Transport Crucible

Congestion Charging aka Road Pricing was the golden key to solving UK transport problems until last week. It would cut traffic congestion and be a rich new source of funding for public transport and schemes to encourage cycling and walking. And, it was also an essential tool in a box of measures to save the planet. Well that was according to the theories that have been in political vogue since the 1990s. But in practice, the road pricing ‘solution’ had its final and most catastrophic crash into the barriers of public opinion in Manchester last Friday – and all meaningful hope for promoting it died. But why has this momentous ending slipped by with barely a mention in the mainstream media and a deafening silence from the pro-charging experts who have been loved by governments since the 1990s? The BBC thought the highlight of this end of a policy theory era was a ‘lack of drama’. Our vogue theorists and commentators could be staying schtum out of shock and respect over the end of their much espoused dream and plans to price people out of out of cars. But what is the true cause of the pervading silence? Could it be that speculative spats over the distant prospect of extra airport runways in London are already more important subjects for attention than a collapse of the core idea in UK transport strategy? This seems so for The Times front page and it’s eco-protest friend and transport correspondent Ben Webster. Yesterday, news of rows over expanding Gatwick, Stanstead and Heathrow airports was splashed across the first and second pages of the Thunderer – as it used to be known before its reporting of transport issues became a little more like an anti-motorised transport drone. But is the latest news about runways really more important than the end of the Congestion Charging road in Britain? No. In practice, animated opposition to airport expansion gets more coverage but is far less significant to the future of UK transport and government response to demand for progress. The real driver behind the silence at the end of the road pricing dream is a far more powerful force. In practice, those who are supposed to tell us and government how to solve UK transport problems are now stuck in a vacuum – and have no idea what needs to happen next. The primary emphasis of UK transport policy over the last two decades has been on constraining use of the modes that facilitate 85% of all passenger travel in Britain and 65% of all freight movements. And, among cash strapped politicians and vogue theorists, the most popular measures for imposing such constraint all involve increasingly sophisticated schemes to price people out of private vehicles on public roads – and create new revenue streams into government coffers. But we now all have bigger than ever problems as a result of reliance on this emphasis. First, Manchester proved once and for all that the great British public will not accept any transport plans that include Road Pricing. A huge majority has yet again said ‘No’ to government plans for them to pay more tax to use the roads they have already paid vastly more to have maintained and improved than actually gets spent on doing so. The only route for politician’s to go forward with road pricing now, in Britain and probably everywhere else, is to take a leaf out of Livingstone’s book on democracy and simply ignore the views of the majority as he did to go-ahead with the Western extension of London’s Congestion Charging zone. But even the weakest visioned politician can see what happened to him and his extension in the end. The biggest problem however is that we in Britain are facing future development of transport policy being led by a generation of politicians, vogue theorists and policy professionals who are inculcated with a belief that constraining car use is the only way to improve transport for all – but they are now facing the stark reality that their key mechanism for tying to achieve that goal has irrevocably broken down. Fortunately there is hope for the majority of us because constraining travel by motorised modes is not the only way forward. Cutting congestion problems by improving traffic flow is eminently achievable, does not require mass road building programs and is relatively cheap. But doing so will involve fresh thinking and taking new directions for future plans and schemes…