Local Authority Directors welcome Government’s transport review
The review of transport resilience published by the Government today (Tuesday 22 July 2014) has been welcomed by the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT).
The report looks at the resilience to extreme weath er events of roads, railways, ports and airports across England and makes over 60 recommendations for action. David Bishop, President of ADEPT, said: This review highlights the very real danger to our economic recovery from inadequate resilience in key aspects of the nations strategic infrastructure.
ADEPT has consistently warned that the impact of climate change and more extreme weather on communit ies has to be countered by investing in flood defence, sustainable drainage systems, and more res ilient Roads and Railways, it's an ‘Invest to Save’ argument.
“There are 183,000 miles of local roads in England and the weather we have faced in recent years has caused huge disruption to our transport network. This report acknowledges the challenges faced by local authorities as they work to keep local roads open during extreme weather. “The harsh fact is that, unless more resources are made available, local authorities are going to have to make the difficult decision to stop maintaining some minor roads, making them less resilient to extreme weather. We are really pleased that the Go vernment’s report recognises this and we hope something will be done to combat the shortfall in transport funding for regions outside London. “Our regional transport network is already hard pre ssed.
Long-term underfunding of local road maintenance has left a backlog of repairs which has been exacerbated over the last few years because of damage by bad weather. More funding must be mad e available to the regions to help keep our local roads open and reduce the impact of extreme w eather on our local economies.”
ADEPT supports all the report’s recommendations on local roads and welcomed a number of proposals in the report, including:
- encouraging all authorities to adopt asset manageme nt principles and to incorporate drainage assets into their Asset Management Plans,
- recognising and endorsing the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme (HMEP), in whose work ADEPT members play a leading part,
- recommending that Department for Transport consults on a set of criteria to be used for any future emergency highway repair funding,
- proposing the idea of identifying a resilient network, where every effort will be made to maintain the movement of goods and other vehicles.