Infrastructure is the new kale. It is the latest fad on the block. Every politician wants more of it. To Labour and Tory, TUC and CBI, infrastructure is the acceptable face of borrowing and spending. All will be well if we just pour billions into concrete. But for what?

HS2: the zombie train that refuses to die | Simon Jenkins Read more

Earlier this month I set out to drive from Darlington to Hull. A sign directed me south to the A1(M), but it did not add that the motorway was closed at Scotch Corner. It was closed not by an accident but for planned “upgrading”, a process that seems to have been in train for 30 years or more. I duly joined a fuming, dribbling 10-mile jam for over two hours before getting off.

I communed with coach passengers, delivery drivers, wedding guests, horse-box owners and others whose weekend was ruined by this casual ineptitude from the road contractors. We were baffled at not being stopped from accessing the blocked road. I never got to Hull.

Had we been on a train, the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, would have ordered handsome compensation, and promised a multibillion-pound high-speed train. Had we been on a plane, a horde of lobbyists would have screamed “capacity crisis … UK plc needs new runways”. Instead, we were that lowest form of life, the weekend road user. Whether on business or pleasure, we were polluting proles. Kettling us in North Yorkshire would show who was boss.

Predictions for road use continue to soar. Last June, Department for Transport figures estimated that over the next 25 years journeys by train, bus, bicycle and on foot would all fall. But car journeys would rise by 10%. Three-quarters of all journey-miles are now in private cars. The economic cost of road congestion in Wednesday’s Whitehall-backed “vision for UK infrastructure” is expected to rise fourfold.

The government can tax, regulate, restrict and plead with motorists – and should do so – but road travel is a huge element in the economy. Some 90% of goods and business traffic goes by road. Half of the country’s poorest households – about 800,000 families – have cars and spend a quarter of their income on them. Yet last autumn’s spending review specifically cut back on local infrastructure to protect London-oriented projects such as HS2.

In 2006, Sir Rod Eddington’s report examining the long-term links between transport and the UK’s economic productivity was unequivocal. Air and train journeys are primarily for personal and leisure use. If the economy is the issue, avoid grand projects, just improve roads. The rate of return to them is huge.

Last week the boss of Next, Lord Wolfson, took up this theme and offered a £250,000 prize for the best idea for better roads. “If we can learn from the rest of the world, or pioneer new thinking in Britain, then we can do something about delays,” said the peer. Perhaps his vans are having trouble reaching his shops. Good luck to him. This column is my entry.

I am told that half the trucks on the M1 are empty, just returning to base. Most cars and vans carry one person

Motorways are land-hungry and costly, designed for high speeds. But speed is no issue. The issue is capacity. We know that if we build roads they “attract traffic”, but restricting road space when demand is rising can only increase congestion and cost. There must be some more road space.

Britain’s A-roads must be the worst in their category in Europe. The south coast’s limping A27 is an outrage; so too is the A303 past Stonehenge and Wales’ farcical north-south link, the A470. If Theresa May really thinks the HS2 is more vital to a more balanced economy than the trans-Pennine HS3 – and no one agrees with her – she should at least do something to expand the existing, dire M62 and A58 links.

Of course the better off benefit from faster trains and less-crowded airports, but everyone benefits from better roads. Here the big gains come not from a few new ones, but from making existing ones work harder.

Across Europe, towns are showing that traffic moves faster with fewer, smarter lights, more roundabouts and more “shared-space” streets. In Britain cars stand inert, idling and polluting at junctions – the average London driver sits stationary for 12 working days – 101 hours – a year. The reason is that traffic engineers are like doctors in the days of leeches. They live in the dark ages.

British traffic engineers are in thrall to road-builders and makers of street clutter. Their world is of signs, railings, painted roads, one-way streets and that most dangerous tool of authority, the traffic light. Roundabouts are faster and safer. As the traffic guru Hans Monderman once pointed out, drivers are safest when in “eye contact” with other road users; they are least safe when distracted by signs and orders. The quickest route to better roads lies not in more asphalt, but in more efficient use of the asphalt we have.

Never mind driverless cars – we need intelligent transport systems | Paul Mason Read more

The biggest wins, however, come from using vehicles more intensely. I am told that half the trucks on the M1 are empty, just returning to base. Most cars and vans carry one person.

The ambition of the new Whim app in Helsinki is to integrate all road users into one market, akin to the American super-Uber car-sharer, Lyft. Travellers are told what mix of available public and private vehicles, cycling and walking, get them fastest from A to B. It is speed-dating for hitch-hikers.

Transport policy is cursed by crazes, the latest being the driverless car. I may one day eat my words, but I cannot see how driverless cars can crack the “sacred cow” problem: the moral hazard of shared road space. Wherever a reckless driver, cyclist or pedestrian takes a chance, the driverless car grinds to a halt, as must all the cars round it. John Adams, UCL’s risk pundit, calls it “deferential gridlock”. Besides, we don’t need empty cars roaming streets looking for people, we need cars to be full of them.

The worst thing that can happen to a public spending project these days is to lack glamour. For George Osborne, it was said you could forget a project if it didn’t involve a hard hat and a view from outer space. Mental health lacks political glamour, so it remains out of sight. So do care of the elderly and technical education.

Likewise with roads. We stumble from one traffic jam to another, fuming and fretting, burning fuel, wasting time and sending costs through the roof. Nothing gets better. And all because May and Grayling have been dazzled by trains and planes.