PRESS RELEASE

A credible plan to improve journeys? Draft RIS3 leaves many questions unanswered

Transport Action Network (TAN)¹ has welcomed the publication of the draft third road investment strategy (2026 – 2031) (draft RIS3)² with a budget of £25bn³. The draft outlines the government’s priorities for the Strategic Road Network (SRN). However, TAN questions whether it is a credible plan to improve people’s journeys, with the government pursuing failed road expansion policies, based on out of date road traffic projections.

The draft RIS3 says: “The consultation [on National Highways Initial Report] revealed that respondents placed the highest importance on improving road safety and environmental outcomes.” Yet it is unclear how this has been acted on when the draft RIS3 is focussed on large, damaging road expansions like the £16bn Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) (which will increase deaths and serious injuries) and the £2.2bn A66 project.

What’s welcome in the draft RIS3:

• Will prioritise maintenance and renewal – good if true, but it is hard to trust since this was also said in RIS2, where the largest proportion of funds went into bigger roads.
• Will maintain Vision Zero ambition (for zero deaths and serious injuries) but this has been pushed back by 10 years to 2050 – there is a danger that the new target will mean once again it won’t be prioritised despite the rhetoric.
• Designated Funds will be continued and restates they should not be paying for things that should come out of scheme budgets – will National Highways actually be held to account if they start to misuse taxpayers’ money?⁴
• Will “also require National Highways to reduce the environmental impact of roads in areas such as noise, air, and water pollution, including in the management of its own soft estates.” – who will hold National Highways to account for meeting legal targets?
• “The Government also wants to see further efforts by National Highways to facilitate modal shift including Active Travel, so that more journeys can be made by cycling, walking and public transport.” – welcome in principle but the scale of the ambition is not stated here and there are no targets to show that this isn’t just tokenistic.

What’s missing:

• Nothing about improving social outcomes (reducing community severance for example) as an overarching objective.
• Action to reduce user carbon emissions from the SRN.
• An explanation of how 22% of households without access to a car will benefit from the development of the SRN, or how this is not driving further inequality (as it takes funding from public transport and active travel) despite talk of modal shift.
• What will happen to the third of the ‘smart’ motorway network that is non-compliant regarding emergency refuge spacing and why the government is building a new ‘smart’ motorway in the LTC⁵.
• How those negatively impacted by the SRN, or who don’t use it, have influenced development of RIS3 as it seems entirely driven by existing users.
• Accurate and credible data – for example the value of new schemes in RIS2 are quoted as having a BCR of 2. This is data from 2020 and not the latest BCR for RIS2 which was only 1.8. However, it’s likely a lot lower than this for RIS3 with the poor value schemes such as the LTC and A66 included in it⁶.

Chris Todd, Director of TAN, said:

“While there are some things to be welcomed in the draft RIS3, like the commitment to modal shift and Designated Funds, this doesn’t feel like a credible plan for our strategic road network. It is based on thinking from a previous, more stable era, and is not equipped to deal with increasing political and climatic uncertainty.

“What is clear is that building bigger roads brings few economic benefits. Just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, as this government seems to be doing, isn’t enough, especially with a growing deficit. If it really wants to improve journey times and reliability, and boost growth, then it needs to prioritise significant modal shift and demand management. Building ever bigger roads just makes things worse. It piles on the pressure on other sectors, such as the NHS, as the Lower Thames Crossing modelling has shown.

“We need a RIS3 reset. Without which, we will remain stuck in the slow lane.”

– ENDS –

Notes for editors

1. TAN was set up six years ago by director, Chris Todd, to help communities press for better (more sustainable) transport. We support more investment in bus and rail services and active travel. To enable this and better roads maintenance (fewer potholes) we continue to oppose the previous government’s damaging roads programme. We also support better integration between transport and planning. ↩︎
2. The DfT published its draft RIS3 today ↩︎
3. The exact figure is £24,983m, up from what was spent on RIS2, while many higher value rail schemes such as Ely Junction are not being funded. ↩︎
4. See TAN’s concerns in our recent blog ↩︎
5. Para 2.6, National Highways’ Performance Report to Parliament 2024/25 – July 2025, DfT ↩︎
6. Para 4.5, National Highways’ Performance Report to Parliament 2024/25 – July 2025, DfT. Note, many Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) studies often fail to demonstrate the benefits claimed before construction, so it is highly likely that the true benefits of the enhancement schemes are much lower. The BCR of 1.8 was only achieved after the low scoring Lower Thames Crossing (1.22) and the even worse A66 Northern Trans-Pennine (0.92) were removed from RIS2 (amongst others). ↩︎

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