The Truth About Britain's Broken Roads | The War On Britain’s Motorists | Dispatches | Channel 4

tonight on dispatches oh what's going wrong on the UK's roads this area is officially pothole house we take on the potholes that are driving us potty it's worse than a third world country it's terrible we demand roads there you go we investigate the traffic schemes that are dividing our neighborhoods why are you locking off half the road Jesus Christ this social injustice and did it reduce the traffic here absolutely not um it was an absolute Nightmare and we revealed the cost of charging an electric car oh that's ridiculous absolutely staggering yeah we ask is this the worst time ever to be a British driver this is e Sussex the sun peaking through the trees the sound of leaves in the breeze Majestic Landscapes connected by roads covered with equally Majestic potholes East sussex's potholes are rumored to be amongst the worst in the country and I do hope my chosen vehicle is up to the task meet the G wagon designed with military service in mind mind made famous by celebrity fans like Arnold schwarzeneger this car was built for the battlefield but the question is can it survive the roads of East [Music] Sussex so as you can see this is is a real rugged SUV in fact it once did serve in the German Army it's the G Wagon versus the roads of Sussex and um oh I'm not sure the gwag is winning oh gosh there's a big one ah I mean they're impossible to avoid here they're on each side of the road in the middle out to the side it's so bad here to my left it's completely C off and there's a load of wheel rims I mean this is like Wacky Races [Applause] we wanted to know just how bad Britain's pothole crisis is oh sir dispatches sent Freedom of Information requests to the 206 councils responsible for UK roads the problem is that they're just constant 167 councils responded with e Sussex paying over 337,000 in pothole compensation to drivers since last year putting them in the top three oh gosh somebody's had a warning sign they've broken down oh my God it's a pothole for the same period the total pothole Compensation bill to these cancels was over £4 million I'm calling it this area is officially pothole hell on the edge of pothole hell There lives a man called Russ who Legend has it is a bit of a pothole superhero hi Ros hi nice to meet you and you I came porle already as you can see you should have bought a tank it's almost a tank yeah you do need it so I've just driven past somebody who is broken down right outside the front of your place okay only one just yeah really yeah we've had a lot more than one at any one time if there's just one out there it's it's a it's a good day the bad phone reception has made Russ's home a Beacon of Hope for motorists who've been potholes as many as nine in a single day I can show you on my phone let's have a look I'll show you this this is some footage we got from from our ring doorbell this is me going out to the lady that broken down there there's three cars on our driveway there's literally a queue of people that have hit poth holes waiting for a place of sanctuary that's it and look this one here of an evening these These are coming at 1 2:00 in the morning look 1:00 in the morning 2:00 in the morning actually look just coming up looking for help to give us a sense of life in this picturesque corner of East Sussex Russell takes us on a guided tour of some of the most impressive Pooles in the area the amount of people that are getting punches on that particular hole is incredible look how deep it is look crazy as you can see when the cars come down they got no option but to go through this hole when the car's coming the other way look watch there you go it' be up there now probably with a flat tire look this is how they're doing their repairs look this is a repair you know for just every repair just falls apart it's ridiculous since we filmed this pothole has been repaired whether it will live up to Russ's standards remains to be seen all over East Sussex people are at their wit's end about the state of the roads there's even a local campaign group to be honest we're just so fed up with it you know some of these holes they're not little poth holes they're giant big craters we even started naming them people know if you say oh the ridge crater I mean there's obviously a lot lot of anger but there's a cost impact in a cost of living crisis drivers who are losing out because of the constant repairs they're having to undertake on their cars and there's a real stress that everyone's feeling and it's just ruining people's lives basically of all the issues affected drivers today time and time again it is the state of local roads that really irks people if we look at East Sussex I'm afraid the picture is pretty bleak but again it's copied right across councils across the country if we look at uh BC and unclassified roads in East Sussex only 0.4% of those were resurface over a 12mon period and only 1.4% were surface stress so we're talking really tiny numbers here East Sussex County cancer told us to deal with a growing number of potholes over the 2023 winter period we employed nearly three times the usual number of Crews to carry out repairs to repair every pothole would cost about four times our current spend and place an even greater burden on Council taxpayers whilst our aim is to get it right first time there are a number of factors that can lead to a Poole repair failing but only a small percentage of potholes have to be re-repair we have invested an additional 15.7 million this year to help improve the condition of East Sussex roads the councils that responded to our Freedom of Information requests said they received over a million reports of potholes last year those councils spent £56 million on reactive pothole repairs alone incredibly given the scale of the problem 40% of these councils said they don't have a segregated pothole budget outside of General Road repairs nearly a third of canels with pothole budget said they overspent with some forking out two or three times more than they'd set aside meanwhile in the 12 months up to March this year the RAC attended 27,000 Poole incidents on Britain's roads a 9% increase we got this customer's car in today and um is hit a bump in the road and now he's got a loud noise so it sounds like it's pothole damage is that something it looks that it definitely looks that way yeah I mean the roads are in reality they are shocking we' looked at some data uh a couple of days ago and we've seen a uh double the amount of suspension arms fitted from this time last year and are these are these expensive fixes for it can be vehicle dependent one failed component here could be a fair few hundred pound to replace correctly so you might be one of the very few people that I can think of who actually don't you don't mind potholes cuz they're quite good for business good great for business absolutely fantastic for business but our customers don't feel the same way no the RC has calculated pothole repair can cost motorists up to £460 we wrote To All 48 UK police forces and can reveal that between January 2023 and March this year 11 of them wrapped up over £80,000 in pothole repair bills as we mentioned councils told us they paid over £4 million in compensation to ordinary drivers in the same period but based on 79 councils Who provided us with the information they rejected a whopping 80% of claims dispatches has also discovered that's partly because when you hit a pothole councils need to agree that it was in fact a [Music] pothole we've done some re search with dispatches looking into the issue of what actually defines a pothole in one part of the country to another and it's a completely an utterly mixed picture in some cases councils are very upfront in other places there's zero information from councils as to what is a pothole and it seems crazy that depending on where you live you might have one Council treating you one way if you were to hit a pothole and another Council treat you completely differently the government recently pledged 8.3 billion pound from its abandoned hs2 project to to tackle potholes but recent analysis by an economic consultancy suggested potholes are costing the economy in England 14.4 billion p a year we don't feel actually the national government at the moment has got a proper grip on just how bad the situation out on our roads really is and in fact 8.3 billion pounds while it sounds like a lot is staggered over the course of a decade and all that that would be enough to do would be to resurface essex's roads and leave the rest of the country's roads exactly as they are today the department for transport told us our additional 8.3 billion pounds is the biggest ever increase in funding for local highways maintenance enough to resurface the equivalent of over 5,000 miles of Roads across the country local authorities received the first 150 million of this increase in October and will receive a further 150 million this year we're also requiring local councils to publish regular reports reports of which roads they are resurfacing with this extra money so taxpayers can see how their money is being spent by their local Council the local government Association told us councils are on the side of all Road users and want to focus on properly resurfacing our roads councils would much prefer to focus on preventative repairs the government should award cancel highways Department's 5early funding allocations to develop resurfacing program s and other improvements to help prevent potholes in the first place coming up we'll see how potholes aren't the only obstacles making life miserable for British motorists why are you locking up half the [Music] roads we've seen how potholes have got drivers blood pressure up all over the nation it's worse than a third world country we dem roads there you go meanwhile in our cities there are other obstacles that have literally become a [Music] Battleground I have traded in the G wagon for something a little more me a two-seater all electric compact car that is perfect for urban life might not be quite so good over Pooles though but it is brilliant for local air quality and local air quality is something that's been on the minds of many councils in recent years among the solutions they've come up with to stop cars driving through residential areas are traffic enforcement cameras and plant pots I've been doing a little digging forgive the expression into local governments Pon for on Street gardening low trffic neighborhoods or ltns for short are a laudable idea safer streets cleaner air and a recent government report found people are generally in fav so why then are they being set on [Music] fire social injustice another day and another death blow against the car why am I paying Road tax for you to lock off half the road Jesus Christ This Is The Friendly community of withington in Manchester in August 2023 the council introduced an ltn here to stop rat running reduce pollution and encourage an active lifestyle for the local community but soon residents question whether the scheme had been properly thought through and successfully campaigned to have it removed this included the Planters or modal filters which used to be outside to hear Jeffrey's house basically what we had is uh we had set of uh model filters so if you can picture a set of Planters going all the way across to the other side of the road and did it reduce the traffic here absolutely not um it was an absolute nightmare what we found was that it wasn't reducing traffic it was dispersing traffic I mean it strikes me that there isn't a lot of traffic around here in the first place yeah as you can see you think it was needed not at all it was literally like it is today even if you go back 7 months ago it was the same so why they introduced a a a a scheme such as that in a very quiet neighborhood uh is is beyond my imagination despite the council's best intentions there were significant gaps in their preliminary Research into the scheme Katarina kriskovich is a withington resident and a specialist in active travel schemes like ltn having consulted on similar projects so Karina what did you see after the scheme was installed did it have the impact you were expecting well some streets saw a reduction in traffic flows while other streets in particularly the boundary roads and the roads to the south and east of the thing they saw increasing traffic do you think it was busy enough to Warrant ltms being put in there well we haven't seen any evidence in terms of data collected that there was any rational for the scheme there was no data collected on pedestrian flows on cycle flows on joury times the council should have provided evidence that there is a problem with through traffic through the neighborhood but this hasn't been done we wanted to know if withington was an isolated case so we asked all UK councils if they had any traffic reducing schemes of the 31 who told us they did 42% said they had no prior monitoring or evaluation reports for the trial schemes they'd installed and so far 18% of the country's ltns have been dismantled Manchester City Council told us while data in withington did show there were improvements being made it was clear from feedback that the majority of people surveyed were not satisfied with how it had been implemented throughout this entire scheme the council has wanted to make sure that local residents had a voice in how their Community was shaped two filters have been retained and the council will be monitoring their impact safety has always been what the council aimed to achieve with this scheme the average cost of installing an ltn is nearly £260,000 now that might be expensive but there is a silver lining for cancels our freedom of information request revealed that 16 UK cancels have issued fines for ltn infractions totaling over £18 million since January 2023 great for pedestrians and cyclists not so great if you're a driver the local government Association told us councils want to take a balanced approach to ensuring that motor traffic keeps moving whilst protecting other Road users so that everyone can benefit from safer streets any surplus income from traffic fines has to be spent on local transport improvements by law such as providing vital bus services or highways Improvement including fixing potholes improving local air quality was behind the implementation of loads of ltns but in the future we won't have to worry about that because we'll all be driving electric cars and the bonus is they'll be cheaper to run or will they [Music] I'm from the Manchester area and I know that driving around the city center can be a nightmare so I've left my electric car behind and I'm going to take an electric taxi driven by taxi tour guide John conine hi John I love how you silently sweet in it's amazing is it it's a hybrid so it's petrol and electric are you going to take me on we're going to do a little down your mem cuz you're very famous around about that Infamous Infamous John is clearly a connoisseur of Manchester and its uh famous faces in fact he's the only green taxi tour guide in the city do you know this little church JY on the right hand side very important in Manchester's musical history because in the 1980s this became a recording studio stock aen and Waterman and what song was recorded uh I don't know Never Going To Give You Up never going to let you down It's All Coming Back to Me Now why did you make the move into an electric taxi what did you what benefits do you think it bring I could see the vehicle is a lot cleaner it's a lot quieter so it ticked so many boxes but recently John has become increasingly frustrated by the rising cost of the UK's public charging Network in particular fast Chargers the general complaint is the price really the the price is just incredible and it's just not worth it and it's sort of defeated the object of having an electric taxi because you tend to use the electric that you've got of your home charger and then you just run on petrol very very rarely will I use the on Street charger it's about eight or nine times dearer than it is charging at your home do you think it's cheaper on petrol or on the public charging Network on petrol there's no comparison because the street charges are just so expensive one of the big selling points for electric cars has been the idea that they're cheaper to run than a petrol car but according to the RAC that's no longer necessarily the case if you can't charge at home according to our figures you might pay more per mile to charge up at those quickest charges than you would if you were to maintain and keep running your petrol diesel car so there is a real inequity here between the halves the people who are can charge up a home and the Have Nots more than a quarter of the UK don't have off- street parking so we took the rac's April figures and turned them into a little game to see if the British public are aware of how much fast charging can cost if you are relying on a petrol car the RAC has worked out that it's 17 P per mile if you can charge at home in your electric car that price drops to just 7 P per mile if you can't charge at home and you're relying on using the fast charges how much do you think it would be 15 9 N9 P per mile so you're going 10 to 12 P okay should I show you let me flip our little wow oh 22 that's ridiculous does that surprise you that it's so much more it's more than three times yes it does yeah oh absolutely staggering yeah would surpris you if I told you that one of the reasons it's more expensive is that there is 5% VAT on the energy you get home 20% VAT on the energy you take from a charger wow I didn't know that not really encouraging people to move to electric cars is it the department for transport told us on average charging an EV on a public network is around the same as fueling a petrol car and we have made it easier to compare prices across charging networks so drivers can get the best value charge UK told us charge UK members are committed to providing affordable charging we are deploying new charges at record pace and ahead of demand to support the transition to EVS government can make public charging even more affordable by addressing VAT on public charging and by tackling the recent surge in standing charges that public operators must pay on electricity which have seen cost rocket by as much as 300% in the last 12 months whilst the UK's transition to Electric is fast approaching it's not moving fast enough and this could have dire consequences for our domestic automotive industry motorists can continue to buy new petrol and diesel cars until 2035 but electric car manufacturers like stellantis who own vool and perso have been given a different time scale I was granted a rare interview with the head of St UK to discuss what this might mean the UK government has pushed back the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2035 but the reality is that for car makers selling cars in the UK you're going to have to move at a different pace aren't you completely completely completely from a customer Viewpoint you don't have the urgency for a manufacturer the difference is deserve mandate the Dev mandate is a government directive requiring all UK call makers to ensure that by 2030 80% of their vehicle sales are electric failure to comply means Hefty fines the fines are very high1 15,000 per car dealers are very motivated in selling electric vehicle but then you need the demand and In This Moment the offer is not aligned with the demand at all does the Zev mandate make the UK an attractive place to do business for a global company the answer the straight answer to your question is no so could potentially as a direct consequence of the Zev mandate there could be a risk to jobs here in the UK to British jobs in automotive yes why because we are doing heavy investment in this country but if it does not work then uh our set of investment could be subject to review it's a fact stellantis employs over 5,000 people in the UK and operates two manufacturing sites so the idea of them reviewing their UK operations is really quite worrying the department for transport told us we have extensively engaged with industry before launching a zero emission vehicle mandate to ensure it works for companies at different stages in the transition process which we continue to support and have already invested more than2 billion in two there's no doubt that today British motorists are angry and looking for answers to the long list of problems on our roads from low traffic neighborhoods to potholes that are literally ruining the roads of the UK to the switch to electric vehicles there are so many challenges facing UK drivers whoever it is that ends up in there Goodness Me they've got their work cut out for them [Music]

Channel: Channel 4 Documentaries

Views: 187,106

Keywords: Channel 4, Channel 4 Documentary, Documentary, cost of living, channel 4 news, cost of living crisis, c4 news, c4 documentary, uk poverty, channel 4 docs, housing crisis, potholes, road, cars, electric cars, ltns, ltn, low traffic neighbourhood, prius, hybrid, hybrid cars, political, roads, dispatches, lorry, motorways, car documentary, government, council, rv, economy, recession, road rage, electric car charging, chuckholes, road quality, pothole repair, potholes uk, uk, car crash, documentary

Id: WA1zGLmc8KI

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024