Cars are the future but our politicians aren’t ready to accept it

We are on the cusp of a transport revolution. Experts predict 2018 will be the year the world fully embraces the electric car, with some even believing it will be, for the first time, cheaper to buy electric than a petrol or diesel-run model. Self-driving vehicles are on the horizon, too – whether you like it or not. New Department for Transport figures, meanwhile, show the number of vehicles on the roads continues to rise, even as public transport usage falls. In other words, Britain’s transport future is looking increasingly car-centric.

And yet the Government does not seem to have noticed. In fact its entire vision of transport seems wedded to a bygone era. It is obsessed with HS2

– the giant rail scheme operating, even by public sector standards, well behind schedule and hugely over budget. It risks being obsolete before it has even opened. Self-driving vehicles will likely be on sale well before the first phase of HS2 opens. But still the HS2 leviathan trundles on.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the proliferation of electric vehicles raises some real problems for the Government. Revenues from fuel duty are set to decline progressively, so how are we going to fund our roads? Suggestions include introducing new toll roads, dynamic road pricing (where you pay for each mile driven, with prices changing depending on how busy it is in order to manage congestion) and even full-scale privatisation of the motorway network. The Government doesn’t seem interested in any of this.

Perhaps that is because, in recent years, politicians, regulators, bureaucrats and environmentalists have shown their ideological objections to car ownership by working hard to recast it as a source not of pride and personal freedom but of guilt – and to “nudge” motorists into abandoning their vehicles. They have misunderstood why people drive: cars offer autonomy and convenience, and people do not want to give those things up. They have also failed to recognise that electric cars remove one of the central objections to driving, which is pollution.

Central planning of transport has failed, with governments proving themselves incapable of predicting the trends and innovations of the future. Those who masterminded the Channel Tunnel in the 1990s, for example, failed to anticipate the era of low-cost airline travel, and ended up overestimating their annual passenger numbers by almost 20 million.

Instead of playing Mystic Meg with public funds, the Government should promote smaller-scale, less risky investments, and, crucially, begin planning for the vehicle revolution and the immense changes it will bring. One compelling suggestion comes from transport expert Professor David Starkie, who proposes transforming the entire HS2 route into a driverless car lane – saving billions in the process. That would be killing two birds with one stone.