IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v81y2019icp242-253.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why did UK governments cut road building in the 1990s and expand it after 2010?

Author

Listed:
  • Melia, Dr Steve

Abstract

Why did a Conservative UK government decide to cut back road building during a time of austerity in the 1990s, whereas a Conservative-led Coalition government decided to substantially increase road building during a time of austerity after 2010? This study aims to answer that question drawing on 32 interviews with ministers, advisors and others, and secondary analysis of media coverage and public opinion. It uses Critical Realist methods in a more specific way than previous studies, representing the key actors, causal mechanisms and changes in underlying social structures in diagrammatic form. It concludes that three mechanisms: a rational response to changing transport circumstances, changing economic ideology prompted by the recession of 2007–9 and public opinion, influenced by the protest movement in the 1990s, explain the contrasting decisions. It identifies key actors who influenced government decisions and explains how a Critical Realist analysis questions the traditional concept in transport studies of causal factors and their relative importance.

Suggested Citation

  • Melia, Dr Steve, 2019. "Why did UK governments cut road building in the 1990s and expand it after 2010?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 242-253.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:81:y:2019:i:c:p:242-253
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.07.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X18308424
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.07.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Iain Docherty & Jon Shaw, 2011. "The Transformation of Transport Policy in Great Britain? ‘New Realism’ and New Labour's Decade of Displacement Activity," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(1), pages 224-251, January.
    2. Harriet Bulkeley & Tim Rayner, 2003. "New Realism and Local Realities: Local Transport Planning in Leicester and Cambridgeshire," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(1), pages 35-55, January.
    3. Goodwin, Phil, 1999. "Transformation of transport policy in Great Britain," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 33(7-8), pages 655-669.
    4. Melo, Patricia C. & Graham, Daniel J. & Brage-Ardao, Ruben, 2013. "The productivity of transport infrastructure investment: A meta-analysis of empirical evidence," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 695-706.
    5. Holmgren, Johan & Merkel, Axel, 2017. "Much ado about nothing? – A meta-analysis of the relationship between infrastructure and economic growth," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 13-26.
    6. G. Hodgson, 2006. "Some Claims Made for Critical Realism in Economics: Two Case Studies," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 7.
    7. A. Wang & I. Ziedins, 2018. "Probabilistic selfish routing in parallel batch and single-server queues," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 88(3), pages 389-407, April.
    8. Jon Shaw & Colin Hunter & David Gray, 2006. "Disintegrated Transport Policy: The Multimodal Studies Process in England," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 24(4), pages 575-596, August.
    9. Geoffrey Dudley & Jeremy Richardson, 1998. "Arenas without Rules and the Policy Change Process: Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 46(4), pages 727-747, September.
    10. Shumin Feng & Xianghao Shen & Baoyu Hu, 2018. "Optimization of traffic demand management policy in China: towards a sustainable mode split," Transportation Planning and Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 198-210, February.
    11. Pedro R.D. Bom & Jenny E. Ligthart, 2014. "What Have We Learned From Three Decades Of Research On The Productivity Of Public Capital?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 889-916, December.
    12. Iain Docherty & Jon Shaw & Greg Marsden & Jillian Anable, 2018. "The curious death – and life? – of British transport policy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(8), pages 1458-1479, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Runst, Petrik & Höhle, David, 2022. "The German eco tax and its impact on CO2 emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeremy Wood & Samuel Meng, 2021. "The economic impacts of the 2018 Winter Olympics," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(7), pages 1303-1322, November.
    2. Dennis Gaus & Heike Link, 2020. "Economic Effects of Transportation Infrastructure Quantity and Quality: A Study of German Counties," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1848, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio & Costacurta de Sa Porto, Paulo & Ferrari, Claudio & Tei, Alessio, 2021. "Roads to growth: The Brazilian way," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    4. Achim Truger, 2015. "Implementing the golden rule for public investment in Europe," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 138, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    5. Elburz, Zeynep & Nijkamp, Peter & Pels, Eric, 2017. "Public infrastructure and regional growth: Lessons from meta-analysis," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-8.
    6. Kornfeld, Robert & Fraumeni, Barbara M., 2024. "How Should We Measure Infrastructure? The Case of Highways and Streets," IZA Discussion Papers 17156, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Andreas P. Kyriacou & Leonel Muinelo-Gallo & Oriol Roca-Sagalés, 2018. "The efficiency of transport infrastructure investment and the role of institutions: an empirical analysis," Working Papers. Collection B: Regional and sectoral economics 1802, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    8. Kyriacou, Andreas P. & Muinelo-Gallo, Leonel & Roca-Sagalés, Oriol, 2019. "The efficiency of transport infrastructure investment and the role of government quality: An empirical analysis," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 93-102.
    9. Välilä, Timo, 2020. "Infrastructure and growth: A survey of macro-econometric research," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 39-49.
    10. Merkel, Axel & Holmgren, Johan, 2017. "Dredging the depths of knowledge: Efficiency analysis in the maritime port sector," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 63-74.
    11. Marta Santagata, 2022. "Roads and intra‐national trade: Evidence from Italian regions," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 101(6), pages 1383-1409, December.
    12. Hüther Michael & Südekum Jens, 2019. "Die Schuldenbremse – eine falsche Fiskalregel am falschen Platz," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 20(4), pages 284-291, December.
    13. Koike, Atushi & Sakaguchi, Takuhiro & Seya, Hajime, 2022. "Road infrastructure and TFP in Japan after the rapid growth: A nonstationary panel approach," MPRA Paper 112375, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Jäger, Philipp & Schmidt, Torsten, 2016. "The political economy of public investment when population is aging: A panel cointegration analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 145-158.
    15. Batool, Irem & Goldmann, Kathrin, 2021. "The role of public and private transport infrastructure capital in economic growth. Evidence from Pakistan," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    16. Adriana Ruiz & Anna Matas & Josep Lluís Raymond, 2016. "How do road infrastructure investments affect the regional economy? Evidence from Spain," Working Papers XREAP2016-09, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised Dec 2016.
    17. Anna Bottasso & Maurizio Conti & Simone Robbiano & Marta Santagata, 2022. "Roads to innovation: Evidence from Italy," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 981-1005, September.
    18. Jeanne Amar & Vincent Piron, 2020. "The Global Project Assessment Method: A New Tool to Bridge the Gap between Cost-Benefit Analysis and Budgetary Decisions," GREDEG Working Papers 2020-55, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    19. Sedef Sen & Tugba Yilmaz, 2023. "An Econometric Analysis on the Relationship between Infrastructure and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Policy Researches, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 10(2), pages 361-393, July.
    20. Achim Truger, 2016. "The golden rule of public investment – a necessary and sufficient reform of the EU fiscal framework?," IMK Working Paper 168-2016, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:81:y:2019:i:c:p:242-253. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.