Delays on A-roads and motorways have got worse despite Government efforts to reduce congestion, it has been revealed.
The Government has reportedly failed to meet its key target for reducing delays and queues have increased on the 100 key routes ministers promised three years ago to make more reliable.
It is understood the Government even tried to hide its failure to meet the target by releasing the figures in a huge batch of reports on congestion.
It is even more of an embarrassment for the Government as the original targets were criticised for being too weak.
Journey times are said to have not improved at all and because of this experts believe that there could be a knock-on affect to the economy.
The congestion target comes for 2005 when the Government pledged to make ‘journeys more reliable on the strategic road network’, which consisted of the country’s 100 most important motorways and A-roads.
The target would be achieved, said the Government, if the average vehicle delay on the slowest 10 per cent of journeys were less in the 12 months to April 2008 than in the 12 months ending July 2005.
In turned out that the average driver was delayed by 3 minutes 47 seconds for every ten miles travelled on the slowest 10 per cent of trips in 2005. But figures for the last 12-month period, ending on March 31, show that the average delay had risen by 4.4 per cent to 3 minutes 57 seconds.
The worst delays were on the M25, the M60 and the M1.
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