Short term thinking at its very worst

 

Rishi Sunak’s new ‘Plan for Motorists’ and his decision to cancel Phase 2 of HS2 are not ‘long-term decisions for a brighter future’

 
Rishi Sunak at his ‘Net Zero’ press conference last month

 
In my last column for Passenger Transport, I observed that it never helps when No 10 or No 11 take too close an interest in transport policy. It gives me no pleasure at all to have been proved right so quickly and so devastatingly.

We had already learned of the decision taken by No 10 to push back the end date for sales of petrol and diesel cars, a decision that infuriated car manufacturers and environmentalists in equal measure.

Next up we were given the Plan for Motorists, a naked attempt to appeal to the worst instincts of the population and scrabble together some votes for the Conservatives at the forthcoming general election.

Dressed up as long-term decision making, this is short-termism at its very worst, a plan not for the future but to take us up to the day after the next election. Survival is the name of the game for Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives, and if British manufacturing, the environment, international credibility and the rest have to suffer, well so be it.

One of the saddest sights of the week has been to see the amiable and decent Mark Harper forced to appear before the cameras at the Tory party conference, like someone in a hostage video, and read out the garbage written for him by No 10

One of the saddest sights of the week has been to see the amiable and decent Mark Harper forced to appear before the cameras at the Tory party conference, like someone in a hostage video, and read out the garbage written for him by No 10.

In announcing that the car driver should take priority over the bus passenger, the government is upending decades of transport policy in this country that has run through Labour, coalition and Conservative governments, and returning us to the so-called great car economy of the 1970s.

The suggestions in particular that bus lanes should be curtailed and that local authorities should be discouraged from enforcing moving traffic offences come, like so much else in the government these days, straight from the unpleasant and unhinged far right of the Tory party. The same wing that enthusiastically votes to curtail the freedom to demonstrate while encouraging the vandalism of ULEZ-enforcing cameras in London.

Mark Harper and his team have been trying to do the right thing, including capping bus fares. Indeed, the Department for Transport recently and justifiably issued a press release pointing out that bus fares in rural areas have fallen 11% over the last year.

But smooth running is essential if the bus is to attract people out of their cars. Removing bus priority will simply lead to more buses more often being stuck in congested streets along incidentally with all the motorists the PM says he wants to help. And people will take the view that if they are going to be stuck in a traffic jam, they may as well be stuck in their own car rather than stuck in a bus.

The good news, if there is any, is that the Plan for Motorists talks about reviews, changing guidance and the like. Very little if anything can be forced on local councils before May next year when the general election is widely expected. DfT civil servants, charged with making something palatable out of these fetid ingredients, can be forgiven for taking their time and going slow, in the entirely reasonable expectation that the vast bulk of the package will be junked by an incoming Labour government.

Then on Wednesday came the hammer blow that we had all been expecting – the amputation of what was left of HS2.

The HS2 concept I signed up to, both as Lib Dem transport spokesperson in 2009 and then subsequently as a transport minister, was light years away from where we have ended up. That was for a network of new track, not simply to Manchester and Leeds, but one that had a spur to Heathrow, to discourage internal flights, and a link to HS1.Trains would run from Edinburgh and Glasgow through to Paris and Brussels using HS2 and HS1.

Philip Hammond and I actually wanted to extend the Heathrow link round to Gatwick, so linking the two airports in 14 minutes and avoiding the need for a third runway at Heathrow. That idea was kiboshed by the aviation industry going over our heads straight to Cameron and Osborne – more unhelpful No 10 and No 11 interference.

So first the Heathrow link was dropped, then the link to HS1 after huge protests from Camden about the destruction this would cause. Justifiable protests actually, but there was just enough space for a tunnel to link the two, and actually also a creaky connection that could be made north of London to provide the link.

Then we lost Leeds, and now we have lost Manchester. All that is left is a bleeding stump that will go from Lichfield to Old Oak Common. The line that was supposed to level up the country will, if it does anything, simply reinforce the strength of the south. If building the line had started in the north, in Manchester and Leeds, and proceeded south, nobody would be arguing that it should be amputated before reaching London.

Transport for London told me last week that they estimate the journey time from Birmingham to central London via HS2 and a transfer at Old Oak Common will be one hour 20 minutes. The fastest train between Birmingham and London on the existing West Coast Main Line takes one hour and 19 minutes.

Britain is fast becoming an international joke and the HS2 decision will only reinforce that view. The country that gave the world the railway cannot even build a new line

Britain is fast becoming an international joke and the HS2 decision will only reinforce that view. The country that gave the world the railway cannot even build a new line. We currently have just 67 miles or 108km of high speed line. France has 3,000km, Germany 1,500km, Spain 4,000km, and China 40,000km.

Meanwhile, across Europe one new kilometre of track is costing £32m. In Britain, the cost of HS2 per kilometre is £200m. Constant changes to the specification, excessive use of expensive consultants, and bloated top level management have played their part. But so too did the fact that Tory voters living up to 25 miles from the line demanded it be put in cuttings or tunnels, and the then transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin unwisely conceding the point.

We saw similar baseless protestations about the impact of a new line when HS1 was being proposed. Those protests were rightly seen off and nobody now complains about HS1.
Of course the real value of high speed train travel comes over longer distances, so it is no surprise that the cost-benefit ratio for HS2 has dwindled as the line has got shorter, and is now down to just 1.2 to 1.

 

 
We were treated on the radio on Wednesday morning to the former transport secretary Grant Shapps trying to blame the cancellation of the Manchester leg on Covid, notwithstanding he was championing HS2 as essential after the pandemic had abated. Passenger numbers on the railway, particularly on long distances routes, have in fact recovered well. More to the point, numbers today are far in excess of those which were seen in 2012 when the business case for HS2 was agreed.

The case for HS2 was always built round capacity, not speed, so that problem will continue to exist on the already congested West Coast Main Line. Those who were looking forward to using the freed up line to put on extra local services or more freight trains will have to think again. Sorry, full up.

Still we can take heart apparently from the fact that HS2 trains will continue on existing tracks into Leeds and Manchester, so at least passengers there can savour the HS2 logo and paint on the sides of the trains. Half Speed 2.

We are promised instead a ragtag and bobtail selection of other bits and pieces to assuage the North. While some of these certainly have merit, they do not compensate for the hammer blow that has been delivered

We are promised instead a ragtag and bobtail selection of other bits and pieces to assuage the North. While some of these certainly have merit, they do not compensate for the hammer blow that has been delivered. Moreover, what confidence can anyone have that these will actually materialise, rather than being cancelled down the line as so much else has been?

Yet again the prime minster is proposing more roads, and this time out of the HS2 budget – a further shift away from public transport to road, making it even more difficult to meet our net zero targets. He is incorrect that we can either have HS2 or other public transport projects. He could raid the £24bn road building programme instead.

While it is likely that the government will pull the plug on the hybrid Bill currently before parliament looking at the Crewe to Manchester section, it is worth noting that parliamentary approval has been secured for Phase 2 from Birmingham to Crewe so there is nothing to stop an incoming government from proceeding with this section, which does in fact stretch a long way north from Birmingham. I urge the Labour and Lib Dem parties to say now that they will build that section at least.

 
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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