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Motorbikes in London bus lanes sparks predictable reactions, but why is the full report on the previous TfL trial still missing?

Riders of scooters and motorcycles will be allowed to use most Red Route bus Lanes in London from now onwards in an 18 month trial of the measure. This move by TfL Chair and London Mayor Boris Johnson follows years of rows over the merits and pitfalls of a safety measure that has been successfully deployed in 17 UK cities – and in various other nations throughout the world including ultra safety conscious Sweden. The move is welcomed by motorcycling groups and attracts varying degrees of hostility from cycling lobbyists , while the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) reports a couple safety benefit facts first and the feelings of opponents second. TC notes that this latest new trial scheme follows another three year TfL trial which formally ended in 2006. It is also worth noting that this measure has been introduced on a trial basis in many locations throughout the world but that not one of them has ever been withdrawn. This fact offers a clear indication that the net results of this measure on safety are positive – and for all vulnerable road users. It is, after all, difficult to believe that such a measure would be maintained anywhere if there was hard evidence that it increased casualties among pedestrians and cyclists. Unfortunately for all concerned the full results from the preceding three year TfL trial have never been formally published by TfL or the Mayor. The report on that study was subjected to a two year period of internal wrangling at TFL. A final version of the report was signed off by TFL in September 2008, and submitted to the previous Mayor. But Mayor Livingstone’s key adviser, named Kevin Austin by the Evening Standard, sent the report back to TFL with orders to remove two thirds of the document that mostly contained evidence indicating safety benefits for all vulnerable road users. This action behind the scenes also coincided with a public decision by former Mayor Ken Livingstone (prior to losing his job in May) that he would not allow motorbike access to bus lanes. TC can confirm that the full TfL report was seen by Boris’s advisors prior to his election and that it informed his decision to go-ahead with this latest trial. Strangely, the full report is still unpublished – which begs a fulsome question raised in the Telegraph a year ago – and TC wonders if this has anything to do with the another strange fact. The former Red Ken advisor who insisted that only a cut version of the report could be published is still in City Hall and guiding his new Blue boss and his new boss’s new advisors…

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5th January 2009 by leonmannings

Eerie silence as Road Pricing Golden key is laid to RIP and UK ‘experts’ see charge plan crash and face need for new way to go

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…

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19th December 2008 by leonmannings

Road Pricing plan for UK in shreds as 79% reject Manchester TIF scheme and signal need for truly acceptable new solutions

UK Government backed plans for the biggest Congestion Charging scheme in the world were rejected by the biggest percentage of ‘No’ votes ever registered against a Road Pricing proposal in Britain. Leon Mannings of TC.com suggests though that the results reveal two critical issues that require urgent and sharply focused consideration. The political impact of this ‘local’ decision on a specific scheme will, however, be nationwide and clearly establishes the extent of public ‘acceptability’ of tackling traffic congestion with extra road user charges on top of existing motoring taxes, that currently include; VAT, Vehicle Excise Duty and Fuel Duty. – Not to mention the tax already paid on the money used to pay road use related excise and duty. In effect and as predicted by TC.com, plans to spread Road Pricing schemes in Britain were crushingly rejected by the public of Greater Manchester – although the scale of defeat for the central government backed grand plan is beyond all expectations including here. This clearly brings progress of UK Road Pricing plans crashing to a grinding halt – but the results of voting also reveal an equally critical issue by recording the huge size of gaps between widespread political support for such measures and public opinion of them. The total of 79% ‘No’ voters shows the scale of public rejection to the whole concept road pricing. But the results also showed that over 70% of voters in every Greater Manchester borough did not want Congestion Charges, aka Road Pricing, even though seven out of ten Manchester borough council leaders had pledged their authority’s support for the proposals. And lest we forget, several key supporters of the Manchester TIF plan vigorously rejected calls for a referendum as in their view it was not necessary… Now though, the referendum results show that seven out of ten elected leaders were either pledging their authority’s support for a road pricing scheme – despite knowing that the vast majority of their constituents were not in favour – or were completely out of touch with public opinion and wrong about the real views of the people they are supposed to represent.

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12th December 2008 by leonmannings

Manchester can lead the C-Charge way but does falling traffic make it right to be cynical about Road Pricing scheme value?

Conflict escalates between key advocates and opponents of Manchester’s C-Charge as D-Day looms for the plan and the last salvos fly from heavyweight letter writing brigades. The pro corner are espousing a ‘yes’ vote to the TIF proposals in the Guardian. They say this will deliver a “state-of-the-art transport system, help to tackle congestion, climate change and air pollution, and make Greater Manchester a better place to live, work and do business”. ‘They’ are; Tony Bosworth, Friends of the Earth, Anita Goldsmith, Greenpeace, Stephen Joseph, Campaign for Better Transport and Mikis Euripides, Asthma UK. TC notes that what they say sounds lovely at least in theory, but that there is another way of looking at this situation in practice… The opposing corner say the package is “not worthy of Britain’s second city”. They say that editorial comments in the Financial Times about the principle of road pricing have merit “but only a limited relevance in Manchester where volumes of traffic on arterial roads, far from being chronic, are actually falling” and that 20 % of 460,000 people, on average net pay of £15,000 a year, would “incur a daily charge of £6”. And, “every taxpayer will also be expected to take on a share of a £1.2bn, 30-year debt without any guarantees that congestion-charging revenues will pay this back” – and for benefits that would be “so thinly spread as to be worthless”. The ‘they’ in this corner are a cross party group of local MPs; Graham Stringer, Labour, Manchester Blackley, Graham Brady, Conservative, Altrincham and Sale, Andrew Gwynne, Labour, Denton and Reddish Andrew Stunell, Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove. TC notes the value in claimed benefits according to vogue Road Pricing scheme theory – but still believes that the majority of Mancunians will feel right to be cynical and vote accordingly this Friday.

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8th December 2008 by leonmannings

War of words over UK Road Pricing escalates as London C-Charge zone is halved – and £230,000 DfT funded TV ad about Manchester scheme is banned for bias to ‘yes’ campaign

The Western half of London’s Congestion Charge Zone will be scrapped – barely a year after former Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone doubled the zone in 2007, despite 70% of Londoners and 80% of businesses saying ‘no’ at the time as Ben Webster of The Times reported. Go here to see how lovely it all was after that – well in theory at least. Go here to see why most Londoners did not want it in the first place and maybe why they want it scrapped asap. Now, Conservative Mayor Boris Boris Johnson will remove the extension after the latest consultation shows that 67% of Londoners and 86% of businesses want it scrapped. Meanwhile, a £230,000 TV ad, funded by Manchester local government and the DfT has been banned by Ofcom for being “directed towards a political end” – which in this case was ‘encouraging’ a yes vote for a government backed TIF transport scheme for public transport and a congestion charge. However, politicians in London remain deeply divided over the latest news on halving the Congestion Charge zone in the capital. Labour GLA member Val Shawcross says it is “foolish and backward” while Green GLA member Jenny Jones says the new mayor’s decision to head the majority view is “bad news for pedestrians and cyclists, and everyone who breathes London’s air.” Conservative Cllr and blogger Phil Taylor says they are wrong to have a “nannying disdain of the democratic process”, and GLA Lib Dem, Caroline Pidgeon says it is “good that that this ill-conceived idea will be abandoned”. The decision to abide by majority views in London is “a triumph of democracy over authoritarianism” says Peter Roberts (pictured) of the Drivers Alliance (DA). The TaxPayers Alliance have just blogged about their ‘active’ support for Roberts here .The DA had also raised concerns that central government and local authorities in Manchester had “squandered” taxpayers money on a biased ‘information’ campaign to promote a package of TIF funded public transport improvements in exchange for the spread of road pricing across the region. But Roberts suspects that the ‘yes’ campaign was hit by a “knock-out blow” this week, when Ofcom upheld complaints about bias in a TV ‘information film’ costing £230,000 to make and broadcast, according to the BBC – and ITV promptly banned it. TC notes however that despite the chasm-like gaps between opinions on about the merits of Congestion Charging or Road Pricing schemes, one thing above all is clear. When a public vote is taken on such schemes around three quarters of respondents say no in consultations. This was certainly the case in the last three consultations over major proposals. These were in Edinburgh and twice for the Western extension in London, – once before it was introduced and now after a year of running. That seems show that ‘no’ has three wins to nil for ‘yes’. All experts in the field say that the result in Manchester and thereby the future of UK road pricing expansion for now hangs in the balance, but TC thinks that ‘no’ will win again – with around 65% opposing the scheme. But of course we will all just have to wait and see…

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29th November 2008 by leonmannings
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