UK Road Funding Shortfall

[petagny]

As reported in last week's FT, it looks like capital spending on roads in the UK has been slashed in the government's deficit cutting programme:

'The country’s road network is facing a £13bn funding shortfall as a result ofspending cuts and a lack of strate'gic planning, despite government forecasts that congestion will jump by more than 50 per cent in the next two decades.

Road funding was hit hard in the last spending review, forcing the Highways Agency, which manages England’s trunk roads, to halve the amount it invests in new projects compared to recent years.'

Evidence that capital spending is generally hit hardest in fiscal consolidations, because it's less politically sensitive than salaries and entitlements?

Quoting a report by the RAC Foundation and Arup consulting engineers (not entirely unbiased commentators!) the FT article also suggests that there is a short-termism in planning for roads and that '...road planning has suffered from being too centralised and by limiting the mandate of the Highways Agency to short- and medium-term management and investment of the network.' I'm not sure that I would agree with this premise: should an arms-length executive agency be given responsibility for long-term strategy development?

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6fc119c8-0717-11e1-8ccb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1eJvKVzBf

[John Short]

And yet in last night's TV BBC 2’s Your Money and How They Spend It, Cross Rail's MD was gloating about some station (Canary Wharf?) costing some 5+ billion - "the most expensive hole in the ground" - out of 20+ billions cap ex.  And Boris was also trumpeting it as well.  Perhaps your comments about cap ex applies to non London projects!  (I caught the tail end of this after the football just in case I am deemed to be a sad..... at least one London team lost!)