Bus services need less regulation and more subsidy not council committees deciding routes.

Geography matters when you're thinking of running a bus service. I know this sounds pretty obvious but it does seem to be a little lost on the London-based political commentariat who rather assume that getting a bus in, say, Appleby-in-Westmoreland is going to be the same as getting a bus at Oxford Circus.

The geography problem is that Appleby is 34 miles from its nearest large town, Carlisle - by comparison 34 miles from Oxford Circus gets you to Sevenoaks in Kent. Nobody is going to run a bus service as frequent as you'd expect in London on these long rural routes. And, because not that many people want to go from Appleby to Carlisle, the passenger numbers are lower.

London's area is just short of 2,000 square miles and holds a population over 8 million. The northernmost part of England (Cumbria, Nortumberland, Durham and Tyne & Wear) is over 6,000 square miles but has only 2.8 million people, nearly half of whom live in the five Tyne and Wear metropolitan districts. And across this area are thousands of little communities and thousands more isolated farmsteads - saying "we should have a system like London" is ridiculous.

Bus usage has been declining (less quickly in London but it has fallen even there) but the density of London means that there are far more profitable routes available to, as the advocates of state-directed regulated bus systems say, cross-subsidise the unprofitable but socially-desirable routes. I'm not defending the current semi-regulated situation, it's the worst of both worlds in many ways with (as the Competition Commission in 2011 concluded) too many barriers to entry, too little competition and too much of a cosy relationship between Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) and the bus operators. But the answer - in as far as there is a way to design an effective bus service for dispersed populations across large rural areas - lies in less regulation not more along with a transport subsidy system focused more on supporting social necessity rather than subsidising commuter travel.

There are a lot of bus users (far more than trains):



Nearly four-and-a-half billion journeys but look more closely and not only are half those journeys in London but if you take those passenger journeys on a per mile basis, London get 7.5 passenger journeys per mile travelled compared to just 2 for rural England.

Simply saying, as the bus regulation fans say, that re-regulation or nationalisation will change everything is to deny the reality of geography - the nature of England's population distribution means you can't create a system for most of it where everyone is five minutes from a bus stop with a regular service. We need to think differently and, rather than simply hand over new powers to committees of local councillors or new-fangled elected mayors, we should combine subsidy with further deregulation.

Why not allow more people - whether private businesses, community groups, or councils - to set up services. Take a look at PickMeUp in Oxford (admittedly an urban area) - with 22,000 people registered for the app:

PickMeUp, managed by the Oxford Bus Company on behalf of Go-Ahead Group, is the largest scheme of its kind to be launched by a UK bus company. It enables passengers to request a mini-bus pick-up within 15 minutes at a virtual bus stop using a mobile phone app. The service provides the flexibility to choose both the start and end point of journeys within the Eastern Arc of the city. Technology enables passengers to be matched with others making similar journeys to enable ride sharing.

Or consider innovations like San Francisco's 'Google Bus' or New Jersey's jitneys as well as asking whether the app-based ridesharing model used by Lyft and Uber is a model relevant to public transport systems in dispersed populations. We could also deliver the subsidy via the app using postcodes to ensure that it's used to resolve the social issues connected to isolation. And lastly there's the prospect of driverless technology - even drone buses - making it more economic to serve those isolated communities.

It isn't a scandal that bus fares are higher outside London, nor is it a consequence of deregulation or privatisation. It's the result of subsidy being withdrawn (or rather shifted from buying routes to providing bus passes) and this has meant that only the profitable town-to-town routes remain. Bus companies, in competition with urban rail and light rail systems, are putting in wi-fi, reclining seats and air-conditioning while reducing the overall system coverage. A wise government would open up the market to new innovations and initiatives but to make this possible we would need a significant increase in public subsidy. One option here might be to shift subsidy away from intercity trains (the London commuter - Southern Rail etc. - trains are largely unsubsidised) that are mostly used by the relatively well off and move it to supporting bus services that largely serve poorer populations.

It is welcome that we're talking about bus services in England but if the start and finish of the discussion is to simply go back to expensive, inefficient, pre-1985 services then we are doing the millions of people who use buses a massive disservice. The opportunity to combine public subsidy with market innovation would be missed and we'd end up with services determined by political whim and prices that don't reflect demand or need. Above all, if we try to apply a system that works well for a concentrated population of millions to a dispersed population of thousands, we'll end up with a complete mess.

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Trains are not the solution to any of the UK's transport problems, they are the problem.

I've felt for some while that we have our transport planning, infrastructure, investment and systems all, as my mum would put it, kecky-pooky. Just to give one example - there were 5.2 billion passenger journeys on buses but just 1.9 billion journeys on railways, yet public subsidy for rail is double the subsidy for buses (including the cost of giving every old person who wants one a free bus pass). The problem is that, whenever there's a problem with rail travel - a method of travel that is never used by half the population and which accounts for less than 5% of total journeys - it's all over the news as pundits and politicians fall over each other to tell us that a couple of late, overcrowded trains is a national scandal.

The real national scandal (if this is the currency we want to deal in) has been the gradual depriving of many communities from anything that looks even remotely like a reliable public transport system. It's no damn good giving older people a free bus pass at enormous cost if there aren't any buses for them to make use of the pass. Yet that is the reality of the UK's upside down approach to investment on public transport. There's a £48 billion investment plan for the existing rail network plus the eye-watering £55 billion or more for HS2. And we haven't even got to such delights as Northern Powerhouse Rail or extending high speed up to Scotland!

By contrast, the road investment strategy amounts to just £15 billion (there's an additional £1.9 billion for cycling and walking - which add up to more journeys than rail) and there is a further £12 billion or so directed through local councils, regional mayors, LEPs and combined authorities. Bear in mind that 95% of all journeys and over two thirds of all passenger journeys take place on roads. Yet government - urged on by campaign groups like the Campaign for Better Transport - still bungs ever more money into rail networks.

The problem is that too many people have heard the words "modal shift" and think it's a realistic option to get more people "out of cars and onto trains". I've heard this at just about every single combined authority meeting without any consideration of how on earth an over-capacity rail network that amounts to less than 10% of miles travelled can provide this modal shift. Worse still we are stuck in a planning model that says people travel to work in central business districts - the curse of Christaller lingers in transport planning meaning that the reality of people's lives is not reflected in how systems are designed or, indeed, what sort of systems get built.

Here's a quote from Laberteaux, Lance Brown and Berger, writing in Infinite Suburbs about what they call Interburbia:

"...in documenting the actual quantities of population, jobs, and transportation movements, we reveal that a planning focus on the developing suburban nodes and their infrastructural linkages (rather than suburb to city core) would more closely match the urbanizing processes we confirm on the ground. A renewed infrastructural focus on intersuburban commuting along with parallel policy and design solutions could help create a better interface between the flexible, service-based economy of suburban environments and the majority of the US population who live and work there."

To translate this a little and by way of illustration, let me talk about my neighbours. Firstly, none of them use public transport to get to work. And the location of that work includes Halifax, inner suburban Bradford, Skipton, Cowling, Bingley and Otley. Only two people have work that takes them to the nearest city centre - the node around which transport planners will work - Bradford.

This pattern will be repeated again and again throughout the UK's urban areas - people don't live in suburbs and commute to inner cities, they live and work in suburbia. Even in London with perhaps the world's more extensive public transport network, the majority of journeys are by car and most people do not work in London's central business districts. Yet intraurban transport planning - look at Crossrail - is all about moving people to and from suburbs to the city centre. And interurban planning is about moving people from one central node to another central node.

The result of this is that expectations of transport investment from most decision-makers (MPs, councillors, government policy planners) are influenced by the loud voices of, mostly richer, people who use trains including, of course, the editors of newspapers and employees at the Department for Transport. Plus of course all those blokes who are still psychologically attached to their train sets. This means that the interests of road users - including those 5.2 billion bus journeys - are of secondary importance to those of rail commuters whinging about how much the tickets cost and that there's a delayed train because the engineering works over-ran.

With driverless options and the advent of a 3D transport environment (the current one is largely 2D), very expensive fixed rail systems - a transport form that takes people from one place they don't want to be to another place they don't want to be - become harder and harder to justify. Yet UK transport plans seem to be trapped into an accelerating investment in new and upgraded rail systems despite this not having the remotest chance of delivering modal shift at any scale.

Trains really aren't the answer to the UK's transport challenges - they ignore the reality of people's lives, fail to recognise choice, are expensive and inefficient, suck in subsidy that amounts to a regressive tax on the less well off, crowd out new and innovative options, and fail to encompass emerging technologies. It's not that trains aren't the solution, it's more that they're the problem.

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Buses aren't saving the planet...

One of the usual arguments against suburbs is essentially "cars are bad for the environment". This statisitc - from the USA so data may differ for other places - tells a different story:

The average car on the road consumed 4,700 British thermal units (BTUs) per vehicle mile in 2015, which is almost a 50 percent reduction from 1973, when Americans drove some of the gas-guzzliest cars in history. The average light truck (meaning pick ups, full-sized vans, and SUVs) used about 6,250 BTUs per vehicle mile in 2015, which is also about half what it was in the early 1970s.

By comparison, the average transit bus used 15 percent more BTUs per vehicle mile in 2015 than transit buses did in 1970. Since bus occupancies have declined, BTUs per passenger mile have risen by 63 percent since 1970. While buses once used only about half as much energy per passenger mile as cars, they now use about a third more.

Hmmmm.

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Legacy transport and housing systems - barriers to better cities

Cities are changing. Or rather cities should be changing but most of them aren't because local (and national) governments plus attachment to legacy transport systems means that this change isn't happening.

West Yorkshire - by world standards a pretty wealthy place - is consulting on its transport strategy for 2016-2036. Illustrating the lack of ambition is that the chair of the transport committee thinks it'll be a stellar achievement if we have an integrated ticketing system in place by 2036.

I'd like us to talk about Olli and his friends:

Meet Olli, Local Motors’ 3D-printed, autonomous, electric shuttle bus. Designed to streamline shared transportation systems around the world, this self-driving car could be the answer to public transportation issues. On top of it all, Olli is partially recyclable.

As long as you have a smartphone, where ever you are is a bus stop. And wherever you’re going is the next stop. The Olli app puts control into the palm of your hand. App accessibility allows users to find existing routs, share an Olli, or charter an Olli of their own. Set pick-up and destination locations, ride from point to point, then pay through the app. Much like Uber, just call Olli through the app and it will show up to take you to your destination. Plus it talks to you!

If you're saying that autonomous vehicles aren't a central part of future urban transport systems then you're trapped in those 19th century legacy systems - trains and buses (at one meeting that same chair talked about using canals more). Mind you we've the same problem with housing where innovative solutions using new technology aren't getting the attention they deserve:

Italian innovator Massimo Moretti launched WASP with the goal to “create a means for affordable fabrication of homes, and provide these means to the locals in poverty stricken areas.” WASP’s affordable housing solution combines 3D printing with biomimicry, drawing inspiration from the mud dauber wasp that constructs its home from one of the world’s oldest building materials: mud. The choice of clay and mud inputs for the portable BigDelta was a conscious choice; although many 3D printers use cement, Moretti chose earth because of its low environmental footprint, local availability, and natural insulating benefits. Based on previous prototypes, the BigDelta will presumably build full-size houses using open-source software and a mixture of mud, clay, and plant fibers for reinforcement.

So you think folk won't want to live in a mud hut?

Atelier Koé’s mud home will be built in Ghana at the beginning of 2016 and the Nka Foundation are calling out for participants to come and join the build. The process of building will give participants (many of whom are professionals or architecture interns), a deep insight into the possibilities of local African materials.

And it'll look like this:




The same goes for other materials - if we're to get unviable city sites recycled as housing we have to change the model, to forget the problems of 1960s system-build and look at non-traditional materials.

The problem is that our urban design, building, transport and infrastructure planners are still working with those 19th and 20th century legacy systems. The result is that we respond to the challenges of housing and moving growing urban populations through a combination of regulation, price fixing and subsidy. We'd rather subsidise commuter fares or impose rent controls than plan for the space to allow markets to meet need affordably.

There are plenty of other opportunities - from pop-up housing to taxi drones - that need to be looked at in our city planning. But I'll be surprised if any local plan from a UK council even allows for these ideas to be explored. These local plans as well as the economic plans, housing strategies and transport plans simply assume that there won't be any technological change and proceed accordingly. Yet a glance at both house building and transport suggest this is absolutely not the case. We're on the cusp of an autonomous vehicle revolution that will completely change urban public transport, free up space currently dominated by parking and allow more public space as a result. Yet the only response from city authorities appears to be the ramping up of regulations to protect the taxi industry.

In housing new building approaches and technologies might see self-build made simple and easy. Yet building regulations are used (some might say with the connivance of the housing building industry) to resist experimental approaches and planners stick with their clunky approach to land allocation and urban design.

It's time city leaders started to change their thinking and, instead of simply following the tramlines laid by urban planners, started requiring those planners to develop space for different approaches to housing and transport.

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This is it? Seriously? Devolution should be about a whole lot more than buses and new taxes

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Some chap from IPPR North has bunged his challenge to 'metro mayors', you know the powerful folk who'll be elected once all these devolution deals are done. And Luke tells us these mayors should "shake up" their cities.

So what exactly does this shaking up involve for our Luke? Well firstly there's buses - yes folks, buses:

Mayors could connect their more deprived citizens with the jobs they need with new bus routes;

That's right, this IPPR chap puts creating new bus routes (something that existing public transport authorities can already do) as a great win for our new elected mega-mayors.

Next Luke says mayors can raise lots of new taxes - that's right, the economic underperformance of Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and Bradford is because the citizens of those cities don't pay enough tax;

To do so they will need to invest, and that means raising revenue from the right sources. Each city is different and will require a different approach. But the candidates should first look at the powers they're already set to have: workplace parking levies, congestion charges and the 2p business rate premium.

But central government should enable them to go further. Whitehall should make implementing these charges far easier, and lift the cap on the business rate premium. It should allow mayors to spend this money on whatever mix of transport investments their city needs.

Forgive me for being completely underwhelmed here and frankly a bit concerned that, given all the things that could be done, this clever bloke can only come up with more buses and more taxes.

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How technology means you don't need a public transport authority

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As is common these days, this discovery comes from Africa - matatu are privately-owned mini-buses that provide much of the service in cities like Nairobi:

Based on the gathered data, a first comprehensive Matatu map was released in 2014. Recently the Digital Matatus group joined forces with Google to bring the Matatu system to Google Maps. Just like checking subway times in New York, residents of Nairobi can now simply see the Matatu system on the map and plan a trip, use a Matatu smartphone app, or use the printed version of the map. The benefits of the new system are more efficient travel and even the possibility of using safer routes during the nights.

Much better than a load of councillors sitting in Leeds talking about bus routes in my humble opinion!

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Fascinating Yellow Bus stat....

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Makes you think this:

"School bus carriers operate the largest mass transportation fleet in the country. Each day, 480,000 yellow school buses travel the nation’s roads. Compare that to transit, with 140,000 total vehicles, 96,000 of which are buses; to the motor coach industry, with 35,000 buses; to commercial airlines, with 7,400 airplanes; and to rail, with 1,200 passenger cars. In fact, our school bus fleet is 2.5 times the size of all other forms of mass transportation combined."

And there's loads more about America's yellow bus fleet here.

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How public monopoly prevents transport innovation

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For perhaps the wrong reasons we're focused again on issues relating to public transport. And this is done knowing that the majority of Brits favour the nationalisation of the railways and, I assume, believe that mayors or councils should run the buses, trams and tubes.

The problem is that we're in a time of new opportunity and change that challenges the dominant idea that city transportation schemes need to be planned. That challenge sits in our pocket or our handbag.

Just as we've seen with financial transactions, governments and the agency businesses that feed off the granting of monopolies are resistant to the disaggregated and dispersed self-service models emerging as a result of the smartphone's growing ubiquity. And in doing so we do the public a disservice.

Before I talk about some specifics - drawing on US examples where the challenge to public transportation monopoly is more developed - here's a section of Boris Johnson's 'tribute' to union boss, Bow Crow:

"Whatever our political differences, and there were many, this is tragic news," he said.

"Bob fought tirelessly for his beliefs and for his members.

"There can be absolutely no doubt that he played a big part in the success of the Tube, and he shared my goal to make transport in London an even greater success. It's a sad day."

Now I'm sure that these were nice words about the boss of a key London 'stakeholder' but it beggars belief to say that a union forcing costs up and resisting change or efficiency is in the interests of London's transport systems.

So to San Francisco where there have been a series of battles around what are know as "tech buses" - these are services, provided by Silicon Valley business, that take workers from the city out into the valley for work. And they are unpopular with users of existing (more expensive and less reliable) public transport systems. Resulting in a variety of bus-based class warfare:

This December, several anti-bus rallies were held in the Mission District by a group that called themselves the San Francisco Displacement and Neighborhood Impact Agency. The group blocked buses and held up signs with statements like “Warning: Two-Tier System.” One man made headlines by dressing up, and, after claiming he worked for Google, berating the protestors with appalling class rhetoric. But it turned out he was really just an imposter, having worked previously as an Occupy organizer. Another protest in Oakland led — as ones there often do — to bus vandalism.

Note the words 'two-tier system' - hipster techie folk who earn good money out in the valley get a lovely shiny bus service whereas the other folk have to make do with late, dirty buses. And it spills over into the Bay Area's gentrification rows:

“In case you’re wondering why this happened, we’ll be extremely clear. The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their neighborhoods. While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffets, everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums have helped create."

The problem isn't American capitalism though. The problem is the municipal monopoly - the unholy alliance between the city government and unions to deliver an inefficient, expensive and unresponsive transportation system:

Muni, the city’s local bus, rail, and cable car service, is similarly inefficient. A study last May found that its on-time ratings hovered around 50 percent due to rail cars that regularly broke down. These delays cost an estimated $50 million in productivity — yet Muni has California’s second-highest paid transit workers.

The government-run rail that follows a similar route as the tech buses is Caltrain. Today, its customers endure a plodding, 90-minute ride from San Francisco to San Jose. This same trip takes under an hour by automobile, helping explain why some companies now bus in their employees.

Those 'tech buses' are a response to a failed service monopoly (and that monopoly's owner - the city council - has got its rents from the 'tech buses' by charging them a fee to stop at a bus stop) that doesn't meet the needs of local commuters. Looking a little deeper we find that the San Francisco authorities want to stamp out any innovation - not just the 'tech buses' but the growing use of ridesharing, a business that threatens the lucrative taxi monopoly (a license in San Francisco is over $250,000, in New York the coveted 'medallion' sells at touching $1m).

Indeed the business threat of this 'sharing economy' (we've seen the same regulatory response to Airbnb, for example) is repeated across other US cities - Seattle, for example, has threatened rules that would limit the numbers of drivers using services like Uber and Lyft, and one Seattle councillor proposes that the cab drivers become 'unionized city employees'.

Back in San Francisco, where Uber started, the debate is stuck at finding ways to control these new private transportation systems, to force the 35,000 people using the 'tech buses' back onto the old creaking public system and to regulated cabs rather than find a neighbour to share your ride with.

For Britain (outside London) the situation remains more flexible with a mixed economy of provision as well as the widespread availability of mini-cabs as well as Hackney cabs. There are moves by public transport authorities towards more directed and planned models such as 'quality bus contracts' and local councils jealously guard the revenue generator that is the taxi trade. But what isn't happening - with one or two striking exceptions - is the exploration of new economy solutions to urban transportation. Indeed the debate, such as it is, seems to me moving more towards greater use of monopoly power to prevent innovation than towards actually meeting the transport needs of local residents.

But then, so long as we think union bosses like Bob Crow are part of the solution rather than an obstacle to better services we will be stuck in this dead debate. Even worse if we persist with the 'Big City Boss' approach to delivering those services that Boris Johnson (drifting ever nearer to Bloomberg's urban fascism) seems to prefer. The development of better transport really isn't down to pouring billions of borrowed money into the ground and cosy deals between union bosses and city mayors.

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Gardens on buses...a cracking (if pointless) idea

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Over at pop-up city they've found buses with gardens on the roof. I love this!

Mad - to see more visit the Pop-up City!

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The failings of public transport revisited...

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And this is despite all the old folk getting free travel during the period in question:

The new developments come after it was revealed that the number of bus journeys in West Yorkshire have reduced from 235 million in 1995-96 to an estimated 180 million in 2011-12. 

Not a very impressive record for West Yorkshire's public transport people. But somehow we're now going to hand over all the transport cash - you know for roads and cars as well as the buses they've screwed up on - to this lovely bunch (now calling themselves the 'Integrated Transport Authority').

Tell me it's a joke?

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High speed rail still isn't the solution to the North's economic problems

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The other evening I was talking with Ray about public transport. A conversation at the end of which we agreed to disagree. However, Ray was absolutely right in his belief that public transport is really about linking close places better - what we might call "intensity" - rather than smoothing the connection between distant places. Far more people want to travel swiftly and easily to a place three miles away that to a place 300 miles away.

Yet the grand and important planning people focus almost entirely in INTER-city travel rather than on INTRA-city travel. Except of course when they speak of London where billions has been spent to maintain that city's best-in-class transport system. We are still committed to the nonsense of high speed rail (and let's be clear that opposition isn't just about a bunch of Buckinghamshire NIMBYs) even though the case is becoming ever flimsier:

The MPs also question the assumptions made about savings to business travellers using the line. They say it is not the case that the time spent on a train is unproductive because in fact many use the train as an extension to the office.

The report also highlights a failure in the planning for HS2 to consider the benefits and costs of alternatives such as investment in broadband and video conferencing.

There is a real need for investment in public transport - you only have to look at the local impact of extensions to tram systems in Manchester and Sheffield to appreciate its importance. However, we need to focus on local intensity, on linking places within a city-region to other places within that system. The aim should be to replicate the scale, scope and integration of London's system in, for example, the urban conglomeration stretching from Liverpool to Leeds.

Thirty odd billion wouldn't get us all the way to that ideal but it would be a whole lot more value than spending the same on a vanity project that - we now know - contains no noticeable economic benefits.  High speed rail will not make the North more successful whereas the proven technologies of buses, trams and local trains will have a positive impact and will provide real, tangible and short-term benefits for real people.

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We need investment in local transport not another grand rail scheme

You will know that I am not especially keen on the proposals for a high speed train, initially to Birmingham and subsequently along two spurs to Manchester and Leeds respectively.  And – in anyone’s book – this is going to cost a great deal of money (I am using the cost figures from supporters of HS2):

HS2 phase one: London to Birmingham (The phase currently up for debate), construction start date 2015/16 completion 2026. Time frame from planning to completion 15 years. Total cost £15.8 to £17.4 Billion for construction plus £2.8 billion for rolling stock all 50+ units. That makes for a total cost of £18.6 to £20.2bn over 15 years.

Let’s call the cost for the link to Birmingham, £20billion – a nice round figure. Now, leaving aside the fact that our public finances simply don’t have that kind of money, is this the best use of such a large public investment?  It seems a little group call itself the North West Business Leadership Team think that it is:

“As members of the North West Business Leadership Team, we know that economic growth in the north of England is already being choked off by a lack of capacity in its increasingly busy transport links...”

It seems that the ability of besuited business leaders to get to that ever so vital meeting in London is compromising the economic development of the North? I guess that low skill levels, high taxes and the low levels of business start-ups have nothing to do with the underperformance of the North! And, let’s be clear here, the proposals for a new train set will not be completed until at least 2030 but in the meantime businesses in Manchester, Leeds and Bradford will have to struggle on with the clunky old train set we have at the moment! So not a contribution to solving the current economic problems - maybe the recession after next?

And remember folks that the North West Business Leadership Team was keen on another big white elephant – one that thankfully the North West’s voters nobbled – the Greater Manchester congestion charge!

Mike Blackburn, Chairman of the NWBLT’s Transport Group and the North West Regional Director of BT, said: "The government’s package of support amounts to £1,000 for every man, woman and child living in Greater Manchester today.

"Provided the promised infrastructure investment is in place before road pricing is introduced, we believe it is right that part of the cost of improvements should be borne by those who choose to travel by car at peak times."

So I guess these folk – sitting in their universities, banks and management consultancies – have form. Which brings me, dear reader, to the question – if you had £20billion to spend on public transport improvements, what would you spend it on? I’m pretty confident that addressing a multitude of backlogged road schemes (anyone for a tunnel under Saltaire?), local rail improvements, bus initiatives and motorway junction upgrades could be done for this sort of cash.

And these improvements would directly benefit millions of people – the ones for whom shaving a few minutes off the trip to London isn’t a real benefit at all. Journey’s to work, to local centres and to visit friends or family will be quicker, easier and more pleasant. Elderly people in Cullingworth might have a little more choice as the investment could support rural access and better bus networks. I think you get the gist – building a grand railway at huge cost brings little or no benefit to the vast mass of ordinary people. Investing in local transport systems benefits everyone not just the lucky few who have a need to go to London and the wherewithal to afford the high fares.

If the panjandrums of big business in Manchester want to have a grand new railway, here’s a suggestion – why don’t they pay for it themselves?

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A thought about competition

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My son was moaning about the price of a bus fare into Shipley yesterday.

"It's not like that in Bath," he says, "we have competition there."

It would appear that an enterprising bus operator has put on blue buses undercutting First's orange buses (these colours must be a Bath thing) on the popular trip from Bath itself up to the university. Back to my son:

"The blue buses charge £1.50 return, " he says, "compared to £1.95 for the orange buses. All the freshers who live on campus are waiting for the blue bus now."

And it gets better!

"The orange buses have announced a price cut to £1.50 return," says Jethro, "and the blue buses are offering a return of just £1 after 7.00pm!"

So there you are guys, competition works. And works quickly to the benefit of the consumer.

Health? Education? Bring it on!

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