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.

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Transport planners are asking the wrong question - which is why their answer is always 'more trains'

Places of work are not conveniently distributed and, to make matters worse, where most people live is more disbursed than planners seem to think. Since most people don't live in dense inner-city suburbs and don't work in 'central business districts' (this is true even for a city like London), transport planning solutions founded on urban transit from suburb to city don't work. Transport planners are asking the wrong question and getting the wrong answer.

Here's Joel Kotkin talking about Los Angeles:

If you want a job in Southern California, it is very useful to have a car. The average worker in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (which includes Orange County) can get to fewer than 1 percent of the jobs by transit in 30 minutes. By car, the average worker can get to 33 times as many jobs, according to University of Minnesota research. In Riverside-San Bernardino, the average worker can get to nearly 100 times as many jobs by car as by transit in 30 minutes.

Yet, as Kotkin observes, the city managements in Southern California have "...decided only their solution — more trains — is an acceptable alternative." There's no consideration of ride-hailing, ride-sharing or private jitneys - responses that work with the dispersed nature of the place and the realities of how people live.

West Yorkshire is, you'll all agree, pretty urban in nature but its land area is a third bigger than Greater London with a quarter of the population. And, for all Leeds supposed significance (something I consider consistently overstated to the detriment of the region), the distribution of employment is such that the same applies to West Yorkshire as does in Los Angeles - if you want a job it's pretty useful to have a car.

Despite this reality, transport planners remain transfixed by the idea of the train (or some other fixed line system such as trams, streetcars or trolley buses) - transport solutions that, as one wag put it, "take people from one place they don't want to be to another place they don't want to be". We go to London, which has the most comprehensive public transport system of any major city anywhere, and say "let's do that" without appreciating the constraints of physical geography, where people live and where they work. We need a tram because Manchester has a tram.

But Manchester's tram system doesn't serve most of Greater Manchester:



So, because the tram doesn't go near where most Mancunians live, they do what they've done for years - get in their car and drive to work. Tram systems are great but still, for places that have them, represent fewer than 5% of commuter journeys.

The central problem here - one that transport planners must know but seem to ignore - is that the distribution of people and jobs simply isn't suited to the sort of mass transit solutions those planners like other than where population density is high and there has been a long history of major investment in transport infrastructure (London and Tokyo are the two best examples). Given that it is uneconomic to run relative cheap bus services into many dispersed parts of West Yorkshire what hope do we have of creating a fixed infrastructure transit system that can replace using the car?

Last night I had a conversation with some folk about buses and taxis (it started with us talking about getting the train to Carlisle). The conclusion of the conversation was that, if there were more than two of you then getting a taxi to Bingley station for the train is cheaper than using the bus. And, even with two people the extra cost of a cab is minimal (seven quid in a taxi, six quid and change on the bus). So you get a taxi that comes at your convenience, gets you there quicker and picks you up from your front door rather than have you stand in the wind and rain at a bus stop.

So the right way to think about transport in this case is "how do we make taxis cheaper, cleaner and safer". But that's not what transport authorities are doing - quite the opposite. When a system arrives (ride sharing) that promises to do just this the response of authorities is to try and stop the improvement. And the same goes for ride-hailing, jitneys and mini-buses - public authorities put regulatory barriers in the way, often at the behest of those whose interests are affected by these innovations.

This isn't to say you shouldn't have a tram (although I consider it the wrong thing for West Yorkshire) but to argue for transport planning to work with human behaviour rather than to see itself as trying to force people to change that behaviour. I never drive into Leeds city centre, not because I'm trying to save the planet or think cars are evil but because it's cheap and convenient for me to do so (especially when my wife drops me off at the station). I do drive into Bradford centre because the public transport option isn't cheaper or more convenient.

Joel Kotkin is right to criticise this sort of statement from transport chiefs (this is from the CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Phil Washington):

“It’s too easy to drive in this city. We want to reach the riders that left and get to the new ones as well. And part of that has to do with actually making driving harder.”

Since no transport system based on fixed lines can serve a dispersed population as well as the car, this attitude condemns many people to a less pleasant, more expensive and slower journey that can't be substituted for a ride on a public transport system. Yes the new capacity will fill up (although it is interesting to note that most journeys on UK tram systems outside London are not commuter journeys) but it will be marginal to the totality of journeys.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the 'decarbonisation' of road transport (what you use to generate the electricity, how to keep all those cars charged up, power grid problems, etc.) but the intention of public authorities is to do just that - we're committed to 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2040. It would be, therefore, better to invest in resolving those unanswered questions than to pile more billions into transport systems that don't even begin to answer the question we should be asking - how can people move around as they do now but more efficiently, more safely and more cleanly?

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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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It's time to stop obsessing about trains - they aren't the infrastructure solution we need

Let's imagine for a minute that I'm going to give you several billion pounds for the purpose of making the North of England's infrastructure "fit for the 21st century". Let's also forget that, in the real world, this looks unlikely because when you put infrastructure schemes through the Department of Transport's models they tell you that investing in the North - compared to yet another rail scheme for London - is a financial no-no.

Now, because you're an assiduous consumer of commentary and consider yourself bang up to the minute on transport issues, you come straight back and say something like:

High Speed Rail from York to Liverpool - maybe extending HS2 to Newcastle as well

Electrification of assorted railway lines (Calder Valley, Harrogate-York, etc.)

Rail links to Yorkshire's airports and ports

Light rail for Leeds (that may or may not connect to Bradford, Huddersfield and Wakefield

New stations, new rolling stock, fancy ticket machines and ticket systems

More trains, bigger trains, faster trains...

I know this is the response most folk will give because, even in the North where 95% of people don't use trains (on anything but a very occasional basis), the reporting on transport issues is utterly dominated by problems with trains - too old, too crowded, strikes, break downs, timetable problems:: you name it the BBC, Yorkshire Post and local media will be all over it.

Tell me, when did the newspapers or television news last cover the fact that your bus is old, slow and subject to delays and cancellations? When was there a shock horror report complete with vox pops from exasperated commuters saying how the endless summer of road works has caused congestion everywhere? One of the main routes into Bradford, the B6144 along Toller Lane and White Abbey Road, has been closed for eight weeks while Yorkshire Water try to find some of the wet stuff - have there been any reports on the sheer annoying inconvenience and cost of this work? You missed it?

Yet the single most important means by which people in the North get to work is by car and, however much you might want to parade your green credentials, all that vast investment in railways won't make anything but the tiniest of dents in this traffic. And, as you all know of course, the problems on the railways result from the decision (something to do with privatisation) to incentivise increasing passenger numbers - there isn't enough capacity on the rail system. Modal shift (every councillor I've ever met who has served on a transport committee can intone this - it goes with 'get more freight on rails' as a mantra) if it is a success simply results in the rail system seizing up.

So here's an alternative list for your infrastructure investment - one better linked to reality and less to the fact that too many transport planners still have a model railway in the attic:

Bus priority schemes, new buses and better bus stations

Superfast broadband - targeting where the commuter traffic is coming from not where it's going to

Car share apps and schemes - with financial rewards for users

Properly funded road maintenance and improvement - dealing with the thousands of stalled small schemes

Deregulation of taxi and minibus - getting something like the US Dollar bus schemes

Support for employer run bus schemes

Incentives for home working and local shared work spaces

Better cycling infrastructure (including, for larger places, cycle rent schemes)

Railways - for all that they have a place - are still 19th century technology. The EU auditors recently reported that the only high speed line on the whole continent (including HS1 and the Channel Tunnel) that is profitable is the Paris-Lyon line. The money spemt on railways represents a huge subsidy to wealthy urban commuters and we're paying the price of this with potholed roads, outdated diesel buses, over-regulated taxis and the almost complete absence of any national (let alone regional) strategy for roads. It is time to line the transport planners up and ask: "do you like trains?" If the answer is "yes" then get rid of them.

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

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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.

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Writing elsewhere...on the waste of cash that is HS2

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Over at the Culture Vultures you can read me ripping into High Speed Two:

Let’s put is more simply still – if the government put £30 billion on the table for The North to develop its transport network, do you think we’d even think of building a railway to London?

Go read - and comment!

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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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Ah, that high speed rail thing again...

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...and how it's impact will not be what we're told:

If building great roads and trains were the route to lasting prosperity, Greece and Spain would be booming. The past 30 years have seen a huge splurge in infrastructure spending, often funded by the EU. The Athens metro is excellent. The AVE fast-trains in Spain are a marvel. But this kind of spending has done very little to change the fundamental problems that now plague both Greece and Spain – in particular, youth unemployment.

Worse, in some ways, EU funding for infrastructure has created problems. In Greece, milking the EU for subsidies became an industry in itself: and political connections were a surer route to wealth than entrepreneurial flair.

Doesn't look that promising, eh?

Not looking good for HS2's economic case is it?

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The grand vanity project that is High Speed 2 - a fancy train set rushing the wealthy of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester away to London so much faster - is fast losing any limited investment credibility:

The Department for Transport has revised down its estimates of the economic benefits of the proposed High Speed 2 rail line to just £1.20 for every pound invested.

And that's with all the speculative nonsense that goes into economic return estimates for these sort of infrastructure schemes. In truth the project - even the slightly more viable  London-Birmingham bit - will be as loss-making as the Humber Bridge and the Channel Tunnel.

And we should expect further quiet downgrading of the returns:

The revision downwards is the fourth made by the government since its original estimate in March 2010 of £2.40 for every pound invested. The latest revision comes after an adjustment to an estimate published in January, which had calculated the benefits to be £1.40 for every pound invested. 

Of course the government - and the fans of HS2 - tell us that there are other benefits that "reach well beyond transport economics." Absolutely, it'll be a shiny train set that they can show off about. That's why we're doing it - it has little transport benefit and no economic benefit.

But that's fine because a bunch of people who won't be using the line support it:

Other documents released by the government today showed that a majority of those living in the most deprived areas within nine miles of the proposed London to West Midlands HS2 route support the project. 

Now that's a very specific survey there - or rather a very carefully selected group. It's not that people support the scheme or that people within nine miles of the route support the scheme, it's that the "most deprived" places within that second group support the scheme!

Does this not seem like a bit of a mistake yet?

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Is London's public transport really so expensive?

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London has a fantastic public transport network yet we still get special pleading:

Travelling in London is nearly three and a half times more expensive than Paris and 10 times dearer than in Rome, according to research by the Campaign for Better Transport.  With successive Governments in Britain allowing fares to rise faster than inflation, the gap has also been widening in recent years.  Next week commuter fares, which are capped by the Department for Transport, will increase by an average of six per cent.

Now this information should be treated with some caution – it’s based on one 23 mile journey rather than an assessment of the system itself. For me the central question is whether Londoners, Parisians and Romans can give up the car (i.e. it is no longer essential to practical living). For most people within the urban area of London Paris the car is only needed to visit maiden aunts in Hampshire, it isn’t needed to get to work, visit locally, shop or do those other regular everyday things.

Rome – crammed to the gunnels with crazy traffic – has just 38km of underground and less than 200km of other urban rail system. Paris Metro is a little longer at 86km and the other light rail is limited. The London Underground alone has 402km of track before we’ve taken account of overground services, trams and bus priority systems.

In London a comprehensive annual ticket (Zones 1-9) costs a little over £3,000. But bear in mind that the transport system in London is so comprehensive you don’t need a car (although this gets a little trickier the further you get from London). The AA gives a running cost for the cheapest category of car (valued at below £12,000 new) at 10,000 miles per annum as £4,553 – over £1500 more expensive than using public transport.

The Campaign for Better Transport is arguing that we should use more of the taxes paid by people who don’t use London’s commuter network to reduce the cost of that commuting rather than getting those commuters to pay the full cost of providing the world’s most extensive and comprehensive public transport system. Especially given that this system is significantly cheaper than running a car (that is only a luxury to most Londoners).

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Is there actually a business case for HS2 - or is it just anecdote?

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From the select committee enquiry into the proposed high speed railway to Birmingham comes this gem from Sir Brian Briscoe, the boss of HS2 Ltd:

"We have not measured the wider economic benefits of improved connectivity. But, anecdotally, people in the West Midlands have said that transport improvements would drive other kinds of economic improvements."

We are - it seems - to spend billions on building a railway we might not need on the basis of "anecdote".

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So the really fast train is just a means for rich folk to get to London quicker!

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Or that's the view of HS2's main proponent, Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary:

"Uncomfortable fact number one is that the railway is already relatively a rich man's toy. People who use the railway on average have significantly higher income - simple fact."

So not for the likes of you and me then! And not a great way of improving the North's economy either.

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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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Build better roads and urban systems...inter city high speed trains are rubbish

The Government - applying it's usual strategy of stealing any Tory policy that's been announced, changing it slightly and spending more money - has announced a new high speed rail link from London to Birmingham. And the usual collection of politicians who wish they had better train sets and the rail network operators were frothing about the wonderment of all this...

Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher said high-speed rail was "a vital part of a modern, dynamic economy". He also said that it would "take cars and lorries off the road, cut domestic flights and release capacity on the existing rail network, transforming services even for those communities not served directly by a high-speed line. It is the low-carbon, sustainable transport of the future."

Inter-city trains are not the solution. They travel from one place you don't want to be to another place you don't want to be. They are expensive. The rails makes them inflexible and route-bound. They are inefficient carriers of small load freight. Yet we seem obsessed by them!

I'm all in favour of urban mass transit systems - trams, local trains...I could even persuade myself to like buses. But super fast trains are a waste of money - £30 billion in this case. When they can't get a train 9 miles from Leeds to Bradford in under 20 minutes and most of us a nowhere near a railway station, super-fast trains seem just another shiny toy.

If you want to spend £30 billion linking our cities. Can I suggest building some better roads?

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