Decarbonisation and the UK’s transport infrastructure

On any giv­en Mon­day morn­ing in Man­ches­ter, traf­fic builds on the roads head­ing into the city and cars grind to a halt along Princess Park­way. A sim­i­lar scene plays out each morn­ing as com­muters head into the city cen­tre at the begin­ning of the work­ing day.  

Road trav­el accounts for over one-third of all car­bon emis­sions in Man­ches­ter and it’s a sim­i­lar sto­ry across the coun­try.

In 2019, road trans­port account­ed for 27% of all car­bon emis­sions and at COP26 in Novem­ber, coun­tries agreed that decar­bon­is­ing the trans­port sec­tor is vital if the plan­et is to achieve net zero by 2050.

For Man­ches­ter, a new vision of this future is quick­ly becom­ing a real­i­ty. The city’s Metrolink light rail net­work, the largest of its kind in the coun­try, runs on 100% renew­able ener­gy, and plans are afoot to elec­tri­fy the region’s bus­es. Simon War­bur­ton, trans­port strat­e­gy direc­tor at Trans­port for Greater Man­ches­ter (TfGM), says it’s the tip of the ice­berg. 

”We plan to ful­ly elec­tri­fy Greater Manchester’s bus fleet as part of our plan to deliv­er a car­bon neu­tral trans­port net­work and to dri­ve out the pol­lu­tion of diesel bus­es that is most heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed in our town and city cen­tre areas,” he says. The region’s bus fleet will be 50% elec­tric by 2027 and 100% elec­tric with­in a decade, a move that would sin­gle­hand­ed­ly reduce car­bon emis­sions by 1.1m tonnes. The Greater Man­ches­ter Ring and Ride fleet will also tran­si­tion to zero emis­sion tech­nol­o­gy by 2027.  

The elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of the UK’s trans­port sec­tor is essen­tial in the race to decar­bonise. In four years, over 100 multi­na­tion­als have signed up to the EV100 ini­tia­tive. Busi­ness­es that join must make a pub­lic com­mit­ment to switch their fleet to elec­tric vehi­cles and/or fund charg­ing points for work­ers and/or cus­tomers. EV100 com­pa­nies have col­lec­tive­ly agreed to switch more than five mil­lion vehi­cles by the end of the decade.

Nation­al High­ways, the gov­ern­ment-owned com­pa­ny that oper­ates, main­tains and improves motor­ways and major A roads across Eng­land, has also been swift to act on decar­bon­i­sa­tion. By 2030, it wants cor­po­rate emis­sions from its vehi­cle fleet, offices and onsite light­ing to reach net zero. Ten years lat­er, con­struc­tion and main­te­nance emis­sions must also hit that tar­get, with user emis­sions fol­low­ing by 2050.

Stephen Elderkin, Nation­al High­ways’ direc­tor of envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, explains how the com­pa­ny will slash its cor­po­rate emis­sions. “LED light­ing will be rolled out across the net­work, while three mil­lion trees will be plant­ed to off­set car­bon emis­sions,” he says. “Our fleet of cars will be elec­tric and ener­gy effi­cient build­ings will be used to house staff and vehi­cles.”

Reduc­ing emis­sions dur­ing the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of roads presents anoth­er chal­lenge. Infra­struc­ture com­pa­nies, includ­ing Nation­al High­ways and their sup­pli­ers, will have to imple­ment PAS 2080 dur­ing every project, a glob­al stan­dard for man­ag­ing and reduc­ing infra­struc­ture car­bon. The frame­work looks at the whole val­ue chain and aims to reduce car­bon emis­sions and cost through more intel­li­gent design, con­struc­tion and use. 

Nation­al High­ways is cur­rent­ly run­ning a £1bn project in Essex to widen 25km of the A12. PAS 2080 was at the fore­front of their plan­ning for the work. “Our sup­pli­er has made var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal com­mit­ments in their bid to deliv­er the scheme with us,” says Elderkin. “That includes a 30% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions through­out the con­struc­tion process.”

Work is also under way to ensure that mate­ri­als used dur­ing con­struc­tion projects pro­duce min­i­mal emis­sions. “Work­ing with our sup­pli­ers and oth­er major clients, we need to set out a roadmap and an expec­ta­tion of the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als that we expect and which mate­ri­als are going to reduce the impact on the envi­ron­ment,” adds Elderkin. “We need to look at the cement, asphalt and steel that we use and make sure they aren’t adding to emis­sions.”

Kather­ine Bright, trans­port plan­ning direc­tor at WSP, one of the UK’s largest engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices con­sul­tan­cies, says behav­iour­al change is also key to reduc­ing trans­port emis­sions. “Six­ty per­cent of all trips are two to five miles,” she says. “Ide­al­ly we want peo­ple to trav­el in dif­fer­ent ways. We don’t want to just go from a diesel car to an elec­tric car, that’s not help­ing real­ly. It’s about putting more fund­ing and devel­op­ment into pub­lic trans­port and local cycling and walk­ing schemes.”

In 2018, TfGM launched the Bee Net­work, a pro­gramme that aims to cre­ate the largest cycling and walk­ing net­work in the UK by con­nect­ing each area of the city via active trav­el routes. It has since become the term which encom­pass­es the full trans­port vision for Greater Man­ches­ter.

“There are cur­rent­ly over 100,000 cycle trips and around 1.3m walk­ing trips every day in Greater Man­ches­ter,” says War­bur­ton. “We know that the appetite for cycling and walk­ing is there and we intend to build on that enthu­si­asm with our car­bon neu­tral trans­port ambi­tions.”

In a bid to per­suade peo­ple to ditch their cars and reduce emis­sions in favour of active trav­el, TfGM last year launched three award-win­ning Cycle Opti­mised Pro­tect­ed Sig­nals (Cyclops) junc­tions, with a fur­ther sev­en under con­struc­tion in Greater Man­ches­ter. It has also pub­lished a report that shows strong evi­dence for zebra mark­ings to be autho­rised for use on side roads to increase safe­ty and the num­ber of peo­ple walk­ing to school, work and the shops.

The city is also set to intro­duce the biggest clean air zone out­side Lon­don. Greater Manchester’s 10 coun­cils have been direct­ed by the UK gov­ern­ment to intro­duce a cat­e­go­ry C clean air zone (CAZ) as part of its Clean Air Plan to tack­le harm­ful NO2 pol­lu­tion on local roads. 

Phase one of the zone, which will incor­po­rate non-com­pli­ant bus­es, some coach­es, HGVs, and taxi and pri­vate hire vehi­cles from out­side the region, is due to go live in May this year.

The sec­ond phase will fol­low in June 2023 – for large goods vehi­cles (LGVs), taxis and pri­vate hire vehi­cles – but coun­cil lead­ers have recent­ly writ­ten to the envi­ron­ment sec­re­tary to request he con­duct a fun­da­men­tal review, after a new report high­light­ed issues impact­ing the avail­abil­i­ty and cost of clean air zone-com­pli­ant vehi­cles, par­tic­u­lar­ly vans.

When imple­ment­ed, the CAZ will oper­ate 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week, every day of the year. All roads with­in Greater Man­ches­ter, apart from roads man­aged by Nation­al High­ways (such as motor­ways and trunk roads), will be includ­ed in the clean air zone.

The decar­bon­i­sa­tion of Manchester’s trans­port net­work could pro­vide a tem­plate for oth­er towns and cities to fol­low but there is still much work to be done. Invest­ment in charg­ing points to facil­i­tate the mass roll out of elec­tric vehi­cles and future forms of sus­tain­able trans­port is essen­tial. Busi­ness­es also need to play their part by tran­si­tion­ing their vehi­cles to elec­tric and incen­tivis­ing the use of sus­tain­able trans­port among its work­force. And, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, the gov­ern­ment has to give pow­er and fund­ing to local politi­cians to imple­ment inte­grat­ed trans­port net­works that enable peo­ple to leave their cars out­side cities and use active trav­el and elec­tri­fied pub­lic trans­port to nav­i­gate these areas. 

How will National Highways decarbonise the UK’s road network?

Nation­al High­ways’ net zero high­ways strat­e­gy will put road­ways at the heart of the UK’s net zero future. The aim is to con­tin­ue serv­ing the dai­ly trav­el needs of mil­lions of peo­ple in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able way. The strat­e­gy is split into three parts:

Step 1: Cor­po­rate emis­sions: net zero by 2030

Aim: Cov­er­ing net­work light­ing, road­side equip­ment, trav­el and offices

Nation­al High­ways’ first ambi­tion is to elim­i­nate emis­sions from all of its own oper­a­tions. Togeth­er, these led to 82,000 tonnes of CO2e dur­ing 2020, with that fig­ure pro­ject­ed to fall to 50,000 tonnes CO2e in 2030 with­out direct action. In 2020, the com­pa­ny achieved its com­mit­ment to only buy 100% cer­ti­fied renew­able elec­tric­i­ty. The focus is now on how to gen­er­ate more ener­gy on com­pa­ny sites, decar­bon­is­ing com­pa­ny trav­el and increas­ing the removal of car­bon on its premis­es.

Step 2: Main­te­nance and con­struc­tion emis­sions: net zero by 2040

Aim: Cov­er­ing the man­u­fac­ture, trans­port and use of mate­ri­als on its road net­work

Nation­al High­ways is one of the UK’s largest buy­ers of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, but the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change has called for the con­struc­tion indus­try to be large­ly decar­bonised by 2040. Nation­al High­ways will reduce con­struc­tion emis­sions by focus­ing on the asphalt, cement and steel sec­tors. The com­pa­ny will use a car­bon man­age­ment sys­tem to embed approach­es that min­imise emis­sions, includ­ing lean con­struc­tion prac­tices and the prin­ci­ples of the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies will also increase the capac­i­ty of its exist­ing net­work, min­imis­ing new con­struc­tion.

Step 3: User emis­sions: net zero by 2050

Aim: Cov­er­ing emis­sions from the vehi­cles using the strate­gic road net­work

Nation­al High­ways wants all of its cus­tomers to be trav­el­ling using net zero trans­port by 2050 in line with the UK Cli­mate Change Act. While many of the actions that will deliv­er this ambi­tion are out of its direct con­trol, it still aims to play its part. The pri­or­i­ty is to help roll out solu­tions to decar­bonise HGVs and sup­port the uptake of elec­tric cars and vans. It will also con­tin­ue its work inte­grat­ing the strate­gic road net­work with oth­er trans­port modes, while work­ing to improve the effi­cien­cy of the net­work.