The trouble with our transport
My good friend Bob Robinson recently gave me a nudge to listen to this podcast – see link below:-
https://www.centreforcities.org/podcast/city-talks-british-rail-with-christian-wolmar/
It’s was interesting to me as a transport nut as in many ways Woolmar, despite being a bit of a Labour hack, makes many interesting and relevant points regarding how the UK has failed to plan for transport for generations, probably going back as far as the birth of our railways.
As a society we’ve seemingly always been happy to allow many of our transport developments to be at the behest of private developers and financiers’ meaning little is planned in any meaningful way except for short-term financial gain of course.
Yes, of course governments went motorway mad from the 1960’s onwards as they tried to make the motorist (read Daily Mail readers) happy with their car-centric lives and any form of public transport was really for the poor folk who could not afford their own car. Hence our run down railways and ever decreasing bus services (since 1980s Bus Deregulation outside of London) have been the norm as public sector transport spending/subsidy has been withdrawn/redirected in favour of private motor vehicle.
I was amused to hear Woolmar making reference to that rather right-wing country Switzerland where public transport is really a big thing. Our usual UK right-of-centre politics has left public transport poorly planned and second class yet those who do successful right-wing politics far better (from a public transport perspective anyway) than our Conservative Party have a totally different attitude to how best to plan and run public transport. I bet the Swiss are utterly horrified at the UK’s apology for public transport.
Go on give Centre For Politics’ Woolmar podcast a listen; his analysis and ability to put our transport troubles in historical context is compelling.
Wolmar is Mr Railways and very readable. I agree our public transport hasn't been planned, managed and executed as well as it could have been over many decades. But there are quite a few points here you won't be surprised to hear I find difficult to agree with.
ReplyDeleteI'll restrict myself to saying 1. private investment means public money is available for other things, 2 since 1950 or so the motor car has been one of the biggest means of levelling up and providing individual choice and the freedom to work and live life in a much more fulfilling way, 3 the motorist more than pays the cost of roads and subsidises public transport 4 I've never seen an analysis of what the economics are of a major shift to public transport but my bet would be that if the rail network was twice as big the public subsidy would also be doubled and that money would then not be available for health, education etc. And sorry but all motorists (35 million have a licence) are Daily Mail readers (1 million sold, 2 million readers)? What did they put in your coffee today, mate?