The Freight Transport Association (FTA) has welcomed the release of the Department for Transport's report on congestion - Journey Time Reliability on Motorway and Trunk Roads.

The FTA said its members, which represents operators of almost half of the UK lorry fleet, felt an investigation into the extent of UK roads congestion and a focus on journey time reliability was long overdue.

Richard Turner, FTA chief executive, said: "Roads congestion is the blight of UK industry - the resultant loss of reliability together with the actual cost of delays constitute a colossal waste of man hours and money for individual companies and for the whole economy.

"Lorry operators make enormous investments in systems, vehicles and IT designed to improve efficiency and customer service. However, much of that investment is negated when they become entangled in the daily congestion which impacts on the UK's key trade routes. These operators are entitled to expect a road network fit for the purpose with high journey reliability.”

The FTA welcomes the report's recognition of the worst problems and the government's commitment to providing more capacity, to improving the performance of the current network and, ultimately, to the creation of a road pricing system designed to better ration road space, said Turner.

A new system would bring about various much-needed developments, he claimed:

"(The) new system will have to recognise the essential economic role of freight transport operations.

"These new statistics record an all time low in reliability and set a benchmark to improve upon. Those of us responsible for delivering the fourth largest economy in the world are entitled to expect a more reliable roads network than we have today."