§ Mr. Matthew TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what studies his Department has(a) undertaken and (b) commissioned which quantify the cost to the economy of traffic congestion. [108329]
§ Mr. HillMy Department has not commissioned estimates of the costs of congestion from external sources. A number of external estimates have been made of the value road users might place on the elimination of congestion from the road network. The CBI have put this figure at £15 billion. Some estimates are lower, but agree that the figure runs into billions every year and is rising.
The Department has made estimates of the amount of time lost on English roads as a result of congestion in 1996 and produced forecasts for 2010 under a number of illustrative scenarios. The results of this work are set out 230W in our report "Tackling Congestion and Pollution", published last month. We will be doing more work in this area as part of our follow up to that report.
Neither the external estimates, nor those undertaken by my Department, can be translated directly into assessments of the cost of congestion to the economy. This is because they relate only to the benefits road users might derive from reduced delays and take no account of the costs of achieving these reductions. The true costs of road congestion to the economy are the net benefits we forgo if we fail to tackle it.