The Labour government that came to power in Britain in 1997 inherited a real mess on the railways, but it is still not doing the right things to clear it up. Since the new Department of Local Government, Transport and the Regions (DLTR) announced the governments ten-year plan in August 2000, ministers have boasted of how much they will invest.
The sums are, indeed, large: the plan envisages 33.5 billion pounds of public money being spent on the railways, not including the London Underground. Of course, as Andrew McCarthy concluded in his openDemocracy article, to restore a network on which basic maintenance has been neglected for decades will take a lot of money. But beyond that, it is far from clear that new investment is required or (where it is) that the taxpayer should pay for it. Much of the proposed expenditure cannot be justified; some will compound the problems.
The programme is geared to the Governments target of increasing the passenger miles travelled by rail by fifty per cent and freight tonne miles by eighty per cent. No attempt has been made to justify these targets, which seem to rest on a vague belief that rail travel is somehow always desirable. In fact, all motorised transport, including rail, imposes a heavy economic and environmental cost, and sometimes a social cost as well.
It is true that rail is a very safe form of transport and is less polluting and environmentally damaging than cars, lorries or aeroplanes. It can therefore make sense to spend money on rail in order to encourage transfers from these other modes or to prevent transfers in the opposite direction. But it cannot make sense to encourage new rail travel, which should be provided for only when the travellers or shippers concerned are prepared to pay for all the costs involved. Moreover, even transfers from road to rail may not always be desirable.
Many British towns, London especially, bear witness to the fact that rail construction can be as damaging to the environment as road construction. Where that damage has already been done, and where spare capacity exists, it makes sense to exploit it. But where transfers to rail require new infrastructure, there may be a substantial environmental loss rather than any net gain.
Channel Tunnel vision
The most conspicuous items in the ten-year plan were two prestige projects. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) was then estimated to require a subsidy of five billion pounds. The environmental damage done by this scheme is so severe that it should have been vetoed even if the economic case had been strong, but in fact no such case exists.
The CTRL was originally sold to the British parliament on the promise that it would enable fast links between the European continent and British regions to be provided, which in some unexplained way would regenerate those regions. There was never the faintest possibility that such services would be viable, as a back-of-the-envelope calculation is enough to show, and that claim was finally abandoned.
It was also claimed that the CTRL, by virtue of its station at Stratford, would regenerate east London. That almost equally implausible claim survives, although the value attributed to this benefit does not begin to cover the subsidy.
But by far the most important benefits in the Governments claimed justification for subsidising the CTRL are those accruing to the Eurostar passengers themselves, arising from a reduction of some thirty-five minutes in the present journey times to Paris and Brussels. Eurostar passengers are drawn overwhelmingly from well-off people living in the most prosperous part of England, and there is no possible reason for the taxpayer to subsidise them.
A study by the National Audit Office published in March 2001, but yet to be considered by the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, showed that even if some highly doubtful calculations were accepted, the CTRL did not show value for money.
It is now too late to stop the first stage of the CTRL, which brings trains into Waterloo by a new route. Little work has so far been done on the second stage, which involves tunneling under the Thames and east London in order to reach St Pancras, and that can still be stopped.
Stopping it might involve paying some penalties to contractors (although the government should be able to minimise the penalties by offering alternative work to the civil engineering firms concerned), and it would of course be highly embarrassing to the government. This is therefore a key test of the governments sense of priorities, resolve and indeed honesty.
The wrong kind of investment
The upgrading of the West Coast Main Line to carry trains capable of going at one hundred and forty miles per hour was estimated in August 2000 to require a subsidy of four billion pounds. That was a considerable increase over the original estimate; and it was a request for yet further money for this project that led to Railtracks being put into administration last year.
The case for upgrading this line, as opposed to restoring it to allow trains to go at their previous speeds of one hundred to one hundred and ten miles per hour was never made.
High-speed trains are not environmentally friendly, since energy consumption, air pollution and noise all rise sharply with speed, and they reduce the capacity of the track for other trains. Upgrading should never have been considered unless the passengers themselves were prepared to pay the full cost, and perhaps not even then. Because of the escalating costs the original specifications have now been cut back. Whether they could be reduced still further is not clear, but the possibilities should be examined urgently.
In order to meet the Governments targets, the Strategic Rail Authority has allocated the bulk of the rest of the proposed investment to the south-east. Most of it is destined for lines described as commuter services, or to other lines, which (though not so described) have an important commuting function. The net effect will be to encourage the growth of long-distance commuting into London.
This is an economic, environmental and social evil, bad both for the south-east itself and for the balance between the south-east and other regions, and it is highly perverse to encourage it.
Commuting does not merely eat up the countryside with dormitory suburbs, it destroys the city too, by depriving it of the residents who would have an interest in making it live and breathe. Commuting should be seen as the problem, not the solution, of transport policy.
Basic maintenance on the London Underground, as on the national rail system, has been neglected for decades; and here too several billions of pounds, which can only be supplied by central government, will be required to remedy the neglect. But it is also proposed that a similar sum be spent on new lines.
New lines should not even be contemplated until the existing lines have been put in order (this itself adding some fifteen per cent to present capacity), and until conditions on the roads have been improved for walking, cycling and bus operations.
Among other benefits, such improvements would allow those people who now reluctantly choose the railway or the Underground but would prefer to walk, cycle or take the bus to do so. It is most unlikely that in those improved conditions any case for new lines could be made out, especially as their effect, as with surface rail, would be to encourage longer journeys within the London area and to exacerbate the regional imbalance.
Managing the traffic flow
Subsidies to the less damaging modes of transport are not the best way of dealing with the environmental or social problems of the more damaging ones. It is better to tackle the problem directly by regulating and pricing the offending modes. The present indiscriminate use of cars in towns must be limited, both for environmental reasons and to improve transport efficiency. Appropriate rules for using cars within towns would also affect the choice of mode for travel to and between them.
There is a very strong case for reducing speeds on roads outside towns, on motorways and high-class roads as well as on minor roads. Lower and better-enforced speed limits would reduce the danger and pollution associated with any given amount of car travel and would also reduce that amount.
Some drivers would choose to transfer from car to train for their longer journeys, but others would adapt differently: by substituting a shorter car journey for a longer one, by transferring to coach rather than to train, or even, for journeys of only marginal importance, by giving them up altogether. These other reactions could not be brought about by subsidies to rail. But they would be at least as effective as a transfer to rail in reducing road traffic and the nuisance it causes.
For lorries, firm action on speed should be supplemented by other changes in the rules. The largest and most intrusive lorries should be confined to a limited network of motorways and selected roads. There would be exemptions for access, but they would not be given automatically and most would be phased out over time. The present system of large annual taxes on heavy lorries should be replaced by distance-related charges.
One consequence of these reforms would be to encourage a transfer of freight from road to rail. But, as with cars, that would not be the only or the most important effect. Most goods would still go by road but lengths of haul would be reduced. Methods of goods distribution in towns would be rationalised: the lorry mileage driven to carry out the same task of goods delivery would be considerably reduced, while at the same time more environmentally-sound vehicles would be used.
A transfer from road to rail, however induced, will only reduce the nuisance of road traffic if the rail journey and the road journey are of comparable length. A switch to rail for commuting journeys is often accompanied by a change of job or a change of house, resulting in a longer journey. The road journey at each end of the rail journey also has to be considered. This is of especial importance in relation to the target of increasing rail freight traffic, measured in tonne miles, by eighty per cent.
At present, the rail freight market is dominated by bulk goods, such as petroleum, coal and gravel, which often have one or both ends of the journeys at rail-connected premises.
But to achieve the eighty per cent target, rail is likely to have to capture goods now moving between premises accessible only by road. The road journeys to and from the railway sidings may be quite long and will often take place on roads much less suited to carrying heavy good vehicles than the motorways used for long hauls. (This is not to deny, however, that there is considerable scope for transferring longer goods movements both to rail and to coastal and short-sea shipping).
Finally, there is always a danger that the benefits from transferring traffic from rail to road will be eaten away by traffic generation. We are all now familiar with the fact that building new roads generates more traffic. But relieving existing roads can have the same effect, especially when the roads are congested to start with. To be of lasting value, transfers from road to rail must be accompanied by measures to check traffic increases. That is yet another reason for preferring restraint on the roads to subsidies to the railways as a means of bringing about the transfers.
A clearer way forward
The Government should announce a long-term aim of reducing long-distance commuting to London. The aim should be to encourage people working in London to live there, and to develop employment opportunities elsewhere in the south-east for commuters who would prefer to continue to live outside London. Both as a means of achieving those aims and as a separate objective in its own right, there should be a policy to build up other regions by transferring some London-based activities there.
These aims cannot of course be achieved by transport measures alone; other tools of regional and land-use planning will be necessary. But transport has a very important part to play. The subsidies which now go to the south-east should be phased out over a period of fifteen to twenty years. Meanwhile, overcrowding should be reduced by season tickets that would encourage the trend for people to work at home one or two days a week.
The rules governing road transport should be reformed, starting with the measures mentioned above, in order to move towards a situation where rail can compete without subsidy. In the meantime, however, to refuse to subsidise rail at all would make even a second-best solution unattainable. At present, subsidies to rail freight are given only for shipments that would otherwise go by road; this targeted system should continue. There is also a case for subsidies to certain passenger services, such as rural branch lines or commuter services to provincial cities.
But decisions on subsidising such passenger services should be taken at a local level, rather than by the Strategic Rail Authority, since rail investment for these purposes must be compared with other ways of achieving the same social, environmental or efficiency aims, that have nothing to do with the Strategic Rail Authority. For example, traffic restraint and innovative bus schemes might be a better solution for some towns.
Creating a level playing field for rail for longer journeys will also require a reform of the rules governing air transport. First of all, taxes on aviation fuel for domestic flights should be raised to at least the same level as taxes for other modes of transport. The case for insisting on the use of slower and therefore much less polluting aircraft for domestic flights should also be examined.
The previous, Conservative government in Britain was not wholly wrong in wishing to involve the private sector in railway operations, even though the way it was done, especially the separation of track and operations, was a disaster.
Freight should have been tackled first: the poor showing of the state-owned British Rail in freight was due to sluggish management as well as to the conditions weighted against the company. BR was good at railway operations narrowly defined, but never really got to grips with the concept of door-to-door transport, or with marketing.
The ideal reform would probably have been for haulage companies or freight forwarders to own railway sidings, and either own or rent the wagons. BRs role would then have been simply to arrange the movement of wagons from one private siding to another as requested by the hauliers.
Hauliers would have been responsible for dealings with customers and for the road haul between customers premises and the sidings. Once such a system had been established for freight, the possibility of privatising some branch lines, or handing them over to local authorities, could have been considered. Reforming the present structure in that direction is the most creative route out of the present mess.
Regionalising the roads
The case for a national road-building programme is already very weak. If reforms governing the use of roads can be introduced, in turn making subsidies to rail unnecessary, its justification would be destroyed altogether. There would then be no need to widen motorways or to build new major roads. But roads would still have to be maintained; it would still be necessary to build roads to serve new development; some new bypasses would still be desirable.
Local authorities should handle all this work. Some of the money now allocated to the national road programme should be transferred to other sectors of the economy where the need is much greater. The rest should be given to local authorities, but not earmarked specifically for roadbuilding. The DTLR and the Treasury should insist that local authorities follow ordinary economic logic in allocating their transport budgets by giving priority to the schemes that show the best return on investment.
Bus priority measures, traffic calming and other road safety measures often pay for themselves several times over within a year, even when assessed by methods that take no account of some important benefits. Formal methods to assess schemes to help cyclists and pedestrians have not been developed, but there are strong grounds for thinking that they too represent very good value for money. New roads, by contrast, take many years to pay for themselves even when assessed by methods that are consistently biased in their favour.
A reorganisation of transport policy in the direction proposed here would help to bring road, rail and other forms of transport into a much-needed healthier set of relationships in this small island.