What should be the priorities for our roads and for public transport over the coming decades?

Kent County Council has published its thoughts in its Local Transport Plan and is asking the public for their views.

But anyone expecting specific proposals on new roads or junction improvements will be disappointed.

The emerging plan sets out only the higher-level objectives, with the promise that detailed proposals will follow in a final plan after the results of the public consultation are known.

The plan acknowledges “challenges” to the county’s ambitions of both improving connectivity and simultaneously reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

It admits that due to financial restraints “our highways assets are in a phase of managed decline”.

It says: “The rate of highway asset deterioration has far exceeded the rate of investment. As a result, the value of the backlog of maintenance works needed for our managed road network has been increasing.”

Traffic congestion was causing both poor air quality and negatively impacting Kent’s economy, it said.

Some indicators of public health, such as obesity and life expectancy, had been worsening. It was thought that both would be improved by people walking, cycling or using public transport instead of cars, but the county said “the financial viability of the public transport service has declined due to cost pressures and changes in passenger demand”.

A disappointing recent trend had also been an increase in the number of fatal or serious injury accidents, after a decade of steady improvement.

More than 50 people were killed on Kent’s roads last year. In 2019, the figure had been 36.

Aside from the human tragedy, the council said: “The cost to Kent’s economy from the impacts arising from road collisions continues to provide a compelling need to act.

“The Department for Transport estimates that the value of the economic impact from severe and fatal road collisions in Kent in 2021 was £401 million.

“The scale of this cost demonstrates the challenge, but also the large opportunity for the improvement in wellbeing and quality of life for Kent’s residents and the economy that can arise from improving road safety.

“We want to improve the health, wellbeing and economic prosperity of lives in Kent by delivering a safe, reliable, efficient and affordable transport network across the county.”

The county said its aim to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 would be achieved by “getting effective dedicated infrastructure to electrify vehicles, increasing public transport use and making walking and cycling more attractive”.

But although estimated carbon emission from the transport network had been falling in recent years – thanks mainly to improvements in engine efficiency - there were pressures that might reverse that trend.

Acknowledging a claim that has long been made by the Green Party, KCC said: “Major changes to the road network designed to add capacity and improve journey times are likely to lead to additional vehicle trips, increasing CO2 emissions.”

But it said that that in itself should not stop highways improvements from going ahead. It said: “The government has established through the courts that individual schemes can go ahead where they have wider benefits, even if they increase carbon emissions, because the net zero 2050 target and the carbon budgets leading to that are national and cover all industries.

“This enables increases in one industry such as transport, to potentially be offset by savings in another industry. Given this, we aim to take a balanced approach.”

The county said that major road improvements planned by National Highways that would affect Kent, such as the Lower Thames Crossing and the M2 Junction 7 (Brenley Corner) and the A2 route from Lydden into Dover, were expected to increase carbon emissions by 4% by 2037 – the end of the plan period.

The county said: “This is because more road space and faster journeys leads to increases in the volume of trips.”

Money is the council’s biggest challenge. It said: “Funding levels have now fallen and at a time when costs have jumped upwards by a large amount.

“For example, the price of planned road resurfacing in 2023 has increased by 30% compared with 2022, so £25m in 2023 buys the equivalent of £17.5m of work in 2022.

“These price rises are affecting our day-to-day maintenance and our long-term capital programme with scheme costs rising – what works and schemes can be delivered will reduce if funding does not keep pace with price rises.

“Overall, this makes improving Kent’s transport networks more difficult to achieve.”

This will be KCC’s fifth Local Transport Plan. The last one, published in 2017, was supposed to run until 2031, but the government has required all highways authorities to update their plans with a focus on net zero carbon emissions.

KCC said that since 2017, £400m had been invested in improving the county’s roads, though only £29m of that came from the county council, the vast majority was from the government, with some from developers.

The leader of Maidstone Green party, Cllr Stuart Jeffery, said: “It’s good to see that KCC finally admits that more roads lead to more emissions and that they admit that the current transport strategy has failed, but they still don’t understand the enormity of the problem.

“They need to stop putting the car first in their plans. For many of us there are safer, healthier and more sustainable ways of getting around. Public transport, cycling and walking need to be prioritised.”

Residents, businesses and stakeholders are invited to give their feedback on the plan.

You can have your say by clicking here. The deadline for responses is Monday, September 18.

Any queries about the consultation can be sent by email to LTP5@kent.gov.uk