I have identified three negative influences that have held transport back, or led it in the wrong direction, through the decades
HS2’s River Tame West Viaduct. The entire HS2 project has been subject to regular chopping and changing
The turn of the year is a good time for reflection, to step away from the day to day issues to look at the wider picture.
I have been involved in transport one way or another since 1984 when I worked for British Rail, then through my time as a council leader, an MP for 18 years, a transport minister for three and a half years, managing director of a bus company, and most recently director of external affairs for Campaign for Better Transport.
A lot has changed since 1984, of course, but the basic purposes of transport policy remain the same. First, it should facilitate social mobility, whether to work, school, public services or for leisure. Second, it should facilitate movement of goods and people to keep the economy going. Third, it should deliver the above while minimising the impact on the environment, whether in terms of emissions or land use.
To a significant degree these three objectives are met, but our system is far from optimal. Why not?
Unfortunately, the negatives that have held transport back, or led it in the wrong direction, were with us when I first got involved and if anything are even more powerful today.
I have identified three main malign influences that run through the decades.
1. Prejudice
This underpins the constant favourable approach to roads over public transport.
There persists the immovable belief in some quarters that road building axiomatically helps a local economy. Yet the evidence, such as it is, suggests that driving a new road into a weaker economic area can suck business out rather than bringing it in. When the M4 was extended down to Wales, a good number of businesses relocated to the Reading area on the basis that Wales could now be sensibly reached from there. The same logic saw Royal Mail relocate from Brighton to Gatwick after the M23 was extended down to the coast.
In my part of the world there has been a relentless campaign to build a new A27 dual carriageway through lovely countryside from Eastbourne to Lewes at a cost of well over a billion pounds. Yet there is a perfectly serviceable parallel railway line that completes the journey in just 20 minutes. Moreover, the best way to help Eastbourne’s economy is not to suck businesses out with a new road but to upskill the town’s workforce.
Even more absurdly, there is the ingrained belief, including in the new government, that providing more road space relieves congestion when we should all know by now that it (a) generates new journeys that would not otherwise have been made by car (b) moves the traffic jam a few miles down the road to where the “improvement” ends. Just look at Birmingham which has probably had more spent on roads than anywhere else and has some of the worst traffic problems in the country.
Money spent on roads is called “investment” and money spent on public transport “subsidy”. Can someone please get the Treasury to understand that the terminology they have used for multiple decades is rather out of date
But then money spent on roads is called “investment” and money spent on public transport “subsidy”. Can someone please get the Treasury to understand that the terminology they have used for multiple decades is rather out of date.
When I was a transport minister, I had on my wall an old 1960s cartoon from, I think, the Daily Express. It showed a static dual carriageway rammed with cars going nowhere in either direction and which was crossed at right angles above by a railway bridge with a train going across and on which one passenger was saying to the other: “Disgraceful, this train’s two minutes late.”
The same double standard applies to accidents. The Hatfield train crash of 2000 killed four people and injured 70. It caused a general anguish and massive media coverage about rail safety and led to vast amounts being spent to make a safe system even safer. Nobody remarked that that same weekend, more people were killed on the roads. As they are every weekend.
In 2023, on our roads there were 29,643 people killed or seriously injured of which 1,645 were fatalities. From April 2023 to March 2024, there were by comparison 10 non-workforce deaths on the UK rail network. If for no other reason than safety, the government should recommend people switch from road to rail.
2. Political cowardice
Yes Minister had an episode entitled The Whisky Priest when the mythical minister Jim Hacker knew what he should do but bottled out from doing so. It is trend that runs through transport.
The freezing, and indeed “temporary cut”, of fuel duty since 2011 is a blatant example. Failing even to raise it in line with inflation has lost the Treasury a sum adjacent to the £22bn black hole the chancellor keeps going on about. Moreover, even the dire state of the economy and the fact that Labour has boxed itself into a corner by identifying a raft of personal taxes it has promised not to raise, was not enough to persuade her to tackle this absurdity. But if not in the first year of a five year government, then when?
Meanwhile, bus and train fares rise inexorably, encouraging a reverse modal shift, often hurting the poorest people, and leading to more congestion on our roads, so undermining Labour’s commitment to social justice, to tackling climate change and to creating growth.
This political cowardice has also pushed a move to pay-as-you-go driving into the deepest recesses of the Treasury though everyone privately knows it has to come and indeed makes sense and has many potential advantages, not least as the move to electric cars is eroding the Treasury’s tax base even further.
Then there’s the failure to control emissions from aviation, with successive governments instead glibly pretending something called jet zero will magically materialise. Worse, the last government cut Air Passenger Duty, the only tax on flying, and this one, via Angela Rayner, has overruled a Labour council to almost double the number of flights out of London City airport.
Why have we not seen the rationalisation of rail fares that everyone in the industry knows should happen but it never does?
Why have we not seen the rationalisation of rail fares that everyone in the industry knows should happen but it never does? Because inevitably there will be winners and losers and nobody is prepared to generate losers, no matter how logical this might be. It is the same reason why there has been no revaluation of Council Tax since its inception in 1993 and why water rates are still ludicrously based on rateable value, a system that was abolished in 1990.
Locally, there is ample proof, from places such as Nottingham and Brighton, that where good provision of, and road priority for public transport is matched by steeper car parking charges, the economy and environment both prosper. Yet so many places insist on low car parking charges which actually has the opposite effect. Some, like Wealden District Council near me, are so frightened of the motorist, that all car parking is “free” (ie subsidised by the council taxpayer) and they dare not even decriminalise parking enforcement, leading to chaotic parking everywhere as understandably, the police aren’t interested in wasting time on this.
Where is the political leadership when the knee-jerk reaction is to cave in to pressure groups like Fair Fuel UK and their friends in the tabloid press, even when you know what you are doing is wrong?
It all smacks of the sentiment expressed first by the French lawyer Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: “I am their leader, I must follow them.”
3. Mismanagement
I do not suggest we adopt the Chinese government’s approach of telling people their house is going to be demolished next Friday to make way for a new railway line, but we must be able to do better on delivery times.
Thameslink 2000 was finally finished in about 2018, the splendid Crossrail project was years late, and then of course there is HS2, which has been subject to regular chopping and changing by politicians and grotesquely incompetent management by those in charge of the project. And of course with late delivery comes big extra costs.
Incidentally, construction of the Channel Tunnel was begun in 1880. It opened in 1994.
Then there is Network Rail, whose signal failures are responsible for the loss to passengers of 988,419 minutes since 2018, and whose bill for track renewals has ballooned by a third compared to the period 2014-2019.
Their new stations are becoming eye-wateringly expensive: £25m for a standard two-platform station at Reading Green Park, £22m for the same at Worcestershire Parkway, and £20m for Reston. Yet back in 2009 when severe floods hit Workington, Network Rail impressively managed to build a brand new station within six days at a cost of £216,000.
Can we look to the rail minister to sort all this out? Oh hang on, that’s Peter Hendy, chair of Network Rail during the period of huge cost increases.
The Department for Transport is also responsible for epic mismanagement itself
The Department for Transport is also responsible for epic mismanagement itself, of course. There was the £40m compensation to Virgin when the tendering for the West Coast Main Line was messed up, and the subsequent award to Avanti, now widely regarded as Britain’s worst train company. That however did not stop the DfT under the last government extending their franchise and awarding them a bonus of £4m in 2022 for “operational performance” and “customer satisfaction”.
Overall, our transport system works quite well. But it could be so much better. Can we hope that anyone will seriously tackle the three malign influences?
I’ve seen it, I’ve said it, but who will sort it?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Norman Baker served as transport minister from May 2010 until October 2013. He was Lib Dem MP for Lewes between 1997 and 2015.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Transport’s three malign influences
by Passenger Transport on Jan 10, 2025 • 1:10 pm No CommentsI have identified three negative influences that have held transport back, or led it in the wrong direction, through the decades
The turn of the year is a good time for reflection, to step away from the day to day issues to look at the wider picture.
I have been involved in transport one way or another since 1984 when I worked for British Rail, then through my time as a council leader, an MP for 18 years, a transport minister for three and a half years, managing director of a bus company, and most recently director of external affairs for Campaign for Better Transport.
A lot has changed since 1984, of course, but the basic purposes of transport policy remain the same. First, it should facilitate social mobility, whether to work, school, public services or for leisure. Second, it should facilitate movement of goods and people to keep the economy going. Third, it should deliver the above while minimising the impact on the environment, whether in terms of emissions or land use.
To a significant degree these three objectives are met, but our system is far from optimal. Why not?
Unfortunately, the negatives that have held transport back, or led it in the wrong direction, were with us when I first got involved and if anything are even more powerful today.
I have identified three main malign influences that run through the decades.
1. Prejudice
This underpins the constant favourable approach to roads over public transport.
There persists the immovable belief in some quarters that road building axiomatically helps a local economy. Yet the evidence, such as it is, suggests that driving a new road into a weaker economic area can suck business out rather than bringing it in. When the M4 was extended down to Wales, a good number of businesses relocated to the Reading area on the basis that Wales could now be sensibly reached from there. The same logic saw Royal Mail relocate from Brighton to Gatwick after the M23 was extended down to the coast.
In my part of the world there has been a relentless campaign to build a new A27 dual carriageway through lovely countryside from Eastbourne to Lewes at a cost of well over a billion pounds. Yet there is a perfectly serviceable parallel railway line that completes the journey in just 20 minutes. Moreover, the best way to help Eastbourne’s economy is not to suck businesses out with a new road but to upskill the town’s workforce.
Even more absurdly, there is the ingrained belief, including in the new government, that providing more road space relieves congestion when we should all know by now that it (a) generates new journeys that would not otherwise have been made by car (b) moves the traffic jam a few miles down the road to where the “improvement” ends. Just look at Birmingham which has probably had more spent on roads than anywhere else and has some of the worst traffic problems in the country.
But then money spent on roads is called “investment” and money spent on public transport “subsidy”. Can someone please get the Treasury to understand that the terminology they have used for multiple decades is rather out of date.
When I was a transport minister, I had on my wall an old 1960s cartoon from, I think, the Daily Express. It showed a static dual carriageway rammed with cars going nowhere in either direction and which was crossed at right angles above by a railway bridge with a train going across and on which one passenger was saying to the other: “Disgraceful, this train’s two minutes late.”
The same double standard applies to accidents. The Hatfield train crash of 2000 killed four people and injured 70. It caused a general anguish and massive media coverage about rail safety and led to vast amounts being spent to make a safe system even safer. Nobody remarked that that same weekend, more people were killed on the roads. As they are every weekend.
In 2023, on our roads there were 29,643 people killed or seriously injured of which 1,645 were fatalities. From April 2023 to March 2024, there were by comparison 10 non-workforce deaths on the UK rail network. If for no other reason than safety, the government should recommend people switch from road to rail.
2. Political cowardice
Yes Minister had an episode entitled The Whisky Priest when the mythical minister Jim Hacker knew what he should do but bottled out from doing so. It is trend that runs through transport.
The freezing, and indeed “temporary cut”, of fuel duty since 2011 is a blatant example. Failing even to raise it in line with inflation has lost the Treasury a sum adjacent to the £22bn black hole the chancellor keeps going on about. Moreover, even the dire state of the economy and the fact that Labour has boxed itself into a corner by identifying a raft of personal taxes it has promised not to raise, was not enough to persuade her to tackle this absurdity. But if not in the first year of a five year government, then when?
Meanwhile, bus and train fares rise inexorably, encouraging a reverse modal shift, often hurting the poorest people, and leading to more congestion on our roads, so undermining Labour’s commitment to social justice, to tackling climate change and to creating growth.
This political cowardice has also pushed a move to pay-as-you-go driving into the deepest recesses of the Treasury though everyone privately knows it has to come and indeed makes sense and has many potential advantages, not least as the move to electric cars is eroding the Treasury’s tax base even further.
Then there’s the failure to control emissions from aviation, with successive governments instead glibly pretending something called jet zero will magically materialise. Worse, the last government cut Air Passenger Duty, the only tax on flying, and this one, via Angela Rayner, has overruled a Labour council to almost double the number of flights out of London City airport.
Why have we not seen the rationalisation of rail fares that everyone in the industry knows should happen but it never does? Because inevitably there will be winners and losers and nobody is prepared to generate losers, no matter how logical this might be. It is the same reason why there has been no revaluation of Council Tax since its inception in 1993 and why water rates are still ludicrously based on rateable value, a system that was abolished in 1990.
Locally, there is ample proof, from places such as Nottingham and Brighton, that where good provision of, and road priority for public transport is matched by steeper car parking charges, the economy and environment both prosper. Yet so many places insist on low car parking charges which actually has the opposite effect. Some, like Wealden District Council near me, are so frightened of the motorist, that all car parking is “free” (ie subsidised by the council taxpayer) and they dare not even decriminalise parking enforcement, leading to chaotic parking everywhere as understandably, the police aren’t interested in wasting time on this.
Where is the political leadership when the knee-jerk reaction is to cave in to pressure groups like Fair Fuel UK and their friends in the tabloid press, even when you know what you are doing is wrong?
It all smacks of the sentiment expressed first by the French lawyer Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin: “I am their leader, I must follow them.”
3. Mismanagement
I do not suggest we adopt the Chinese government’s approach of telling people their house is going to be demolished next Friday to make way for a new railway line, but we must be able to do better on delivery times.
Thameslink 2000 was finally finished in about 2018, the splendid Crossrail project was years late, and then of course there is HS2, which has been subject to regular chopping and changing by politicians and grotesquely incompetent management by those in charge of the project. And of course with late delivery comes big extra costs.
Incidentally, construction of the Channel Tunnel was begun in 1880. It opened in 1994.
Then there is Network Rail, whose signal failures are responsible for the loss to passengers of 988,419 minutes since 2018, and whose bill for track renewals has ballooned by a third compared to the period 2014-2019.
Their new stations are becoming eye-wateringly expensive: £25m for a standard two-platform station at Reading Green Park, £22m for the same at Worcestershire Parkway, and £20m for Reston. Yet back in 2009 when severe floods hit Workington, Network Rail impressively managed to build a brand new station within six days at a cost of £216,000.
Can we look to the rail minister to sort all this out? Oh hang on, that’s Peter Hendy, chair of Network Rail during the period of huge cost increases.
The Department for Transport is also responsible for epic mismanagement itself, of course. There was the £40m compensation to Virgin when the tendering for the West Coast Main Line was messed up, and the subsequent award to Avanti, now widely regarded as Britain’s worst train company. That however did not stop the DfT under the last government extending their franchise and awarding them a bonus of £4m in 2022 for “operational performance” and “customer satisfaction”.
Overall, our transport system works quite well. But it could be so much better. Can we hope that anyone will seriously tackle the three malign influences?
I’ve seen it, I’ve said it, but who will sort it?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Norman Baker served as transport minister from May 2010 until October 2013. He was Lib Dem MP for Lewes between 1997 and 2015.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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