I am sure you’ll all be aware that most of the world, especially our friends in Scandinavia and Canada, have had a good old laugh in recent weeks at the UK’s wholesale inability to deal with weather of any severity. On Monday 03 February, roughly one foot of snow completely crippled London’s transport network and subsequently it’s workforce, and the rest of the country didn’t fare much better.

The day saw 20% of the UK’s employees, certainly much higher in London, unable to make it to work – that’s around 6.4M people, at an estimated cost to the economy of US$1.8bn. Everybody was up in arms and even the 20% who had a day off to make snowmen pretended to be appalled. Cries rang out of “where was the grit, where was the salt?” And my personal favourite, “where were the snowploughs?”

Well, the answer to the final question is, “we don’t really have any,” and that’s because we live in England, not Iceland. The same people would probably back a multi-million dollar flood defence system in the Sahara. The fact is, it would cost considerably more to be constantly prepared for another Monday 03 February, than to take the once in 20 year snow hit, which may, or may not even happen.

But the furore did polarise a point. Why such a fuss over this when it’s becoming increasingly impossible every day, not every 20 years, to get anywhere on time in the UK purely because traffic volumes exceed the available infrastructure?

I drive almost every morning out of London, through the Blackwall Tunnel, one of the multitude of access points to the city. Almost daily, the traffic heading into London is completely gridlocked leaving up to one hour of work productivity lost per person. Multiply this urban scenario internationally and the lost production figures become obscene, and this is a daily event!

We may not be able to do much about lost productivity due to freak snow storms, but we can certainly do something about daily productivity lost due to poor infrastructure. It’s time to do some serious maths and point out to decision makers that improved urban infrastructure can, and will pay for itself. Life costing is the way to promote the advantages of such large-scale projects, ultimately making cities more functional and economically productive.

Then when the snow comes again in twenty years time, we could actually afford to take the day off and build some snowmen.

Tris Thomas


Tris