Forget about trains: we must embrace the car revolution and invest in roads

operation. Given recent breakthroughs in electric and driverless cars, 2018 may in time be considered a revolutionary year for transport.

These changes will disrupt commuting and travel patterns in unimagined ways. They will demand new legislation and new infrastructure, like charging stations and grid upgrades (since these vehicles will probably be electric too). Given projected trends towards car journeys, our existing network looks unlikely to keep pace.

Can we trust the state to prioritise roads, as it should, in the coming years? Recent policy decisions suggest not. Successive governments have viewed the common motorist as part-cash cow, part-pest, with drivers beset with interventions to complicate their journeys and “nudge” them towards public transport. While rail is heavily subsidised, fuel duty contributes £25billion a year to the Treasury – around three times our annual spend on roads. It’s hard to imagine the Exchequer foregoing such sums with the advent of (non-fuelconsuming) electric cars, so stand by for dynamic road pricing to make up the shortfall. This could at least inject a welcome market mechanism into the network, by, say, disincentivising non-essential journeys at peak hours.

Either way, we should be examining these questions now, not re-treading well-worn debates about rail nationalisation or obsessing over obsolete projects like HS2. The internet’s arrival in the Nineties triggered unforeseen social and behavioural changes: Britain’s forthcoming transport revolution will prove similarly disruptive. It’s time for a more visionary planning system.