Roads, air travel and new technology are where transport investment and subsidy should go - not trains.

 Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a comprehensive and affordable public transport system is desirable. Also that it is right to use public funds to both develop the system and to subsidise its operations. There are contrary arguments but we can probably agree that such a system would enjoy popular support. The question then becomes what does the system look like given what we know about the history of transport systems, the current arrangements and provision, and the technological direction of travel.

A couple of days ago the Labour Party proposed a massive subsidy for regulated fares (the 40% or so of rail fares where the government controls the price) - a one third cut in fares for loads of train users including many commuters. Plus free rail travel for under 16s. The reaction has been mixed - some have danced with glee (perhaps in anticipation of a cut in their annual season ticket costs) whereas others have responded with the observation that this pretty much represents a subsidy largely benefitting the better off because about half of rail commuters are in the top 20% of earners and, anyway, only about 11% of commuter journeys are on a train.

Some of the defence for this proposal suggests that, by cutting the fares, they will become affordable to commuters who aren't using the train to get to work because of the cost. This may well be true but what we don't know is how many people fit into that category and whether all we achieve is to get people to shift from one form of public transport, the bus, to another, the train. There is a further problem in this expectation since the distribution of employment doesn't allow for fixed line systems to meet the needs of workers other than in very densely populated urban areas with substantial historic investment in those fixed line systems. Even in London, the assumption that travel-to-work happens on a hub-and-spoke basis from the City and Westminster is wrong. Most employment in the city isn't in London's centre but is dispersed across the urban area. This is likely to be even more true for lower paid employment in sectors such as retail, care and hospitality.

To give some further context, the population of the North of England (the regions of North West, North East and Yorkshire) have a population not dissimilar to that of Greater London and the immediate suburban areas at its boundaries. London's population density is 15 times greater than that of the North meaning that employment is even more dispersed than in the capital. A fixed rail system alone simply cannot meet the needs of people travelling to work in the North and it's hard to argue for new fixed rail infrastructure when the same money investment in road-based public transport (and other options such a cycling, e-bikes and the like) would go so much further to meet the needs of "the many" commuters in the region.

So the logic of geography tells us that, outside densely populated urban areas, fixed rail systems are inefficient but at the same time nobody seems to be able to recognise this logic and argue for a different solution to public transport needs. But first let's - setting aside the supposed environmental gains - note that fixed rail isn't even a great solution to long-distance travel: unsubsidised air travel between UK destinations is, in many circumstances, cheaper than travelling by train.

Geography and economics tell us fixed rail is not the best way to meet our objective (a comprehensive and affordable public transport system) because existing networks are insufficient and the cost of new rail infrastructure is prohibitive - one forked high speed line linking London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester looks likely to cost at least £75 billion and won't be completed until 2035 at the earliest and probably 2040. And this eye-watering investment won't even scratch the surface of likely transport needs.

The most extensive and comprehensive transport network is our road system. This system connects your front door - as Bilbo Baggins knew - to everywhere in the country, millions of miles of lovingly (well some of the time) maintained roads available for use by pedestrians, cyclists, bikers, horse riders, ox carts, buses, taxis and the private car. The system, compared to rail, is flexible, cheap to run and able to accommodate the needs of travellers. And most of the network isn't congested. Moreover, the strategy of government (although I've a feeling that this is harder than is sounds) is to 'decarbonise' road transport over the same period it will take to build one high speed rail line.

This suggest to me that the right response to our question isn't subsidising rail travel or planning huge investments in relatively limited extensions to that network - this sounds good and probably appeals to a generation brought up on Thomas the Tank Engine while being told how bad cars were for the environment. Short of directing the whole of government infrastructure investment into railways for forty years (and probably not even then) there is no chance of rail meeting future transport needs. Any sustainable, affordable public transport system will include the current fixed rail systems - with maybe some sensible and fundable urban extensions - but most of the focus needs to be on road and air travel systems.

This conclusion seems even more sensible when you consider the technological direction of travel. There is reality of driverless vehicle or the ability for taxi and minibus systems to exploit the mobile phone but there's also the idea of drone delivery, air-taxis and improved short haul travel that could extend the capacity of our existing network by several orders of magnitude. And, while private cars will remain a significant (even dominant) part of the transport environment we will see short-term hire and carsharing become increasingly popular especially in places where off-street parking is at a premium.

Lastly we come to buses and taxis. Driverless vehicles offer (assuming we can make them work) the opportunity to reduce running costs making it more economic to run the services into more remote areas than is the case at present. Places that last saw a bus in 1935 may well see these mystic creatures again. But to make road-based transport systems work, we need both investment and, ahead of driverless, subsidy. And the subsidy should not be on fares but rather on routes, on better buses and on in-bus technology plus work in congested inner-urban areas to give buses and taxis priority. Buses are far more able to meet our objective - an affordable, comprehensive and sustainable public transport system - than are trains. Technology offers the prospect of a bigger economically-sustainable route network but there's a string case for investing ahead of this opportunity through extending the route subsidy that disappeared when Gordon Brown decided subsidising fares was better politics.

Today we see that "better politics" trumping good sense as Labour promise to cut fares for rail commuters by defunding road maintenance while the Conservatives offer a sort of Titfield Thunderbolt world by opening old rail lines closed by that cad Beeching (and both Labour and Conservative governments). Plus a sort of gentle tiptoeing round the gross extravagance of HS2 while making the right sort of environmental mooing sounds about air travel. No party's transport proposals comes close to recognising that we are on the cusp of a transport technology revolution - not just electric and driverless vehicles but the full impact of digital technology on the way people engage with transport options.

The missing bit is that the essential existing networks - road, rail, air traffic - require adequate maintenance. We've spent two decades failing to look after local roads meaning that they are less and less reliable - Bradford, for example, underfunds its highways maintenance by about 30% each year (this is pretty typical of metropolitan authorities). Looking after our systems and, where we can, upgrading them makes more sense than extending the system with new roads and railways especially if this means the maintenance cash gets cut. But I guess saying we'll spend lots on money looking after the networks we've got isn't politically sexy - even if it comes with a promise of investment in super buses, flying taxis and digital technology.

.....

Why rail-led modal shift is a myth - and we need different thinking on transport

****

The data is from Australia but it won't be any different in the UK:

In 2013–14, there were 178.5 billion passenger kilometres travelled on capital city roads in Australia and 12.6 billion passenger kilometres travelled on urban rail networks. I’ve written before that this share is unlikely to change for the simple fact that only around 10% of metropolitan wide jobs are based in central business districts of our major cities. Agreed, it’s an important 10% for public transport because PT best serves a highly centralized workforce as you find in CBDs. Commuter rail in particular relies on a ‘hub and spoke’ model, mainly designed to ferry people from into and out of CBDs.

Let's develop transport policies that actually respond to the challenge rather than direct investment on the basis of having had a train set as a kid.

....

If we want to protect the environment, we need to fall in love with the car again

****

New Start magazine is home to the most predictable and dated of approaches to regeneration. A bunch of folk wrapped in the New Economic Foundation, Green Party, Agenda 21 line of anti-development, anti-car, anti-freedom beliefs that simply don't reflect the reality of either regeneration or the thrust of transport technology. Here's a classic of the genre from the misnamed Campaign for Better Transport:

We know our reliance on cars is bad for us – bad for our health, bad for the environment and bad for the economy. Yet the way we plan and build continues as if it were still the 1950s and the car a watchword for freedom.

And so on in this vein. Each illustration of the car's evil is ticked - 'clone towns', 'subtopia', 'car-dependent ghettoes', 'foorball pitch sized car parks', 'retail parks'. And the glorious alternatives to economic growth are celebrated - 'improved public health', 'revitalised town centres' and 'tackling carbon emissions'. Plus of course the desire that planning rules should be changed "so economic growth is no longer allowed to trump essential considerations like environment and health". As if planning rules do anything at all but limit economic growth - it's what they're designed to do.

My problem with this - and all the stuff about "strong public transport links with discounted ticket prices, the establishment of cycling routes and initiatives such as free bike workshops all contributing" - is that it completely fails to recognise the direction of transport technology. All the most innovative and green developments in transport are about roads and transport on roads - from smart road surfaces and electric vehicles through to flexible urban pods and lorry peletons the future of transport lies with clean green vehicles using a new generation of roads not with 19th century technologies like trains, trams, bicycles and trolley buses.

Technology is making roads dramatically safer and allowing greater capacity while the development of hybrid engines and more efficient transmission systems is making vehicle significantly less polluting. New materials reduce the carbon emissions in manufacture and make recycling or waste reduction easier. In time vehicles become smaller as technology eliminates collisions allowing for more flexible parking systems.

The problem is that we have a planning system that sees roads as a problem and cars as a curse rather than seeing these systems as a more flexible, safer. reliable and sustainable solution that railway tracks or other systems dedicated to single uses. Most public transport solutions (with the honourable exception of electric buses) rely on this exclusivity - from bus lanes and tram lines to swathes of countryside ripped up to accommodate high speed rail. It really is time we set aside this obsession with old technology and began to support investment in the exciting technologies of tomorrow - technologies based on the shared space that is the highway.

If we want a sustainable transport future then the answer lies in working with technologies that make roads more flexible, safer and faster. We need to embrace the idea of increased road capacity and smoother traffic flow that smart road technologies will bring. Above all we need to remember that the car still is a watchword for freedom, is still the preferred means of transport for the majority, and that driverless technologies open up that freedom to people who right now can't access the car. We need to fall in love with the car again.



....

If we're to serve tomorrow's economy we need to invest more in roads and less in rail

Since 2001 rail travel in the UK has increased by over 50% (and has more than doubled since rail privatisation in the 1990s). I'm guessing that people see this as a cause for celebration and a recognition that 'heavy' rail is part of the nation's long term transport solutions. And this celebration is reflected in the investment programme for those railways, in proposals for brand new railways and in political rows about this investment.

However there's a problem. Currently rail journeys account for just 3% of total journeys (slightly more than this as a percentage of journey miles) and we are repeatedly told - hence the investment programme - that the rail network is over capacity. Let's assume that the investment programme succeeds and rail capacity is increased thereby allowing another doubling in rail journeys (this is a big requirement that the planned investment isn't going to meet) - rail would then constitute 6% of journeys made in the UK and the system would be uncomfortably crammed to the gunnels.

Given that the billions of planned rail investment dwarfs every other planned investment by the UK government, you would assume that it would go a long way towards resolving the nation's transport challenges. Between the investment in the current network and High Speed 2, the UK's rail investment programme amounts to approaching £80bn. This compares to the road investment programme of (and I'm being kind here) less than £30bn over the same period. The UK plans to invest more than twice the amount in rail than on the road network, yet there are 20 times as many journeys by road as there are by rail. Roughly speaking we're planning to spend £40 on every rail traveller for each £1 we spend on a road traveller.

The result of this imbalance in investment is that the UK's roads are not up to scratch. Local authorities have trimmed on highway maintenance (in Bradford we underspend by 30-40% each year on highway maintenance) and have little or no capital available to deliver improvement schemes let alone new road schemes. The national investment programme - the £15bn announced in 2014 that is slightly enhanced by decisions in the July 2015 budget - barely scratches the surface of improvements needed in the strategic road network. Yet a decision to delay one small part of the rail investment programme is treated as a major political faux pas whereas the consistent and lamentable underinvestment in our roads doesn't merit media coverage let alone the sort of outcry we get from train fans.

MP after MP, from every side of the house, lines up to berate ministers, including the prime minister, about rail investment. But questions about roads are few and far between despite most of those MPs' constituents making more use of them than they do of railways. When road schemes are asked about the response is that there isn't the funds, that other schemes have higher priority or that the decision is delegated to one or other agency.

For decades we operated under a sort of 'field of dreams' myth about road investment - 'build it and they will come' was the mantra. Or rather the reverse of this - building roads increases traffic volumes ergo if we don't build roads people will shift to other forms of transport thereby saving the planet (or something along these lines):

In transportation, this well-established response is known in various contexts as the Downs-Thomson Paradox, The Pigou-Knight-Downs Paradox or the Lewis-Mogridge Position: a new road may provide motorists with some level of respite from congestion in the short term, but almost all of the benefit from the road will be lost due to increased demand in the longer term.

The problem is that, wherever we look now, this paradox appears to be weakened - in the UK traffic volumes fell for three consecutive years (something that hadn't happened before) during the downturn and, since 2010 have been essentially stable. This is a situation mirrored in the USA where there has been a significant decline in vehicle miles - the population adjusted estimate is that traffic volumes have fallen back to the level they were back in 1994. This picture - dubbed 'peak car' - reflects the logical cap to car ownership rises driven by declining household size, suburban growth and women entering the workforce (as well as increased earnings relative to the price of cars). The consequence is that we should reconsider the various induced demand models for road development:

In a world of peak car, where traffic levels are flat to declining on a per capita basis, induced demand no longer holds court, certainly not to the level claimed by those who believe it’s pointless to build roads. In fact, what peak car means is that while speculative projects may be dubious, there may be good reasons now to build projects designed to alleviate already exiting congestion.

Our road networks are pretty resilient. Despite decades of underinvestment in maintenance the network remains in place and functional (if a little bumpy). However, if we are to deliver on the demands of a new economy, turn round the economic performance of the North and meet the needs of technological change, we have to look again at transport investment priorities. Placing a bigger stress on roads makes sense both because they are the dominant mode of transport for UK residents and also because those roads will prove central to future transport technologies:

A pair of trucks convoying 10 meters apart on Interstate 80 just outside Reno, Nevada, might seem like an unusual sight—not to mention unsafe. But the two trucks doing this a couple of weeks ago were actually demonstrating a system that could make trucking safer and much more efficient.

While the driver in front drove his truck normally, the truck behind him was partly operated by a computer—and it stuck to its leader like glue. When instructed to do so, the computer controlled the gas and brakes to pull to within 10 meters (roughly three car lengths) of the truck ahead. The computer then kept the two trucks paired at this precise distance, as if linked by some invisible cable, until the system was disengaged. If the truck in front stopped suddenly, the one behind could have reacted instantaneously to avoid a collision.

It's time for a rethink on transport priorities and begin to invest in the infrastructure we need for tomorrow's economy - that infrastructure is roads.
....

Another reminder why we need to spend more money on our roads

****

Even in London:

More than half of Londoners commute to work by car or other light vehicles (including car pools). Transit accounts for about a quarter of commuting, while about 10 percent of commuters walk to work. Approximately six percent usually labor mainly at or from home.

And there's a reason for this - despite the supposed dominance of commuting to central London most of the region's employment isn't in that central business district (defined as the four central boroughs of Westminster, Camden, Southwark and Lambeth plus the City of London - ought really to include Tower Hamlets and Kensington as well):

Despite its strong CBD, the London area is anything but monocentric. Approximately 85 percent of London area jobs are outside the central business district.

The commuting we hear about (very loudly on assorted social media most mornings) is primarily folk travelling in from outer London and the fringe of towns on the edge of London. Yes it's important but this transport system has taken the lion's share of UK transport investment for the past decade or so. It is tome to rebalance and start investing in the transport network everyone uses - roads.

...

Roads are much more important than railways - public investment should reflect this fact. It doesn't.

A bit of Britain's most important transport network

No matter how desperate the banana republic, the international airport is always a shimmering palace of perfume and croissants. It is only when you get out onto the dirt roads that you realise where you are.

The government seems determined to take the same approach to our own transport system: all the money gets sucked into vanity projects while transport used by the rest of us remains creaking.

And the biggest vanity project of all is Britain's rail network. The truth of the matter is that most of the public seldom if ever use a train - they are expensive compared to buses, inconvenient and crowded. But more to the point we prefer - and will continue preferring - to use the car. Just 2.4 million people - overwhelmingly in London - commute to work by train or tram. This is just over 9% of commuter journeys and compares to the two-thirds of journeys to work on the roads (by car, bus or motor cycle - adding in walking and cycling gets us to eight out of ten commuter journeys on the roads). Nearly half the population (45% in 2009/10) simply didn't use a train at all for any reason.

Yet whenever we talk about transport investment, we talk about trains. Billions is promised for new railways like HS2, for ever shinier stations, and for the polishing of existing (and admittedly creaky) networks. The need for rail investment is always hogging the headlines while the scandal that is our underinvestment in looking after the network of roads and pavements that carries 90% of journeys barely gets a mention. In 2012 the government invested £7.5 billion in the road network split roughly 50/50 between the strategic network and local roads. This compares to around £13 billion spent on railways (split between subsidising fares to the tune of £3.8 billion and the rail investment programme).

So Ross Clark is right, government in the UK is starving the everyday transport network - our roads - of funding while promising ever shinier new rail infrastructure (best part of £20 million on a new entrance into Leeds station being a fine example). Here in Bradford we need around £11 million a year to sustain our road network but are only spending about £6 million each year. With the result that the standard of the roads deteriorates year on year - the government responds by bunging one off funding for fixing potholes at councils when what is really needed is an adequate capital budget that would allow the proper maintenance of the road over a 25 year cycle.

The problem is that building grand railway schemes is popular with rail users. And rail users are mostly in London where the decision-making is done:

In 2009/10, 59 per cent of all rail journeys started or finished in London. The South East and the East of England were the regions with the next highest number of journeys but 65 per cent of journeys in the South East and 75 per cent in the East of England were to or from London.

And those train users - even in London - are more likely to be in their twenties or thirties and more likely to be in well-paid professional employment. The profile of rail users doesn't reflect the national demographic profile but the very different profile of London commuters (and higher income London commuters at that).

So we have a transport system that provides just 2% of journeys, costs the taxpayer over £13 billion a year, has incredibly low levels of customer satisfaction, is unreliable and still requires some other form of transport for people to complete their journey. How exactly is this the transport system of the 21st century? And why does it suck up so much of the attention (and investment) while the much more important road system isn't provided with the cash to even maintain it to a safe standard let alone improve it?
....

Council's haven't enough cash to look after the roads we've got. Why adopt more?

****

There's a set of reasons for Council highway departments 'adopting' new highway. Partly this is because, if the developer does the work to standard, they have no choice and partly it's because we seem incapable of creating any means of managing highway that doesn't involve the very inefficient process of collecting taxes in one place and setting budgets in another.

The roads on new estates - the one's thrown up by the big housebuilders - aren't serving the wider public. They are there specifically and absolutely for the benefit of the people who buy the houses on that estate. Yet our system believes that looking after those roads should be a duty for the local council rather than a sensible responsibility for the residents.

Now think about looking after those roads. And then read this:

What would our neighborhoods look like if we voluntarily reduced the amount of infrastructure? This isn’t a purely academic question. As municipal, state, and federal budgets get squeezed there’s going to be a point at which we have no choice but to stop building new roads and even reduce the amount of maintenance on the roads we already have. We could approach this situation with dread and a sense of loss, or we could embrace it as an opportunity to get a better quality of life for a whole lot less money.

This isn't about not filling in potholes nor is it about Council's not taking responsibility for what we might call the "strategic road network". Rather it's about whether you could simply hand over the responsibility for looking after estate roads to the beneficiaries - the people who own the properties and who live on the estate.

John Sanphillippo, who wrote the quote above, is an American (and we should recognise that the system over there is a little different) but he makes a pretty convincing case for us reconsidering how we design, build and manage local roads - the ones that do nothing other than take folk from the strategic network to their houses. And Sanphillippo makes the point that we'd build roads rather differently if we were responsible for their upkeep - here he is describing a new development with what we in the UK would call 'adopted highway':

What does all that paving really do for the neighborhood? You could land an Airbus A380 on this much tarmac. But what’s the point? You can be quite sure that when these roads become cracked and potholed the wealthy well-connected residents of these grand homes will mobilize and bang heads at the public works department. Somehow the government will be made to absorb the expense of repaving things even if the (very high) property taxes from these specific homes doesn’t come close to covering the real cost of maintenance. Would these home owners accept a different standard if they were directly responsible for maintaining their own road?

And it would be perfectly possible for the owners of those properties to collectively own and manage the road network serving the estate. If we are to change the relationship between citizen and government and to reconfigure public services, one of the things we have to do is ask whether some of the things we do actually are public services - the owning and managing of estate roads might just be one of the things that has to go.

...

The evidence suggests new roads won't generate more journeys.

****

It has been a commonplace view - supported in the past with some evidence - that building new roads didn't work as a strategy to reduce congestion because those roads encouraged new journeys. Indeed part of the argument here was that congestion itself acted to discourage car use and encourage shifts to other forms of transport.

So, when the government announces £15 billion of road investment, we get a familiar outcry:

The government claims the investment will be transformational, creating jobs and reducing journey times. But this is wishful thinking, ignoring the inconvenient truth that new roads create new traffic while dogmatically clinging to the assertion that road building is good for the economy.

The problem with this view is that, while it seemed to be true as car ownership soared and alternative travel options stagnated, it was never the roads that created the journeys - rather those roads acted as a justification for getting the car, then getting the second car and latterly buying the kids a car. However, since 2006 (or thereabouts) the game has changed with journey miles reducing. Partly this reflects recession and the cost of fuel - although journey miles increased during previous recessions - but mostly it reflects the impacts of other changes in our world.

How road use has declined in the USA

As this graph shows (I know it's from the USA but let's remember it's a much more car oriented culture) over the last decade there has been a steady decline in the miles travelled by car in the USA. The data for the UK doesn't show the same decline but slight increases in vehicle miles here are almost entirely down to light goods vehicles (LGVs - all those delivery vans plus the ubiquitous white van). And there is nothing to suggest that upgrading roads results in increases in vehicle miles. Even back in 2003 studies showed that the induced travel effect of new roads was lower than previously thought and that induced investment and induced growth effects were larger. Put simply the economic benefits of new roads has been under-estimated while the environmental disbenefits were over-estimated - with the result that investment was moved away from roads.

Since 2000 UK public investment in railways has increased from £3.5 billion per annum to £7.5 billion compared to a rise from £2 billion to £3 billion (not even keeping pace with inflation) in road investment. And we should remember that while about a fifth of the population use trains a lot, most people seldom if ever use this form of transport (buses are much, much more important than trains). But everybody - whether they own a car or not - uses the roads. So any strategic investment in our road network is welcome especially since about half the proposed investment is going into looking after the roads we've already got - something that governments, local and national, have neglected for decades.

Among the collectivists of this world there's a view that the private car is a bad thing (I seem to remember some daft Labour MP suggesting private cars should be banned). I take a different view - the availability of a car in the drive means that people are liberated from the inconvenience of public transport and the tyranny of its timetables. Talking to a senior council officer the other day, I discovered that there are places not three miles from the centre of Bradford that not only have no trains but, after 6pm, have no buses into the city.

However, regardless of my preferences (and the preferences of most Britons), the fact remains that the 'roads create traffic' argument lacks good evidence - road investment doesn't increase trips and does increase investment and economic growth. As Aaron Renn commented in talking about the graph above:

In fact, what peak car means is that while speculative projects may be dubious, there many be good reasons now to build projects designed to alleviate already exiting congestion. 

Bear in mind that by speculative projects Renn means privately-built roads predicated on toll income not simply new roads. The assumption that traffic growth had no limits was always the weakness in the 'green' argument against new roads but it's clear that as technology - smartphones, Skype, e-commerce and so forth - eliminates reasons for journeys the numbers of those journeys declines. And road investment really does become a stimulus to growth when it focuses on reducing or removing the congestion that pollutes and plagues our lives.

....

So we know who'll build the roads...and that the Council won't like it!

****

Some 25 or so years ago we were driving around Turkey in a hire car. As we poddled along the main road east from Antalya, we found that a landslip had resulted in a large part of the road relocating itself onto a neighbouring beach. There was no road but, in that spirit of initiative, good sense and enterprise several bulldozers and diggers had ploughed a new 'road' around the missing chunk of highway.

It was a botch, a fix done so as to avoid a fifty odd mile detour for all the traffic along that normally travels that road (not to mention keeping access to the little hamlets and farms along the way). Almost certainly the arrangement did not meet the sort of standards that Bath & North East Somerset Council apply to roads:

"We appreciate the difficulties that local residents have experienced since the emergency closure and work has started to deliver a permanent solution as quickly as possible, but will not encourage proposals that have not been proven to be safe or compliant with statutory requirements.

"The council has no details to confirm the toll road design meets safety standards and no evidence that insurances are in place for any member of the public who uses the private toll road." 

For me this sums up the problem - people are discouraged in every way from any initiative resolving a problem or providing a service that doesn't have the official stamp placed on it. Even when it is vastly superior to that quick fix on a main road in Turkey. Indeed the description of the road puts plenty of council run roads to shame and I bet it doesn't have any potholes!

At the minute the road doesn't have planning permission but given its temporary nature it's hard to see how the Council can enforce this lack. The work rebuilding the damaged A-road will take five months. In the meantime the Council has to issue an enforcement notice that has a right of appeal (about one month), then process a planning application (six weeks to two months) which, assuming refusal, the applicant can appeal (up to three months).

So all the Council can do is get its po-faced officials to issue grumpy statements of disapproval!

....

...but who will build the roads?

The same sort of folk as built the last lot I guess.

Next question please?

....

The failings of public transport revisited...

****

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?

....

Potholes...

****

Every Councillor needs to be on top of the pothole issue and pointing out how the council needs to act and act now to do something (specifically fill in the pothole being pointed out). We are assiduous in performing this vital task, keeping highways maintenance folk busy filling in said holes.

Then we troop into the council chamber and vote for budgets that cut spending on that vital task of highways maintenance. Local council's spend less than 5% of their revenue budget on looking after roads, pavements and footpaths. Which is down from 11% (and in actual cash terms more) in 2008.

This reflects the priority of government - national and local. The idea that looking after roads is an important function of government has long passed - even in the transport field the focus (and the spending) has been directed to railways. While we subsidise heavy rail to the tune of over £13 billion, national revenue spending on roads languishes at a mere £9 billion. And this priority - as ever - is reflected in the choices of local councils.

The odd thing is that most people, most of the time simply don't use trains. Even in London. Yet we all - whether we're drivers, bus users, cyclists or pedestrians - use the roads. Perhaps we have (in our obsession with hating the motor car and disliking the lorry) simply forgotten that it is roads that carry the lion's share of freight, that allow us to get from our front door to where we wish to go and that are the real lifeline of our economy.

That our roads - suburban, urban, trunk and rural - are riddled with potholes represents a colossal failure in government priority. We've allowed ourselves to be lulled by those green dressed sirens into accepting the wholly false premise that railways present any kind of solution to the transport needs of a modern economy. Railways merely take us from one place we don't want to be to another place we don't want to be - it's the roads that complete the journey.

Potholes are a symptom of misplaced priority not a failing of any system. We simply stopped spending money on roads. New schemes are evaluated on the basis of unwarranted environmental impact assessments meaning that, in almost every case, new roads don't meet criteria. And councils faced with tight budget settlements choose to spend on social services for the minority of residents rather than roads for everyone. And there's a reason for this of course.

Those social services carry an enormous risk - whether we're speaking of the terrible child death or the dreadful story of elderly neglect this always trumps you or I getting a broken car as a result of a pothole. So we pour money into social services - as it happens nearly all of the grant we get from central government (education aside) ends up being spent on social services. And the result of this is that we spend less and less money on looking after the roads we all use.

With the result being potholes that us councillors can point at, take action about, get sorted!

....

Going anti-clockwise round Coventry - a paen to England's roads

Today, for reasons that are unimportant to you, dear reader, we drove from the fine old town of Bath back to a very nearly drowned Cullingworth. The journey took in a new experience since, rather than the usual sclerotic motorways we opted for a pleasant drive – I would say meander but the one thing the Fosse Way doesn’t do is wander about – passed Malmesbury, Cirencester, Stow-in-the-Wold and Stratford. I say passed since – with the exception of Moreton-in-Marsh – all the places en route are safely by-passed by a well maintained and appropriately sized highway.

At the end of this little trip the navigation (Kathryn) announced that we were now going “anti-clockwise round Coventry”. This tickled me a little but got me to thinking about how we moan and whinge about transport, traffic and roads. Yet, over the years the assorted county councils (in the main) have, along with the Highways agency, smoothed the passage of traffic while allowing the various little market towns, spas and villages to breathe again.

So since we didn’t go through any town centres – a favourite topic on mine – I will comment on roads. Starting with the little windy country lanes that don’t seem to go anywhere but which are lovingly patched up and repaired by a combination of council workers, assorted contractors and the local farmer. The recent bad weather has bashed away at these roads washing away lumps of them, filling dips and hollows with water and strewing the surface with the debris from fields and lanes – a veritable flotsam and jetsam of farm life. And they – those farmers, the men from the water board and the council – were already out mending and making do. Allowing us to pass (actual thigh deep floods aside) from one place to another with the minimum of hindrance.

And then to the better roads – thousands of miles of them that we take for granted. Filled –sometimes to overflowing – with traffic, all going busily about its daily business. These are the arteries of England’s economy. Forget about those trains and planes, ignore the fancy urban tramways and underground systems – it is these A-roads and B-roads along with the wealth of England flows each day. Ten thousand and more vans, pick-ups, low-loaders, trucks, container wagons, car transporters and delivery lorries. Each one with its precious cargo – goods and expertise flowing from one small place to another. Each little trip making it possible for us to have bread on the table, heat in the house and a happy smile on the faces of healthy children.

So to those who look disdainfully at the car, who curse the van and the truck. For all you who hold forth about how all the freight can go on railways or even into barges. All of you are wrong. The future success of our economy depends rather more on those roads, on allowing the easy movement of plumbers and locksmiths, supermarket delivery drivers and truckers, computer salesmen and cheesemakers – all the producers that make us rich. And that means roads.

So if there is to be infrastructure investment let’s spend it on by-passes, new road links, road widening and road improvements. Let’s give councils the money to do the backlog of repairs. Let’s spend the money we get from road users – all £30 billion and more of it – on making life a little easier for those road users. And let’s tell all the tree-huggers and planet-savers that, right now, getting the economy moving is more important than their eco-scaremongerings.

Getting the economy moving means getting people moving. And that needs roads. Including the one going anti-clockwise round Coventry.

....

People want their Council to fix the roads...

****

Perhaps not a surprise to those politicians and bureaucrats actually plugged into real life:

A poll by May Gurney suggests the British public believe highway maintenance and improving local road networks should be the top priority for councils.

The research found 41% of the population wanted local roads improving compared with 33% which wanted better services for the elderly.

 

Perhaps Bradford's leaders will come to regret that 50% cut in highway maintenance then?

....

Campaign Diary: Days Seven and Eight - white dots and chasing fairies

 

A quiet start to the week - took an evening off from the doorstep as Kathryn had driven to Milton Keynes and back therefore earning rest rather than doorbells. Still most of the delivery is out the door - got Wilsden to sort out but that should be done before the end of the week.

Took a wander up to Harecroft, a little hamlet between Cullingworth and Wilsden, where there were concerns about the sudden appearance of white dots on the cherished stone flagged footways. Residents - quite understandably - feared the worst and that the council were planning to rip them up and lay low maintenance tarmac instead!

Turns out the white dots were a precaution - there had been a couple of attempts to steal the flags while some general repairs were ongoing. Painting white dots on them is a disincentive to theft as it would mark then as stolen! We learn something every day!

Still chasing whoever's responsible for the Cottingley Beck area - want to get on with sorting out what is a pretty important site the management of which is causing local residents (who are, in this case, paying directly for the upkeep) a great deal of annoyance and irritation.

Back to Harden this evening for canvassing - sun's out so should be good.

....

Bus travel not stressful? Who're you trying to kid?

Now I don’t claim to be as clever as the Goldacre chap when it comes to squirreling out dodgy research (although it’s interesting to note that Ben never strays into the drinking, smoking and eating field – that’s pinko Guardianistas for you) but this research worries me.

Driving a car is more stressful than going by bus, says new research

The author, Dr David Lewis is the media’s favourite ‘neuropsychologist’ and conducts lots of clever experiments designed to advise the owners of big brands on psychological stuff. And some of his work on brands and advertising response is very good and very interesting. His latest piece of research is paid for by folk called “Greener Journeys” who are:

…largely funded by major bus companies and so there are no studies on the stress levels of driving compared with travelling by train.

Dr Lewis did this to come up with his contention:

Dr Lewis, from the University of Sussex, conducted an experiment in which the heart rate and Electro-Dermal Response (EDR) of 30 commuters was measured when taking identical or similar journeys by car as a driver and by bus as a passenger.

So just thirty folk – that’s a pretty representative sample! And even if we aren’t concerned with representativeness, can we really be so sure that the results from just thirty people are enough to prove the point? I know Greener Journeys think so - but they just want to make more money from bus travellers rather than to save the planet or to reduce my stress levels.

So here are a few questions for Dr Lewis:

1. Have you repeated and replicated your test across a range of different locations, times, weather conditions and demographics?

2. Can you provide any evidence that modest short term increases in stress (which is what he is measuring) are actually a health risk?

3. Have you tested the stress levels when the bus is late or cancelled, it’s peeing down with rain and some women is giving you grief for smoking at the bus stop?

....

Ah, the open road (and why we need more of them)!

I’m a bit of a fan of roads. As a child I didn’t have a train set – I had Scalectrix (although my capacity for breaking anything with delicate moving parts meant this worked less often than did Ian Bruce’s – but then he never took his out of the box for fear of it breaking) and I had Matchbox cars.

Now Matchbox cars (and for that matter Corgi, Dinky, Hot Wheels and other less remembered brands) were important because, unlike all those deluded, backwards-looking kids with train sets, I didn’t have to moan to Daddy to get them. I could buy them out of the 12½p (half-a-crown to those still remembering proper money) my parents kindly gave me in pocket money – at least until I was thirteen when it stopped and I had to get a job (in truth several jobs).

And with Matchbox cars came track. Orange strips of plastic that could be linked together to form roads – and with generous gifts from benefactors (grandparents, aunts, uncles, Mr Sparks) we also got the bends and loops. We were made. More than anything else we did, playing with this dominated – we raced cars on parallel tracks, we set all the tracks out in a single length and saw which car went the furthest, we constructed complicated loops and bends to test the road holds and we staged multiple pile ups by crashing cars on one piece of track. I even recall doing off road – using a single piece of track to roll the cars down the garden and through the allotment.

Roads are good – far better than inflexible, expensive and unsatisfying railways. Road give us the freedom to travel – to go where we want to go, in the manner we want to travel and (more or less) at the pace we want to go. And the best roads are big wide, well-maintain motorways – safe, fast and, with the right vehicle, a delight to travel on. OK, these motorways are now congested, are full of people who perhaps need to take a few more driving lessons and could be rather better maintained (and we could perhaps spend more on this than on new crash barriers, lighting and other superfluous features doubtless justified only by some daft EU regulation).

But motorways – as the gods of roads – as great. And we need more of them. I know, I know...car travel is the new evil. Those like me (and frankly most of the rest of the population) who rather prefer to travel at our pace and directly to the place we’re going are dreadful people who are destroying the planet at our convenience. Or rather we’re not – and will be doing less of this destruction with each passing year. Cars are becoming less and less polluting and more and more safe. It’s not an unreasonable assertion to say that, by 2030 cars will not be the bad boys they are now (except of course for the vintage pick up I’ll be driving) by carbon-free, quiet and non-polluting.

But to make this glorious future work we need to build some more roads. Just as building the M62 transformed the North of England’s transport systems, the new generation of roads will see in the next step forward in economic growth and sustainable transport. And before all the swampies start digging trenches and nailing themselves to trees, think about this – motorways take up a tiny proportion of England’s land surface, they keep heavy traffic away from towns and villages thereby saving untold thousands of lives and they carry more freight, more vehicles and more passengers than even the very busiest commuter rail link. Roads are vastly more efficient, more flexible, greener and more useful than any other way of setting out a route from town to town.

Since the future lies with safe, green, flexible transport we need to plan now for the smooth, swift roads on which those cars or the future will travel.

....

Time to put the trains sets away boys!

***

The other day, some of Bradford’s finest – including the wonderful John Pennington and Andrew Mason – presented a plan to link the two stations in Bradford City Centre so as to create a link between what were the Midland and GNR networks. And very fine it looks too – might enhance the city a little although it beats me how making is easier to pass through the city would regenerate the place.

But these proposals – plus the jolly plans to open up old railways (somehow I doubt that will mean Cullingworth getting a rail link again) and build new super-fast links between the big cities – got me to thinking about railways. More particularly, to considering why we bother – spending more money on our heavy rail network is just pouring money into a splendid dead end.

The problem with railways is that they require expensive infrastructure that only trains (and certain trains at that) can run on. And this is made worse by the fact that (a common trait in public transport) trains go from one place you don’t want to be (a smelly, untidy, often unsafe station) to another place you don’t want to be.

Quite frankly, roads are more flexible, can take a greater variety of traffic in greater volumes, are cheaper to build and maintain, cannot be held to ransom by operators and suit the dynamism of the modern economy. Railways – other than as commuter transport into an out from employment nodes – are a Victorian anachronism.

And looking to the future the benefits of roads will become still clearer as road vehicles become less polluting with the advances in hybrid engines, electric vehicles and fuel cells destroying the environmental arguments against this form of mass transport. By all means invest in urban mass transit and light rail systems designed to move large numbers of folk over short, congested distances but leave off driving new railways through the countryside in some rose-spectacled, harking back to a bygone age. Railways may look good, you may like them but they are not a solution to modern transport problems.

....