Leasedrive Velo Blog

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Last week I stated, as I have done many times before, that the best congestion management policy is to hit the driver where it hurts, directly in the pocket, at the pumps.

Well it looks as if my argument has been vindicated with the publication of another report showing that traffic levels have dropped for the first time since traffic congestion was measured.

Last week, the Department for Transport published an official report showing a 0.5% drop in traffic levels in the first six months.

According to the most recent Trafficmaster/RAC Foundation Journey Time Index, for the first time in four years since its compilation, we have seen a decline in traffic levels with congestion falling by 12% in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2007 on 34 motorways and trunk roads in Britain. The northern section of the M25 saw the biggest decline, by a massive 26%!

Experts put the drop down to the credit crunch, rising cost of fuel and road tax. Well the credit crunch is hitting most people, road tax bills come round only every six or twelve months, so the fact that fewer cars are being used on our roads today has to be predominantly down to the high cost of fuel. As we all know that has risen significantly, hovering around £1.20 per litre for petrol and 20 pence more for diesel. This is supported by the RAC Foundation, one of the co-sponsors of the report, which attributes the presence of fewer cars on the UK’s roads to “the price of fuel making it too expensive for people to drive”.

The journey time index was calculated based on submissions from 7500 traffic cameras around Britain’s major motorways and trunk roads to Trafficmaster’s central computer, when traffic speed dropped below 20mph. While the average speed of traffic in the first six months dropped slightly from 63.3mph to 62.2mph, probably in no small part due to judicious use of the right foot, journey times improved by 0.3%.

My recent personal experiences, as highlighted last week, that more drivers seem to be driving well below the speed limit in force, possibly in an effort to save on fuel seems to be in part borne out by the above figures.

One of the findings of the report was that people are driving slower on motorways to save fuel and make their tank-full go further. Drivers are also questioning the necessity of certain journeys in an effort to make a tank-full go further.

All we can hope for is that when we do come out of our tough economic woes in a few years time that we have learned our lessons and continue to use our personal forms of transport in a wholly greener manner.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

I’ll bang on about it until I’m blue in the face (see my blog of 13 March 2007) but leveraging black box technology to initiate road pricing is not the way to relieve road congestion.

I say this again after reading that the Department for Transport is about to sign contacts with four companies to trial available technology. However good the latter, it is bound to go wrong and I just dread to consider the backlash from the general public when it does. Government hardly has an enviable reputation when it comes to IT systems.

While latest reports indicate that traffic levels in London are back up to pre-congestion charge levels, EurotaxGlass’s confirms the car trade’s recent experience that drivers are down-sizing in the face of higher fuel bills and the prospect of higher VED duties on high CO2 emitting vehicles.

Hitting the driver where it hurts, directly in the pocket, is always going to be the most effective way to get them to move to smaller, more fuel-efficient modes of transport. With prices at the pumps having escalated, drivers for the first time are asking themselves whether a journey is really necessary and, faced with higher food and home energy bills, are doing the only thing they can in these harder economic times, cutting back.

So what the hell is government doing trying to over-complicate matters, as only they can do best, when the natural pricing mechanism in force at the pump will do equally well?

Meanwhile, I see our office neighbours, TRL, have conducted a survey into tailgating. Apparently, 93% of drivers have been tailgated by other drivers when observing correct speed limits.

If that is true, then the 7% responsible should watch out because there is absolutely no excuse for such aggressive behaviour.

I hope courts will take a dim view of such drivers caught by the police. Similarly, I hope the police ensure that drivers do drive at reasonable speeds.

Recent personal experience shows that more drivers seem to be driving well below the speed limit in force, possibly in an effort to save on fuel.

As the police appear to operate a policy of a 10% plus one mph acceptable upper speed limit for national speed limits so they should ensure drivers sustain a reasonable speed for the prevailing conditions.

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

Highlight of my visit to the 2008 British International Motor Show was a sushi for lunch.

The whole experience was dire. For those not living to the east of London, the Excel exhibition halls are a nightmare to reach. However, I’m not about to go on about the hours it took to get there, it was the time spent there when I arrived which was worse.

I have heard that the future of the event is in question and it didn’t take more than a few minutes to see why. The visit to the one main hall was swiftly followed by one to the other opposite, and that was it as far as internal exhibits were concerned.

A quick glance down the list of exhibitors revealed a lack of full manufacturer presence. No BMW, no Mitsubishi, no Porsche to name just a few. The heritage enclosure was the nearest followers of the Stuttgart marque could get to see one of their beloved models, in this case a yellow Carrera GT.

Events outside the halls abounded if you were so inclined to wait around for an ‘event’ to take place. However, by the time I had overcome the disappointment of what turned out to be a flying visit, a quick escape was the only thing on my mind.

Gone are the glory days of the grand shows at Earl’s Court. Many bemoaned the move to the NEC but our National Exhibition Centre was central, at the heart of the British automotive industry and proved a much better venue for showcasing world premieres, however rare they became.

I felt as if the whole of the 2008 show could have been shoe-horned into Halls 1 and 2 at the NEC, and those halls used to be just the preamble to what lay ahead in other equally vast halls.

Okay, the NEC was never going to rival the bi-annual Frankfurt or even Paris events. Nor did it quite have the cachet of Geneva, the smaller bijou event held each year at the beginning of March. But at least the NEC had a presence. For all its quality facilities, the Excel is far too small a venue to host an ‘international’ motor show.

No wonder so many manufacturers question the cost of maintaining a presence at a dying event. ‘Bums in seats’ is the name of the game and you can hardly blame a manufacturer if it prefers to host its own ‘by invitation’ event at a race circuit or proving ground.

If the trend these days is to have linked ‘activities’, then an exhibition venue surrounded by water is hardly the first place you would choose to host a motor show. The NEC has far more surrounding land to mount off-road and track activities.

Perhaps with the pending loss of the British Grand Prix, Silverstone should consider mounting a challenge to Excel. It is central, now has a good access road infrastructure, has different track layouts (both on and off-road) and its centre could host a major tented exhibition area. Now doesn’t that remind me of a certain fleet event held years ago…