GCSE Geography | UK Infrastructure Improvements (UK Economic Futures 8)

Transport is all about moving people and goods - and over the decades the UK economy has benefited from developments in road, rail, airport and port infrastructure, and they all play a key role in regional growth.

Every year billions of pounds are spent to maintain and upgrade transport infrastructure across the UK, and in recent years some huge infrastructure projects have taken place or have been planned.

Road network

Back in 2014 the government announced that it was going to invest £15 billion on a major road upgrading project across the UK, aiming to increase the capacity of our roads, as the current road network was built when there were far fewer cars on the road, and to improve the conditions of roads overall, particularly those trunk roads and motorways that are heavily used by lorries, therefore experience a lot of wear and tear. The £15 billion strategy included 100 new road schemes, adding 1300 new lane miles to motorways and trunk roads to tackle congestion (usually by getting rid of the hard shoulder) and turning some motorways into smart motorways.

Smart motorways are stretches of motorway where technology is used to try to regulate traffic flow and ease congestion using cameras to spot broken down vehicles, which then automatically trigger the large overhead signs warning motorists that the affected lanes are closed (see image below). However, smart motorways have been heavily criticised and many view removing the hard shoulder on motorways as dangerous, particularly for those who have broken down, who can be left stranded in the middle of fast-flowing traffic. Not having a hard shoulder also means that emergency vehicles may struggle to get through to an incident. Perhaps most worryingly, the technology that is monitoring the motorway network stops working on a regular basis. Between June 2022 and February 2024 the technology lost power 392 times, with some of these outages lasting for days. The UK has recently halted plans to roll out smart motorways across the whole country.

Another proposed project is the A303 Superhighway, costing £2 billion to convert the heavily congested road, which is the main route into Cornwall, to dual carriageway. It is controversial though as it involves building a 3km tunnel underneath UNESCO world heritage site, Stonehenge.

Rail network

The UK rail network is often compared negatively to those across Europe - and criticised for offering a very poor service for a very high cost, so is in need of significant upgrade, particularly in terms of improving links between the north and the south. There are several expensive projects underway, such as the electrification of the Trans-Pennine Express railway in the North, which will reduce journey times.

High Speed 2 (HS2)

There is also the highly controversial HS2 costing £88 billion. It was planned to connect London to Birmingham, and then onto Manchester and Leeds – although the Leeds section was cancelled in October 2021, and the Manchester route in October 2023, so the high speed route now links just London to Birmingham. This will decrease journey time but is destroying a lot of countryside, as well as some businesses and homes which are being bulldozed as they are along the planned route.

Arguments for HS2

• Travel times will be reduced and areas in the Midlands and Northern England will become more attractive to industry, leading to investment (although obviously just the Midlands now)
• Increased rail capacity will encourage people to use public transport, helping the government towards meeting environmental targets
• 50,000 jobs will be created by the scheme
• HS2 is expected to create 2000 apprenticeships

Arguments against HS2

• Hundreds of wild sites are threatened by HS2, including ancient woodlands, lakes and meadows
• 1,740 buildings (including homes) will be demolished
• The Stop HS2 group argue that there is no business case for HS2, no environmental case and no money to pay for it
• The cost of the scheme is huge. HS2 was originally costed at £56 billion in 2015, but in 2020 government ministers admitted it was running £30 billion over budget, and could cost as much as £98 billion

Crossrail

Crossrail in London is one of the most advanced infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the UK, costing £16.5 billion with 32km of twin bore tunnels built under central London linking west to east by the new Elizabeth line - which will reduce journey times, ease congestion and add another 1.5 million people who live within a 45 minute commute into central London. It is also claimed that it will increase property prices by 25% close to stations along the route and will encourage further regeneration, which will create thousands more jobs. Construction started in 2009 and was due to open fully in 2018, but ironically the project ran late! The central section opened in May 2022, and the line fully opened in May 2023.

Port upgrades

As an island nation with over 11,000 miles of coastline, the UK has found it easy to develop a thriving port industry, which is the second largest in Europe, handling over 500 million tonnes of freight annually, as well as over 60 million international and domestic passenger journeys.

Most ports across the UK are privately owned and directly employ around 101,000 people. The Port of Felixstowe is the largest for containers (almost 4 million per year), whilst the Port of Dover (pictured below) is the largest for freight (lorries, cars, etc) and is also Europe's busiest ferry port - over 13 million people travel via Dover every year, with a ferry leaving or entering the port every 30 minutes.

Recent port investment includes a £50m investment at Belfast to support offshore renewable energy, and a £195m investment at Bristol for bulk handing and storage, as well as the Liverpool 2 project, which has seen the construction of a deep water quay on the River Mersey, costing £400 million. This will double the port’s container capacity, and create 5000 jobs, boosting the north west-economy and reducing the amount of freight on the road.

Airport expansion

The UK economy is reliant on the aviation industry, which create links to countries all over the world. The UK aviation sector as a whole employs about a million workers (many of which are highly skilled), with a further half a million jobs relying on aviation for the tourism sector. This is not just airlines and airports but also engineering, catering, head office functions, security and retail, among many others. Approximately 157,000 are people directly employed by airports and ground services.

Prior to the Covid pandemic the UK was Europe’s largest aviation market and the third largest aviation market in the world, after the USA and China, with nearly 300 million passengers travelling through UK airports annually. More than 750,000 international flights leave the UK per year, in addition, there are 420,000 domestic flights (to 60 regional airports). The sector contributes around £66 billion to the economy (3.2% of the UK’s GDP) and facilitates a further £26 billion a year from tourism. Aviation also provides around £8 billion of tax revenue to the Treasury.

One of the most controversial projects is the planned expansion of Heathrow (pictured below), one of the world’s busiest airports, handling around 80 million passengers a year and employing 76,000 people! Heathrow has about 1,300 combined take-offs and landings a day, with a plane taking off or landing every 45 seconds. The government has recommended the construction of a 3rd runway costing up to £20 billion, claiming that it would boost the UK economy by more than £200 billion.

Many locals are against the expansion as one village will need to be destroyed to accommodate the runway, and there will be an increase noise pollution for the million people who live under the flight path. There is also the argument that why would we expand an already very busy airport, when we are trying to reduce carbon emissions and that we should actually be discouraging air travel! Heathrow is already the largest emitter of CO2 in the UK - so the expansion cost has to also factor the 'clean-up' cost of the runway, which is how much it will cost to offset the additional carbon emissions that will be caused by an increase in flights, so that the new runway is compatible with the UK’s net-zero target. The predicted clean-up cost of the runway has increased from £50bn to £100bn!

The third runway was first proposed in 2003, and approved by the government in 2009, but scrapped in 2010. In 2015 the Airports Commission recommended expansion, but in February 2020 the Court of Appeal blocked the expansion and argued that it went against climate commitments, however this ban was lifted by the Supreme Court in December 2020, enabling planning to go ahead. The plan stalled post-Covid, but is currently still planned with a projected completion date around 2040.