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When Will They Ever Learn? (2)

Lillian Burns, July 2009

The 'they' of the title are the movers and shakers at local, regional and national government levels whose decisions affect ordinary citizens' lives.

'They' often get it wrong.

Transport policy seems particularly prone to illogical and contradictory thinking and decision-making and nearly every step in the direction of sustainable travel seems to have the ground pulled from under it.

On the one hand, the message really does appear to have finally penetrated to most thinking people that we are living 'beyond our means' (in environmental terms), whether or not they believe in climate change. If asked, most would agree that something needs to be done about the situation. But, on the other hand, there seems to be a determination to fly in the face of accepted wisdom, keep pushing the boundaries of what is within environmental limits that bit further, repeat the mistakes of the past and support unsustainable propositions which, on the face of them, may have some populist element and superficial short-term benefit but which are not long term solutions.

The Department for Transport (DfT) have accepted in recent years that a series of 'soft measures' or 'smart choices' - each individually often modest in scale - can, cumulatively, have a significant effect. Smart choices can incorporate things such as flexible working, providing safe routes to school to encourage cycling and walking and individual travel plan initiatives.

Recently, the DfT has reduced its expectations of quite how much effect smart choices could have on longer journeys and on reducing carbon emissions - even if intensively applied - but it recognises that the majority of trips are short ones and stands by its support of smart choices, especially in urban areas, and wants to see local authorities doing much more in this regard. (That said, judging by the latest Local Transport Plan Guidance, it does not want the job of monitoring progress though).

However, politicians have a 'thing' about wanting to be associated with 'big' projects. Big projects come with big dollops of kudos and offer the opportunity to make sweeping statements about economic and other benefits and to be seen to be doing something significant. But many of these hugely over-egged statements made at the promotional stage of major infrastructure projects prove to be founded on shifting and entirely aspirational sand.

Claims were made that the M6 to Heysham Link Road around the north of Lancaster would deliver thousands of jobs. When it came to public inquiry in 2007, the economic witness for the promoters (Lancashire County Council) had to admit that he could not find the evidence for even one thousand. Similarly, with the Mersey Gateway public inquiry that took place this year, the many thousands of local jobs originally promised translated into 1,200 - for a scheme which the promoters (Halton Borough Council) estimate will cost £604m. That's half a million pound investment per local job. Not to mention that - as the North West Transport Roundtable's expert witnesses proved - the economics of building the bridge and getting the money back via tolls just do not stack up.

Apparently, however, the shaky economic case, the impacts on deprived communities of having to pay to cross the river and the perpetually increasing through-traffic is of no moment as Widnes and Runcorn would have an 'iconic' bridge they could point to.

Meanwhile Greater Manchester's local authorities, having failed to convince their residents to support their Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) Bid, which comprised many sustainable transport schemes, promptly decided to drop some of them (including the purchase of a fleet of yellow school buses) and take funding from promised cycling and walking projects to promote and help pay for more road-building. Yet, at the same time as taking this action, Greater Manchester has been pitching a Sustainable Travel City bid! This is not considered in any way anomalous by the proponents.

As an aside, Merseyside's transport authorities are also bidding for part of the same £29m. funding pot. (NB. The last time the North West Transport Roundtable carried out an analysis of the North West region's Local Transport Plans, it came to the conclusion that Merseyside's was best, primarily because all but one of its major scheme bids were rail projects).

At the time this article was written, the government were imminently expected to announce whether or not they were accepting the Regional Funding Advice (RFA) recommendations which included several road-building projects that will do nothing for carbon emissions or sustainable lifestyles.

The 'major scheme bids' (schemes over £5m.) by local authorities that are now dealt with through the RFA process, along with the Highways Agency's regional road-building plans, are invariably big infrastructure proposals. They occasionally include a mammoth maintenance project but most commonly they comprise either the preparatory work for a major scheme (usually a new or extended road or bypass) or the delivery on the ground of major infrastructure schemes. Yet, in theory, 'major scheme projects' do not have to be 'big bang' type transport interventions.

A 'major scheme' can be the rolling together of lots of small projects such as the delivery of a raft of 20 mph town and village centre safety initiatives or a railway stations access programme or a network of quiet lanes and greenways between and through communities. When the North West Regional Assembly (the predecessor to the 4NW Leaders Forum) sponsored work on a methodology for prioritising major schemes and judging them against various criteria, the concept of a network of quiet lanes and greenways (put forward by NW TAR) scored very highly. But, needless to say, no regional agency nor any local authority has picked that concept up and run with it. A very few, very small 'Quiet Lanes' schemes have been delivered through token pilot projects and a couple of local authorities have adopted greenways strategies, but delivery is piecemeal and slow due to the low priority afforded to them.

The disaggregation of the rail industry and the cost of rail projects are both a major disincentive to regional agencies and local authorities, the majority of whom do little more than occasionally dabble with rail projects. And it is not helpful, when rail initiatives are being progressed by other parties, if Network Rail steps in and kicks them into touch before studies are even completed and reported on - as in the case of the Halton Curve and the Middlewich branch line and station recently.

Meantime, public transport fares keep going up, there are still far too few flexible, demand-responsive and high quality bus services in operation and cycleways, if delivered at all, are often too narrow and/or not maintained adequately and there are insufficient cycle storage facilities at transport hubs and public buildings. Traffic calming schemes often forget to take cyclists' needs and safety into account and sometimes simple public realm improvements which would aid pedestrians are not carried out.

The government's latest command document, 'Delivering a Sustainable Transport System' (DaSTS), holds out some hopes, particularly its requirements for sound evidence and a reduction in carbon emissions, but it could be drawn 'off-track' by the stipulation that it fits with the Regional Strategies if those documents lose their economic/ social/ environmental balance and become - in all but name - Regional Economic Strategies.

The existing North West Regional Spatial Strategy is, in the main, a well-balanced document (discounting the fact that the planning inspectors' recommendations on housing were ignored and no limits were set on housing figures). However, the North West is romping ahead of the rest of the UK with preparations for the first single integrated regional strategy and the process is being totally dominated by the Development Agency. All the early evidence papers are economically-dominated and economically biased and it is not helpful (from an environmental standpoint) that the DfT's carbon reduction strategy published this month relies so much on technological improvements and makes no new commitment on travel behaviour. (A promise of £5 m. for cycle parks at railway stations across the entire country is welcome but it is a token initiative).

The North West, along with all the other English Regions, has put forward to the DfT its recommended list of studies which it believes will help to deliver the DaSTS agenda. These include proposed studies on behavioural change, City Region connectivity, access to the energy coast and accessibility and regeneration. It remains to be seen which studies will get the go-ahead, how much - if any - representation on them there will be from the environmental and the voluntary sectors (and how much notice will be taken of environmental/Third Sector representatives if they are there) and whether the outcomes will be similar to the multi-modal studies or not, ie. recommendations for packages of proposed measures which include a variety of multi-modal approaches but subsequently, with few exceptions, only the new and expanded road schemes are taken forward.

Will we ever break the unsustainable cycle we have got ourselves into? An (understandably) unnamed consultant is quoted in the latest edition of 'Local Transport Today' (LTT 524, July 17-30) as saying: You have these small groups of people working out there on DaSTS and that's all well and good .... But just think what would happen if a major employer turned up at a city council in the current economic climate and said 'I want to build a big factory with a large car park right on the ring road'. The Council would say 'Come right on in' and all the DaSTS work would go out of the window".

Now, combine that, painfully accurate scenario with the announcement in the just-issued guidance for the third Local Transport Plans that the LTPs will be cut free of the DfT. [It says, in para. 38: "DfT will no longer normally assess Local Transport Plans, impose mandatory targets or require submission of formal monitoring reports separate from the LAA [Local Area Agreement] Framework. This places responsibility firmly on individual authorities to consider how to use the Local Transport Planning framework in the way that works for them"].

Also put into the mix the get-out on climate change being handed to local authorities in as far as transport is concerned (ie. the promise that technological improvements will, in the main, save the day). And finally, just for good measure, keep in mind the fact that there are a depressingly large number of elected dinosaurs who believe that building new roads automatically brings economic benefits.

Do those of us who lobby for sustainable transport solutions yet have cause to feel upbeat and look forward to a more stable future where the threat of climate change is diminishing? It still feels as though there is a very long way to go.