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Road Traffic

Asked by Mr Richard HoldenConservativeDepartment for TransportTabled Answered 17 July 2026UIN 18158

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate her Department has made of (a) the total hours of delay to road users, (b) the number of road users affected and (c) the economic cost of traffic disruption resulting from incidents on the strategic road network in each of the last five years.

Answered by Simon Lightwood

National Highways routinely publishes data on delays on strategic road network links https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/travel-time-reporting-tool/.

National Highways have previously published estimates of the causes of delay on the SRN, which includes incidents. See: https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/nixpb1ed/managing-delay-on-the-strategic-road-network.pdf.

The Department also makes an assessment of congestion on the strategic road network using the metric of average delay based on seconds of delay per vehicle per mile (see table CGN0405 Average speed, delay and reliability of travel times (CGN) - GOV.UK).

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