/diary0007| Dear Lord Birt I welcome your appointment as the latest guru to be invited by the Government to “think the unthinkable”, about our transportation systems. Both The Guardian and The Telegraph have highlighted your appointment, and its implied slight to the Department of Transport. If I write to give you my advice, it is not because you will otherwise lack advisors: they abound, particularly among the rail enthusiasts. It is because I think I have a distinctive, and radical, perspective on the matters which you you are called upon to consider. This is what I suggest you should do. Follow Beeching Prune the railway system down to its bare essentials, the primary network which means the principal Intercity lines and the major commuting networks. Rail is an outmoded technology which is very expensive to maintain, and which has not been maintained properly for the last fifty years. We have allowed our metropolitan settlements to become functionally dependent on rail networks, and we have now have no alternative but to maintain them. To abandon rail entirely would cause too much disruption to too many people. And retention will mean major new investment in the primary network. But those who continue to use rail should in the long run pay its true cost, just as homeowners in the Cotswolds have to pay a fortune to find thatchers. The costs are simply deducted from the capital value of their properties. Invest in roads, and the reduction of fuel emissions. Have a look at my Embracing Roads comments, a few days ago. Motor transport, by coach, bus and car, is the true democratic mode of our age, and will dominate the 21st Century. Individual vehicular mobility, meaning the freedom to move from Point A to Point B at a time and manner of the individual’s own choosing, has proved the key new freedom of the 20th Century, for the “advanced economies”. In January 1953, when I took my Driving Test in Cardiff, there were just 2m vehicles on UK roads: there are now 27m and rising. Yet improved highway management has handled that increase magnificently. Do not be a pessimist: UK vehicle numbers are likely to rise to 35m, but they can be easily managed. Investment in better roads (both local and major motorway schemes) benefits a huge range of ordinary people: improving rail travel will never benefit more than a 10% minority. I am sure that both Tony and Gordon will see the force of that democratic electoral argument. Advise Tony to craft a transportation policy with these five component elements. A. Create a modern highway system, facilitating the mass use of the car and public road transport, targeting a 35m network capacity; B. Launch an assault on highway gas emissions , massive investment in environmental research and development, as the correlate of highway expansion. Indeed, (A) is the price that we must pay for the increased personal flexibility and enjoyment of (B) |
C. Invest selectively in the primary rail network , targeting self-sufficiency over a ten-year period. The transition to true market-fares will be a traumatic one, but the Government must create a self-sustaining future for those who work in and use the services of the industry. The railways, after all, caused terrible havoc to the canal industry and the stage-coach industry, when they were introduced. With certain high-value exceptions, rail must now give way to road.
D. Invest in public road transport . Our buses and coaches are the Cinderellas of the system, in spite of their massive importance to ordinary working people. Explain to Tony that if Labour is to win the 2009 General Election, there must by then be high-quality coaches and buses on our streets, with modern suspension and transmission systems, much more passenger-space, increased luggage-carrying capacity, according passengers real respect and dignity. This will require the creation of new public bus companies , spearheading the drive for quality and reliability: the seedy, balkanised, inefficient privatised system we now suffer must be dramatically sidelined, by new public enterprise.
E. Finally, suggest to Gordon that he should now introduce a “Usage Charge” for all vehicles using any part of the public highway on any weekday. It would be the most enormous generator of tax-income. I wrote to him in February 1997, before the
mid-year Election, with my proposals for a Usage Charge, and receipt was acknowledged: you can check out my idea to which I still adhere. The new tax would enable Vehicle Excise Tax to be abolished, and fuel taxes kept consistently lower: both would be extremely popular moves. Low-mileage drivers, capable of choosing to drive overnight or at weekends, would dramatically reduce their motoring tax-bills.
Politically, I recognise, the introduction of such a tax would pose the most enormous challenges: it could not be done by softly softly techniques. But mention to Gordon the thought that in transportation a major crisis
is brewing, on a scale which might
just provide a political platform for
such a move.
Just a few thoughts. I will watch with interest, to see how you get on.
Yours sincerely
Roger Warren Evans What do you think? Drop me a line. COPYRIGHT > The originating content of this website is my own work, and subject to my copyright. But on one condition only, I hereby given my consent to its unrestricted reproduction for any purpose: the condition is that its source is subject to proper acknowledgment, giving my name, my assertion of copyright, and the name of this website as it source, namely > www.warrenevans.net > to Diary Archive Back to today's Home Page
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