road safety strategy, its first for a decade.

Key Takeaways

• 1,602 people were killed on Great Britain’s roads in 2024, and 27,865 were seriously injured.
• The Safe System lies at the heart of the strategy.
• Overarching targets:
  • 65% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured on roads in Great Britain by 2035, using a 2022-2024 baseline.
  • 70% reduction in the number of children (under 16) killed or seriously injured on roads in Great Britain by 2035, using a 2022-2024 baseline.
• Theme 1: Supporting Road Users
  • Consultations: minimum learning period for driving, new blood alcohol limits, eye tests for over 70s, and reforms to motorcycle licenses.
• Theme 2: Taking advantage of technology, data and innovation for safer vehicles and post collision care
  • Consult on mandating the fitting of 18 new safety technologies.
  • Collaborate with stakeholders and vehicle manufacturers to further understand safety concerns regarding increasing vehicle size.
• Theme 3: Ensuring infrastructure is safe
  • Publish a new edition of the best practice guidance ‘Setting Local Speed Limits’.
• Theme 4: Robust enforcement to protect all road users
  • Consult on taking tougher action on drink driving.
  • Review the penalties and mandatory training for drink and drug driving offences, including consulting on the use of alcohol interlock devices.

Comment

A new road safety strategy with ambitious targets is a step in the right direction.

However, a lot of this strategy appears to depend on the results of consultations. If the proposed measures prove unpopular, will they be dropped?

The UK government has decided to allow local flexibility over speed limits, which is likely to hinder the use of one of the most powerful road safety tools - reducing speeds.

A criticism of the Safe Systems approach is that it does not inherently include mode shift. As a consequence, mode shift gets little focus in the strategy.

Overall, the strategy feels like many of its genre: ambitious targets and nice words about the importance of road safety, but will the actions be adequate to achieve the targets.

What Next?

Is your road safety strategy implementing sufficient actions that will enable you to hit your targets?

Freight

Light Cargo Vehicles: Report Highlights Benefits and Policy Needs for Urban Delivery

“Smaller-than-van” light freight vehicles, such as cargo bikes and other small, motorised and non-motorised alternatives, are increasingly used in last-mile logistics operations in urban areas. The International Transport Forum (ITF) has released a report on lessons learnt on how to integrate them successfully.

Key Takeaways

• Under the right conditions, light cargo vehicles can be a more efficient means of parcel delivery compared to vans and trucks.
• In dense urban environments, they can enhance operational efficiency while potentially contributing to various overarching policy goals, including minimising environmental impacts, improving road safety and increasing urban liveability:

• Light cargo vehicles may also come with added operational costs due to their more limited range and carrying capacities, including the need for urban logistics hubs and a larger workforce.
• Authorities play an essential role in ensuring the viability of these light cargo alternatives through transport, infrastructure and land-use policies.
• Establishing the conditions for their continued or increased use requires clear signals and sustained strategic planning from cities.
• The absence of harmonised international classification or standards for cargo bikes and micro or mini “smaller-than-van” delivery vehicles constitutes a significant barrier for the uptake of light cargo vehicles.
• Recommendations:
  • Integrate freight logistics within broader urban planning strategies and mobility plans.
  • Promote vehicle taxonomies that support desired policy outcomes.
  • Align domestic standards and light cargo vehicle classifications to best-in-class frameworks.
  • Encourage more sustainable outcomes through vehicle size and weight-based incentives.
  • Promote an urban logistics sector that provides fair, green jobs for the future of logistics.
  • Facilitate the development of fixed and mobile micro-hubs to support small cargo vehicles.

Comment

Light cargo vehicles can help contribute to the transport objectives many cities have set for themselves, but governments need to be proactive to realise their potential.

What Next?

Have you integrated light cargo vehicles into your strategies, regulations and infrastructure plans?

Road User Charging

New York's Congestion Relief Zone: One Year Results

It has been one year since New York City implemented its congestion relief zone (CRZ). A review of its impacts has been released.

Key Takeaways

• 11% fewer vehicle entries into the zone.
• On track to generate over $500M in the first year.
• Vehicle speeds improved 4.6%. The tolls are shifting traffic to times when the street network has more spare capacity, reducing overall congestion.
• Bus speeds in the CRZ increased 2.3%
• Bus ridership increased 8%
• Subway trips into the CRZ increased 9%
• There was no significant change in PM2.5, NO, and NO2 levels around the region.
• Total GHG emissions decreased 6.1%.
• Since tolling began, average speeds on crossings entering the CRZ during the weekday morning commute from New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Queens have all improved, by an average of 23 per cent.
• Data from the taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) industries suggest that no substantial change in activity has appeared with CRZ tolling.

Comment

The benefits from the CRZ are largely as expected and similar to the experiences of other cities with congestion zones.

Although I support levelling the playing field by reducing subsidies for motor vehicles, such as through road user charging, I consider specific geographical charging zones to be a second-best solution and potentially a dead end.

Congestion zones have often been discussed as a gateway to broader road user charging, but that has not proven to be the case. Indeed, New York is not currently considering expanding its CRZ.

What Next?

Do you have a strategy for road user charging?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​What are the behavioral features of Japanese cycling? Identifying risk-related strengths and weaknesses in a global context​
• ​Safety, comfort, and design of multi-use pathways: a scoping review​
• ​Autonomous vehicles can massively improve the quality of public transport (in German).

Podcast

What Does A Good Fares Policy Look Like?

This week on the Transport Leaders podcast, we discussed fares, including:

• Free/low fares primarily shift trips from walking and cycling, not driving
• Steady fare increases work better than fare shocks
• Unsustainable fare policies create a predictable spiral of service deterioration
• Road user charging may be the key to rational public transport pricing
• Current fare policies represent a "smorgasbord of bad policy" driven by politics over evidence

You can watch it here or listen here.