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Road Traffic Control

Volume 479: debated on Monday 21 July 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate she has made of the level of road congestion in each of the last five years, broken down by constituency. (217620)

The Department for Transport does not hold data on congestion by constituency.

For the strategic roads network in England congestion is monitored using journey time reliability. Journey time reliability is the average delay for the slowest 10 per cent. of journeys measured over the period of a year. Delay is calculated as the difference between observed journey time and a reference journey time (the time that could theoretically be achieved when the traffic is free flowing).

Reliability has only been monitored since the year August 2004-July 2005. Since that time, delays for the slowest 10 per cent. of journeys have increased from 3.78 minutes per 10 miles to 3.92 minutes per 10 miles in the year June 2007-to May 2008. The yearly figures are shown in the following table.

Period

Delay for strategic roads in England (minutes per 10 miles)

August 2004 to July 2005

3.78

August 2005 to July 2006

3.78

August 2006 to July 2007

4.19

June 2007 to May 2008

3.92

For the large urban networks congestion is monitored through change in peak period speeds. The following table shows peak period speeds across large urban areas in England in 2002, 2004 and 2006, based on surveys conducted by this Department and Transport for London:

Miles per hour

2000-03

2003-06

2006-09

London

Central

9.9

10.6

9.3

Inner

11.6

11.7

11.2

Outer

16.9

16.3

2002

2004

2006

West Midlands

21.1

20.5

18.9

Greater Manchester

23.2

21.0

18.5

Leeds/Bradford

20.1

20.4

20.8

Tyneside

27.8

24.7

25.5

Merseyside

23.7

19,8

18.7

Sheffield

18.8

18.6

19.0

Bristol

23.2

19.0

20.2

Nottingham

15.9

16.4

16.5

Leicester

15.6

14.7

15.8

Stoke/Newcastle-under-Lyme

24.3

16.0

17.8

Teesside

36.2

33.1

35.9

Hull

18.8

20.0

21.5

Bournemouth/Poole

21.0

19.4

19.6

Brighton/Hove

27.0

29.6

29.7

Plymouth

23.3

22.0

20.3

Southampton

16.7

19.5

17.7

Blackpool

18.8

19.4

19.7

Portsmouth

25.8

27.5

28.5