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Can the UK re-learn to plan infrastructure for the long term?

Alistair Lenczner, Useful Simple Projects

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has called on HS2 designers to think like the Victorians. That means planning for capacity growth a hundred years, not just 10 years ahead, says Alistair Lenczner; not something we've been too good at in the recent past.

A review of Britain’s recent track infrastructure planning record suggests that, as a nation, we are not very good at planning our infrastructure for the long term. New infrastructure projects often reach capacity within a few years of their completion and lack adequate future-proofing. This makes expanding capacity to meet longer-term growth very expensive. Also, to consistently operate the nation’s infrastructure at or close to capacity means that it lacks resilience to cope with unexpected disruption or peaks in demand.  

"The accumulated cost of works to widen the M25 or provide lane management schemes to increase capacity is an order of magnitude greater than its original build cost." 

In times past, Britain’s infrastructure was built such that it could cope with growth. In London, Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s interceptor sewer, built in the 1860’s, has remained a vital part of London’s sewer network throughout the 20th century during which time London’s population doubled and is still operational today. It will only be relieved when the new Thames Tideway tunnel becomes operational within the next decade. The Tideway Tunnel will do well if serves London as long as Bazalgette’s interceptor sewer has done. 

That Bazalgette’s sewer has been able to cope with London’s waste water for over 150 years is thanks to the reserve capacity that was included in its design. By contrast, some major UK infrastructure projects currently being built or planned at present would seem to risk reaching their design capacity almost as soon as they are built.

London’s M25 Orbital Motorway serves as an example of recent short-sightedness in infrastructure planning. Almost as soon as the complete 3-lane motorway ring was opened in 1986, traffic levels on the motorway started to exceed the road’s design capacity. Since that time a succession of projects have been implemented to widen the motorway try and cope with traffic demand.

The accumulated cost of works to widen the M25 or provide lane management schemes to increase capacity is an order of magnitude greater than its original build cost. The works involved in widening the M25 have also caused significant disruption and has impacted on the regional economy. If the original M25 motorway had been designed with more generous reserve capacity or if the motorway infrastructure (including bridges) had been planned so that they allowed for additional lanes to be added at a later date with minimal disruption, the project would have provided greater benefit and represented better value to the tax payer. Can we learn from the M25 experience?

"A long-term vision for HS2 might allow space in its plans for the future 4-tracking of the line south of Birmingham so that additional high speed train services between the north UK and South East England or continental Europe could be accommodated."

Although London’s new Crossrail project to provide a new east-west express commuter railway under central London is impressive in its scale, it could be argued that its design specification is short-sighted in the context of London’s current rate of growth. The diameters of its running tunnels are not large enough to allow for the possibility of using double deck rolling stock on the line in the future. Double deck trains, similar to those used on Paris’s RER rail network, accommodate significantly more passenger for a given train length and so could have given Crossrail a higher ultimate passenger capacity.    

Talking recently about the UK’s proposed new high speed rail network, the Secretary of State for Transport said that “We will design HS2 once. And we will get it right.” Hopefully “getting it right” will include making suitable provision for long-term growth. However, if demand for travel between London and the North UK grows anything like it has done in the past 30 years, it seems likely that the busiest stretch of HS2 between London and Birmingham could reach its capacity within a decade or so of its opening. Without suitable future-proofing, HS2 will neither allow for additional train paths to accommodate growth in demand nor allow for new train services on an extended high speed network.   

A long-term vision for HS2 might allow space in its plans for the future 4-tracking of the line south of Birmingham so that additional high speed train services between the north UK and South East England or continental Europe could be accommodated. As well as ensuring HS2 could cope with growth, an ability to increase its capacity would also allow its benefits to be spread more widely.       

In aviation, the Davies Commission’s recent report recommends that legislation be put in place to prevent an expanded Heathrow from ever having a 4th runway. This is despite forecasts that suggest that such a runway would be needed to meet long term growth in aviation. This looks particularly odd given that part of the Commission’s remit was to set out a long-term plan for the UK’s aviation needs.    

Recent suggestions made by the Office of Rail and Road that transport planning should consider the longer term are to be welcomed, However, any move towards longer-term infrastructure planning would likely require a change in attitude within Whitehall departments where the rules for assessing the benefits of infrastructure expenditure tend to conspire against long-term planning. Without a change in the way long term economic benefits are valued, we are likely to leave an infrastructure legacy that requires excessively high spending to fix capacity problems resulting from short-term planning. 

Building infrastructure systems that reach capacity almost as soon as they are completed is a poor investment in the long term. With Britain’s population growing faster than ever, we need to think more like Bazalgette and design our infrastructure to serve multiple generations, not just one. 

Alistair Lenczner is director of Infrastructure, Planning and Design at Useful Simple Projects