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Flooding: Best Laid Plans?

Flooding: Best Laid Plans?

How well prepared is Britain's transport infrastructure to weather the winter storms?

File on 4 Investigates · BBC Radio 4

February 11, 201437m 12s

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Show Notes

Flights grounded. Trains cancelled. Roads flooded. It's becoming a familiar story every winter as Britain's transport systems are battered by the weather. While rainfall this winter has been unusually high, has some of the disruption that we've seen been caused by a lack of strategic planning and routine maintenance? Should a flooded river have been able to knock out power supplies at Gatwick, catching airport authorities by surprise? Were the drainage systems adequate on some of the railway embankments that collapsed, leaving passengers stranded? Allan Urry investigates why our infrastructure is struggling to cope with the storms and asks whether bad planning has made a bad situation worse?

Producer: Rob Cave.