(posted 7993 days ago)The Times
June 02, 2002Focus: And for his next trick...
With Britain’s transport system in chaos, Alistair Darling will need deft hands to juggle the urgent problems facing roads, railways and runways. Can he pull it off? Richard Woods and Jonathon Carr- Brown reportTravelling from Alistair Darling’s home in Kennington, just south of the Thames, to the headquarters of the Department of Transport, just north of the river, took only a few minutes by chauffeured car last Thursday. In the early morning the traffic was light, the roads were clear.
However, from his sixth-floor office the new transport secretary looked out over a multiple pile-up of policies that have strewn debris across the country. The scene was shocking: crumbling roads, cracking railways and overcrowded airports.
Railtrack had thundered through the buffers and come to rest amid a thicket of lawyers. On the adjoining Underground line lay a tangle of private finance initiatives.
Not far away the smouldering remains of a new runway policy poked out of the ground. Nearby the emergency services were desperately trying to resuscitate an air traffic control computer that had suffered multiple injuries.
Queues of traffic tailed back miles, engines steaming, drivers fuming, with passengers stranded and business delayed. The air was thick with the complaints of people trying to go about their daily lives.
How long it would take to clear the mess of Britain’s transport systems was anybody’s guess. Amid the wreckage Darling glimpsed five former Labour transport secretaries meandering around looking bloodied, confused and defeated.
Among them was Stephen Byers, wondering what had hit him, Gavin Strang, going nowhere, and John Prescott, old Two Jags, still searching for a proper job. Could Darling succeed where all the others had failed and get Britain moving again? The omens were not encouraging.
WHEN Prescott was transport supremo he announced a 10- year plan (TYP) to unclog Gridlock Britain and declared it to be the boldest strategy for a generation. Over the course of a decade £180 billion of public and private money would be invested in roads and railways, buses and bikes, and the whole network made to run like clockwork.
The blueprint for integrated transport, he said, would “deliver radical improvements for passengers, motorists and business — and all of us as citizens concerned about congestion, safety and a better environment”. That was in the summer of 2000.
True, turning round transport policy takes time. But two years on and Prescott’s vision is still stuck in the slow lane. Even the government’s own advisers admit it.
In a report last month the Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT), which Prescott had asked to provide independent scrutiny, identified numerous failings. Measures to improve bus services and combat local traffic congestion are slipping, it said, and “there are worrying signs that the government and local authorities are soft-pedalling” on measures to curb car use.
While the investment programme is a welcome boost after decades of underfunding, the report concludes, the plan is by no means set to solve Britain’s transport problems.
The immediate mess that Darling has to clear up is Railtrack, which is in the hands of accountants after near financial collapse in October. A new body to run the rail network must be created and installed if the improvements envisaged are to go ahead.
The debacle over Railtrack also needs resolving if the government is to mend fences with the City and secure the private funding it is relying on to improve services. Of the £180 billion, the government is putting up only part of the money. For rail it envisages private investment of £34 billion, for strategic roads £2.5 billion, for local transport £9 billion, for transport in London £10 billion.
In fact, a lot more money may be needed since much of the existing infrastructure seems to be in an even worse state than was first thought. Last week an academic report concluded that an extra £10 billion at least will be needed to keep the rail network operating for the next nine years. The study, by the University of Sheffield and Oxford Economic Research Associates, says the government will either have to reduce its target for expanding rail services or double the annual subsidy of £3 billion it provides.
Last week, too, the government published its latest survey of the state of the nation’s roads. In overall terms it reported a slight improvement after years of deterioration during which, in 2000, our roads hit their worst state for 25 years.
Buried in the optimistic figures was a serious concern: the number of principal roads requiring close monitoring because of structural problems jumped to 16%.
According to the AA, successive governments have skimped on maintaining the infrastructure. Half as much is now spent on roads and local transport as was spent 25 years ago. And this at a time when road use continues to rise. For no amount of asphalt repair jobs can cover up the fundamental problem with Britain’s road network: our umbilical attachment to the car.
IN 50 years the British have tripled their travelling. The days of quiet country lanes with the occasional passing charabanc have been replaced by the constant swish of rubber on tarmac. Some 80% to 85% of all travel in Britain is now by car.
If all the 24m motor vehicles in the UK were parked end to end, they would stretch twice round the world. Road transport accounts for half of most pollutant emissions and one fifth of carbon dioxide.
Surely the rise of the motor car has reached saturation point? Not a bit, says the RAC. Demand for travel increases with prosperity and the method of transport that people prefer is the car. By 2031 people will be making 50% more journeys by car than now, even if the previous heady rates of increase slow down.
One reason is demographics: as the population ages, a higher proportion will have driving licences and the car offers many benefits to the elderly.
According to the RAC study, even if road capacity is increased by the amount suggested in the TYP, traffic congestion will still “increase considerably”.
The government line to date has been that it will make public transport so good that it will lure people out of their cars and on to buses and trains. But experts of different hues are now coming together to agree on one thing: the government is talking nonsense.
Public transport will never be able to compete everywhere with the car. Even David Begg, chairman of the CfIT, said: “We can’t build our way out of the problem and good public transport, while an essential prerequisite, is not enough.”
How much we love the car is reflected in our toleration of an annual massacre on the roads that would be utterly unacceptable in other spheres: 3,400 deaths, 38,000 serious injuries and 279,000 minor injuries in 2000.
In the face of such obsession, the government has backed away from previous measures to curb traffic. And only last Sunday Byers repeated the politically expedient line that he “was not in the business of punishing motorists”.
NOW that Byers is no longer running the nation’s transport policy, will Darling follow the same line or will he be bolder? Experts believe he should be radical. Transport specialists Stephen Glaister, of Imperial College, and John Adams, of University College London, come from opposite sides of the tracks. Glaister, an economist, believes in road building, Adams, a geographer, believes that building more roads will lead to an environmental disaster.
However, both agree that no amount of money will create a public transport system that induces motorists out of their cars (except in the big conurbations). “Eighty per cent of people travel by car,” said Glaister, “and almost none of that traffic has competition or ever will have competition from public transport.”
Adams concurred: “All the evidence is that government will never be able to offer choice to most car owners. And while they continue to be nice to car owners, fewer people use public transport. That means higher fares, fewer services or greater subsidies.” Is there another answer? Adams and Glaister believe that the only real medium-term solution is to change the way people view the roads.
“Look at southern California,” said Glaister. “They have learnt you simply cannot build enough roads to prevent congestion.” The two experts — and even motoring organisations — now advocate some form of charging so drivers no longer take road use for granted.
So far the government has shied away from increasing the financial burden on motorists, fearful of the popular backlash it would provoke. But this weekend Darling indicated that he is willing to rethink this approach. “It’s simply not possible to have more and more traffic on streets designed hundreds of years ago,” he said. “Car drivers accept there has to be some constraint simply because we can’t all drive down one road at the same time”.
Could congestion charging be viable? The necessary technology is not far down the road. Steve Hounsham of Transport 2000 envisages a smart card on the dashboard that would relay information to satellites, tracking where cars have travelled.
This would doubtless cause an outcry over invasions of freedom and privacy. But we are already tracked by our mobile phone calls and have accepted breathalysers, seatbelts and speed cameras as part of everyday life. As Begg spoints out: “The only true anti-motorist policy is allowing congestion to grow.”
Darling insists that he is not out to punish drivers and maintains that his first priority is to improve public transport. But however he sets out to achieve that, it is bound to provoke controversy.
As he pondered his new position yesterday, he observed drily that “this is one of a number of jobs in government (where) if you like adulation you’ll be bitterly disappointed”. Only time will tell whether Darling has it in him to be daring.