No transportation without taxation – if we want top-class services we must pay for them
Kenny Macaskill
Scotrail once again makes the headlines over standards of service and the Tories howl outrage about a workplace parking levy. But it’s worth remembering that the two issues are linked. To paraphrase a populist saying from centuries gone by, there can be no transportation without taxation.
Public transport costs money and keeping fares down and improving quality of service requires investment, not just shouting at the conductor, never mind the operator.
Given the pressures on the public purse, it’s hard to see which areas of health, education or justice you’re going to cut to fund it, so new methods of revenue raising are required.
Indeed, rather than volunteering any savings, the Tories – without any sense of shame – have been calling for ever more public expenditure whether on hospital parking or other public services.
Of course, these are the self-same Tories who squeal about a “poll tax on wheels” with no sense of irony. Once they insisted “poll tax” was a pejorative term and it was really called the “community charge”, even though it was regressive in the extreme.
But the workplace parking levy debate mirrors that of the poll tax in terms of whether the solution is individual or collective.
Is it about the rights of the private motorist or provision for the collective good? Decades ago, some will have argued if you don’t have kids, why pay for education and if you are fit and healthy, just you thank your lucky stars you don’t need to pay for care and welfare.
But there are some public services – and it’s not just public transport – that need paid for – it’s not whether, but how you do it. And it’s better and more economical to do it collectively, rather than individually.
There are issues with Scotrail, that’s for sure. It’s no comfort to a commuter late for work or delayed in getting home to be told that actually they’re quite good in comparison to operators down south. Anyone unlucky enough to travel in the south of England will realise how relatively reliable and uncrowded our trains actually are. And travelling in the north of England helps you realise how old and dilapidated commuter trains can really be.
I understand the frustrations and anger as I’ve been a commuter. It’s a long time ago now, and in the supposedly halcyon days of British Rail, but being stuck outside Croy when it was late, I was tired and up early next morning wasn’t pleasant, then as now.
But privatisation wasn’t a solution, then no more than recently. The service didn’t improve and Network Rail has had to come back to the public sector.
However, the Tories didn’t seem to learn the lesson. The state-owned East Coast Main Line, which took over the service when the private operator walked away, was forcibly reprivatised with Virgin Trains East Coast taking over, only to cease operating last year and hand the services back to another state-owned firm London North Eastern Railway.
Now, despite my occasional difficulties with BR, I was still sympathetic to them. My uncle was a lifelong railway employee and loyal to the service until his dying days. I very much doubt that exists now with individual operators. No headstone will bear the words “lifelong Virgin driver”.
I’ve also expressed support for bringing railways back into state ownership, after all the whole logic of arguing that private is more efficient than public is lost when state operators from other lands take charge. But, it’s neither a priority, nor the solution. I’m sympathetic to taking the Scotrail franchise back in due course but renationalising now, at a cost, would be nuts and the service wouldn’t be improved anyway without additional cash. I disagree vehemently with the former Labour Transport Minister Tom Harris on both independence and Brexit, but on railways he knows his stuff.
Besides, the best argument I’ve heard against immediate renationalisation, either here or south of the border, is that it’s another middleclass subsidy. Though a very sweeping assumption, poorer people tend to use buses whilst the wealthier take the train. Why it’s pursued with such vigour by Jeremy Corbyn when there are foodbanks to eradicate and an economy to boost beats me.
And the argument that the German or Dutch railways are better because they’re publicly owned isn’t sustained by the evidence. It’s not state operation but better funding that delivers the enhanced quality of service. After all, Japanese railways have been privatised but the service is still outstanding.
For in public transport, as in all public and private services, you get what you pay for. The European or even Japanese services that hardpressed commuters long for are heavily funded or supported. If we want to emulate them it’s more cash, not a change of livery and operator that’s needed.
Which brings us back to how it’s to be paid for when there just isn’t enough cash to go around. The Tories have already complained about the level of tax so they won’t want that raised, so new taxes it will have to be. That’s why workplace parking levies are needed, as is congestion charging. Money is needed from new sources which should be hypothecated for public transport.
As with other public services, we can achieve so much more collectively than by paying individually. Besides, the pressing need for action on global warming necessitates it and electric cars are both a long way off and no solution to other down-
sides of mass car ownership, such as congestion or the loss of civic space. Public transport needs improved and it will neither be quick nor easy. In hard times, taxes can’t be too high and we’re still failing to prioritise public transport in other aspects of society, especially planning. Building housing estates and shopping centres where the car isn’t just a luxury but a necessity has to cease.
But, if better bus services, never mind trains, are wanted and the public transport we admire elsewhere is to be emulated, then as well as taxing company BMWS, we need to tax their drivers’ free parking space.