Heroic and dictatorial - welcome to West Yorkshire's potty transport strategy

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority has some plans for the future of transport that are, in the words of one councillor, either heroic or potty. At the core of the proposals is the now familiar anti-car line we see in almost every piece of transport planning. WYCA has especially heroic plans:

As part of that scheme the Authority has set some eye catching targets, including reducing car journeys by 21 per cent, increasing walking by 78 per cent and increasing cycling by a huge 2,000 per cent.

The Authority has decided, in the words of another councillor, to be "dictatorial" (that councillor says he is a liberal too) about this by insisting that "...all transport projects would have to include details of how they would improve the environment." Forget about making the economy stronger. Who cares about increasing access or mobility for the old or the poor. If it doesn't reduce the carbon footprint it doesn't get done.

For years there has been a presumption within transport planning that private transport is bad and public transport is good. Using your own vehicle to pootle about is seen as somehow selfish and inconsiderate whereas getting an inconvenient bus or train to an equally inconvenient location was the acme of good transport. Across the nation (indeed across the world) we poured billions into new networks designed to achieve that model shift, to stop people from using cars. What was the outcome of all this lavish infrastructure? More cars, more car journeys.

Those heroic councillors in West Yorkshire might have missed the reason for this failure in pushing through their new plans. People like cars, they like the flexibility and convenience of having access to a transport system that takes them from where they are now to where they want to be and does so in the dry and carrying all the necessary babies, bags and boxes. There is no point at which a train or a bus will provide such a system. Even bicycles or walking, for all that they do go point-to-point, don't give the same scope as a car. Which means that cars must be part of future transport planning.

As we peer into the transport future, we can see looming in its mists, several big changes. The biggest is the advent of autonomous systems that offer a very different future for the car than that assumed by WYCA's tranport plans. But, when that Authority looks at the future, it explicitly excludes private autonomous vehicles from its planning. Every transport plan being drawn up right now, regardless of the political colour of the authority, takes an anti-car position. With the proposed 'decarbonising' of cars over the next fifteen years or so, the imperative to reduce car travel for environmental reason is reduced and autonomous systems should also deliver a step change in road safety - the two primary reasons for wanting fewer cars no longer apply. So why are we so fixated on reducing car travel?

Another big change, something the last few months have accelerated, is a reduction in the need for people to travel. We've seen how working from home has increased and some of this will become permanent but we've also had a rise in home shopping reducing the need to travel for shopping. We still don't know the extent to which these changes will remain but it is reasonable to expect that essential travel will reduce. This creates a real problem for public transport networks that already operate at low levels of financial viability, something exacerbated by the reluctance to use transport investment on removing the most expensive element of these system's operations - the drivers. No transport plan I have seen looks at how, for example, currently non-viable rural bus networks become viable if the need to provide a driver is removed.

And then we have the opportunity - again ignored in WYCA's plans - of moving to three-dimensional networks by accessing low altitude air travel. The Authority spends time nagging about air travel (like cars, planes are seen as an irredeemable evil - at least until the councillor wants to take her annual holiday on a Greek island) but specifically excludes shifting to a 3D system. Again there's no reason why deliveries, taxis and even private travel might take advantage of currently underused low altitude air transport. There are regulatory concerns and perhaps some safety questions but we are missing opportunities by refusing to even consider the options 3D brings.

I don't lay claim to knowing the answers to problems with transport but I do think our current planners are making the same mistakes as their predecessors - too much focus on trains, trying to exclude cars rather than make cars better, and producing plans for today's problems without considering whether those problems will exist by the time the new infrastructure or systems are built. On top of this, the WYCA, like other authorities, has added an absolutist mantra on the environment that does not reflect either the scientific consensus or the needs and expectations of the travelling public. The result of this will be a transport strategy and billions in infrastructure investment that, at best, will add no value to travel systems and, at worst, will actively destroy economic value to the detriment of the public and the environment.