Sam DaviesThe escalating cost of this project has become just as attention-grabbing as the first-of-its-kind-in-the-UK design. Understanding the story here is really important.
After 10 months’ reconstruction, the Fendon Road roundabout is reopening on Friday morning. There will continue to be heated debate over whether this is the right design in the right location and ultimately only time will tell if it functions as promised – making a step-change in the safety of pedestrians and cyclists while not increasing traffic hold-ups.
But there’s another aspect to this project which has become just as attention-grabbing as the first-of-its-kind-in-the-UK design – and that’s the escalating cost. Understanding the story here is important both because of the specifics of this scheme but also because of:
- The knock-on effect on other specified cycle safety schemes being funded from the same pot; and
- The public’s ability to trust that they are being dealt with honestly and transparently.
So let’s start at the beginning.
The first number associated with this project that I can find was a stated budget of £1.425 million for both Fendon Road roundabout and cycleways along Queen Edith’s Way, approved by the County Council’s Economy and Environment Committee in November 2016.
What the scheme ‘cost’: Nov 2016 to March 2020
It’s not until 2018 that we first see a number specifically associated with the roundabout redesign (discussions about the cycleways had reached an impasse by this point). The County Council applied to the Department of Transport for a funding contribution towards the Dutch roundabout. The application states “Scheme total cost £800,000 of which a DfT contribution of £550,000 is sought.”
This number was then repeated in the press release announcing that the funding had been secured later that year, although this refines the wording slightly “the scheme’s total cost is estimated to be £800,000”. However, it was this £800,000 figure which remained in the public domain until…
Revised scheme ‘cost’: March 2020 to July 2020
…Spring 2020, when the delays to completion of the scheme were announced. Subsequent questioning revealed not only an overrun in time but also a massive escalation in cost – with a new figure quoted of £1.8 million. The previously quoted £800,000 cost is now redefined as an “early estimate” which “did not include the additional utility work now required”, further defined as underground cabling issues, including adding 700m of new ducting. Fair enough, you might think – even with preparatory surveys it’s hard to know what you’re going to find underground until you start excavating. And that didn’t happen until September 2019 when they closed the road.
Clarification of scheme ‘cost’: July 2020
But this is where it starts to get really interesting! The County Council commissioned a report into the overrun which was presented to the July 2020 meeting of its Highways and Transport Committee released. That report stated that the cost of the roundabout was already known to have increased to £1.5 million before excavations started last September.
The only logical interpretation of that is that the statement made in March 2020 to the effect that the £1 million increase was all down to unpredicted utility works is simply not correct. However, this same report repeats the line that “Soon after commencing construction, substantial additional utility work, including BT and UKPN cabling, elements of which were not previously identified by either company were discovered”.
None of this stacks up. According to their own report, £700,000 of additional costs were known to the County Council before the first shovel hit the ground. In September 2019 the cost of the roundabout was £1.5 million. Yet no-one – absolutely no-one – ever used that number in the public domain and no-one ever corrected references to a £0.8 million cost (not an estimate) until the ‘utilities overrun’ became public in March 2020. And the revised cost was never brought back to committee for approval.
Final scheme cost? August 2020
Finally, the July 2020 report goes on to report on the impact of the Covid 19 crisis on the execution of the scheme, bringing us to a “total forecast required budget for Fendon Road” of £2.359 million – that is to say almost triple what people understood to be the scheme cost a mere four months ago.
As these new figures have gradually come into the public domain, questions have been asked how the benefit cost ratio (or ‘BCR’, the measure of ‘value for money’) has changed. The answer has been hard to extract but finally a response was received, which is worth reproducing here in full:
“At the time the South Cambridgeshire Cycle Improvement initiative was being progressed, local members were keen to have the initial S106 funding spent on safer walking and cycling on Queen Edith’s Way, Cherry Hinton Road and the Robin Hood junction and therefore the approach was to derive the benefits based on the consultations that took place and the general support received from the local residents. As such, therefore, a BCR was not calculated and therefore I am unable to supply such details.”
For the avoidance of doubt, a benefit cost ratio was not calculated.
To return to the specific points I raised at the start of this blog:
- The Fendon Road roundabout redesign was one of four schemes included in a £4 million funding pot for South Cambridge, the other elements being the Queen Edith’s Way cycleways; new traffic signals at the Robin Hood junction; and improved cycleways and public realm on Cherry Hinton Road. The Robin Hood scheme is the next to be delivered, scheduled for late 2020 with a budget approaching £1 million. Thus the final cost of the Fendon roundabout plus the Robin Hood junction will account for almost all of the available pot. The Cherry Hinton Road scheme was then due to follow but has now had its budget cut to pay for the roundabout overrun: “Proposals are still in development for the Cherry Hinton Road and remainder of the Queen Edith’s Way schemes and consideration must now be given as to how these schemes proceed based on the £700,000 that would remain in the programme.” We will see what this means in terms of provision in due course.
- The lack of visibility around the expenditure on this project (who knew what when, and by what process increases were signed off) and the reluctance to share information proactively is extremely corrosive to public trust. Many people who have followed this saga over the last four years will never again take at face value assurances from officers or councillors that appropriate project costing and ongoing management is in place, or that there is no need for them to forensically interrogate the detail of both the language and the numbers associated with future schemes. As the saying goes “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
So many questions arise from this project about accountability, transparency and governance.
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Thank you Sam. Where can I get the accident statistics that led to this development so that we can compare the result later.
You can see the accident data upto and including 2019 on https://www.crashmap.co.uk/ There’s no denying that it was an accident cluster but as I explain in the article there’s definitely an opportunity cost to spending this much money on just one project
I totally agree with you Sam. This is not the first time that the question has been asked about the lack of scrutiny that our elected councillors provided …..both Queen Edith’s and County in regard to this scheme.
Shame that this has to be a ‘Cambridge’ project – since, AFAIK, it’s a UK test project, the first Dutch Roundabout ever. So, perhaps National Govt should have chipped in for the excess? I like the idea of discovering that more work needed to be done after the first holes were dug – and so fill in all the holes and leave it as it was before??? Well, I guess somebody would have had to decide whether to go on, or whether to abort, and go for some cheaper scheme – and start looking for another location for the first Dutch Roundabout. Downside of the design (anywhere) – it’s *big*, so it’s liable to run in to stuff under the ground. Better then to build from scratch, in some new develpment? But then, are we building roundabouts at all now in urban areas?
Thank you Sam for this extremely interesting report. I often commented on what sort of cost this would involve. Whilst the ‘Dutch roundabout’ schemes work in Holland, there is a factor of the cycling population being brought up with laws and regulations regarding cycle ways. My point being, Cambridge is a very cosmopolitan city and we have worldwide visitors, how many would even know how to properly negotiate these ‘obstacle courses’? Will the accident rate increase? Will the flow of already congested roads be affected by traffic waiting for a stream of cyclists at the crossing? Ultimately will this horrendous over budget experiment be justified? I wonder.
When are the council going to tell us know how to use this roundabout. Will we see one cyclist using the roundabout.
I am very late coming in to this and I have only done so because whenever I use the roundabout (as a driver) I see very few cyclists or pedestrians using it and that made me wonder how the expenditure could have been justified. It seems that it never was.
Notwithstanding the claims (since shown to be less than the whole truth) that the increase in cost was down to utilities it is just beyond belief that this could go ahead without any cost benefit analysis.
Sam
I live a short distance from the Fendon Road Dutch roundabout.
I drive and cycle.
I find the roundabout pretty dangerous. The first person to get killed on this roundabout will be an electric scooter user. Last week one evening I carefully drove across the roundabout when a scooter overtook me at great speed cut across in front of me. I missed him by inches. The first thing to do is ban this area as a collection point for scooters.
It has always baffled me as to what actually cost so much… it must have been the underground work, because at surface level what have we got that we didn’t have before – a pretty ring of cobble/ brickwork round the base of the existing roundabout ( which wasn’t even scrubbed up), new contrasting red and black asphalt and a great deal of white paint delineating the different zones round the system. None of which we’re developed specialy for this project, and all available in any council’s road maintainence yard. It does not matter how Dutch a design, how inclusive, diverse and eco- friendly this whole enterprise has been promoted, that folks, is what we got for our money. The only additional, and worthwhile changes apart from those mentioned above, are the belisha beacons which of course require cabling and more complicated installation, and would be considerably more costly – but even so, stock items ( and if not, why not?).
The hype and PR around this project has been remorseless and great claims made, but it will be interesting to compare accident statistics one year post lockdown to one year pre Covid.