Christian Wolmar
Discrimination against rail.
“The lack of a coherent intelligent policy is manifested in the ‘we want more of everything’ ethos that prevails in the Department for Transport.”
HAVING written about transport policy for more than 20 years, it has become obvious to me that there isn’t one. Instead, policymakers keep on repeating the same mistakes - they believe that transport is a secondary issue dependent on other aspects of the economy and government, and therefore unworthy of expending any great intellectual or political effort. This lack of any coherent strategy is the reason why railways have, over the years, been treated so poorly by successive governments.
One of my party tricks is to ask any new transport minister I come across the question: ‘Do we need more transport or less?’ Those who are not stumped by the question tend to instinctively answer ‘more’ without any real consideration of the issue.
In researching my new book - Are Trams Socialist? Why Britain has no transport policy -I discovered why, in the near century of existence of the Ministry of Transport (there was no single ministry in charge of transport until after the First World War), it has so unfailingly favoured developing road rather than rail infrastructure.
Initially, when the creation of the new ministry was first mooted, the idea was that railways and roads would be dealt with together in a single department. But the roads lobby, by then already powerful (as it is now), argued successfully to ensure that there should be a separate department within the ministry to deal with roads, rather than road and rail being dealt with as one.
Moreover, the roads organisations, which included familiar names such as the RAC and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, ensured that there would be a committee made up of representatives of highway authorities and other motoring interests, to advise ministers on matters concerning roads, bridges and other facilities for motor vehicles.
Remember this was at a time when there were fewer than a million vehicles on the roads, and most people travelled by train or bus. Yet this structure, and this imbalance, has prevailed ever since.
In the period between the wars, the railways were consolidated into four companies that were governed by all kinds of rules and restrictions, while the Government encouraged a massive expansion in road transport, especially freight.
However, it was after the war that the failure to adopt a balanced strategy between the modes was to become so damaging to the railways. The key moment was the early 1960s. Two reports published in 1963 defined transport policy for the next decades - the Beeching report (which we all know about) and the Buchanan report, Traffic in Towns.
While a scythe was taken to the railways as a result of Beeching, Buchanan argued that a huge increase in traffic was inevitable and that, in effect, towns and cities had to be remoulded to adapt to this upsurge. Whole streets and even big chunks of districts would have to be demolished, in order to create urban motorways and clearways to accommodate the car.
Many of our urban areas - from Luton to Leicester and Birmingham to Burnley - still bear the scars of this short-sighted policy. And London only escaped because the 1973 newly elected Labour Greater London Council administration scrapped plans for a motorway box that would have resulted in the loss of
20,000 homes and the creation of a series of roads on stilts (like the one section that was completed - the A40 Westway between Paddington and Shepherds Bush).
The North London Line, in the meantime, paralleled part of the east-west axis of this outrageous scheme. It was scheduled for closure, but was saved thanks to a vociferous campaign by rail supporters.
Although there has been widespread recognition that the 1950s and 1960s were disastrous - with their emphasis on car transport together with line closures, and the scrapping of all but one tram network and all trolleybus lines - today the politicians still see transport solutions in terms of providing more of all kinds of infrastructure. The lack of a coherent intelligent policy is manifested in the ‘we want more of everything’ ethos that prevails in the Department for Transport.
So, yes, a lot of money is being spent on railways, and there is support for HS2. But Chancellor George Osborne’s plans also encompass a series of massive road schemes. Just one project - the widening of the Huntingdon to Cambridge section of the A14, together with junction improvements - has just been given the go-ahead for construction at a cost of a staggering £1.5 billion (it’s not just rail schemes that are massively overpriced), despite extensive environmental concerns affecting the air quality of local people.
This spending is justified on the basis of continued growth in road transport. Yet, in fact, there has been no growth in per capita car use for the past 20 years - all the growth has been a result of population increase.
There are several reasons for this, but the main one is simple. For decades, people have been prepared to spend on average around an hour per day on transport, and in recent years essentially we have run out of technologies that will allow us to go faster. We have (by and large) built the motorway network, while the rail system and planes go no faster than they did 20 years ago. In other words, we have saturated the demand for transport.
Yet the politicians refuse to accept this, and continue to build roads that will do little to improve transport opportunities. If, instead of signing big cheques for big schemes, transport ministers prioritised schemes that would be most beneficial both in terms of helping people move about more easily while trying to meet our climate change targets, they would not need to build more roads.
Transport planners, for the most part, are fully aware of the failings of the present system. But politicians tend to turn a tin ear when offered the obvious solutions of having a rational policy to reduce car use and provide better facilities for all other modes.
So while many transport policies are moving in the right direction, others are not… thanks to the lack of any long-term thinking on the issue. It is time for that to change.
Are Trams Socialist? Why Britain has no Transport Policy is published by London Partnership Publishing. For a signed copy for £8, postage free, email Christian.wolmar@gmail.com