Christian Wolmar

Integrated transport.

REMEMBER ‘integrated transport’? It was a concept promoted by John Prescott, the muchunderrated Transport Secretary whose excellent ten-year transport plan was killed off by reactionary forces in Number 10.

I had not realised, until researching my new book on British Railways, that the concept is actually far older, having first been promoted through the creation of the British Transport Commission by the Labour government in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The huge and unwieldy Commission brought together everything from canals and railways to coaches and road freight under one organisation. It was an over-ambitious concept that did not survive the 13 years of Conservative rule that followed Clement Attlee’s defeat in 1951.

When Labour returned in 1964, the very capable and hard-working Barbara Castle, arguably the best Transport Secretary we have ever had, set out clearly to bring back the concept - albeit in a rather less allencompassing way.

Her 1968 Transport Act not only for the first time set out clear demarcations between the ‘commercial’ railway (which was selfsustaining) and the ‘social’ railway (which needed subsidy), she also set up the Passenger Transport Executives (called Authorities) in the city regions, which were intended to coordinate the various forms of public transport in those areas.

This was partly stimulated by her anger at the lack of any such co-ordination, as she sets out in her autobiography Fighting all the way: “As MP for Blackburn, I had many unhappy experiences of arriving at Manchester Piccadilly station on a dark wet night and having to wait in the rain for an infrequent bus to Manchester Victoria to catch a connection there.”

Her purpose in creating the new bodies was to ensure they could “build attractive modern interchanges and other links between road and rail”.

Plus ça change, as petty party bickering ensures little progress. In this country, unlike on the Continent, the need for integrated transport is a ferociously contested area between the main political parties, which is why France has 26 tram schemes and more on the way.

Just as the Conservatives had undermined and then abolished the British Transport Commission, they weakened the Passenger Transport Executives created by Castle in their Transport Act 1985. The very notion of ‘integrated transport’ has always appalled the free market instincts of the Conservatives, and still does.

But the concept remains equally, if not more, relevant today. If ever there was a time when