Paul Salveson says without investment in rail and bus services what’s the point of public ownership?
There’s a lot happening on the transport scene, good and bad, but first of all, hats off to transport secretary Louise Haigh for speaking her mind about the odious P & O shipping company, describing them as a “rogue operator”. Let’s hope that Starmer doesn’t sack her for her temerity to say what even some Tory politicians said about the company that sacked 800 of its staff with zero notice.
Press leaks about the Rachel Reeves budget suggest that the go-ahead will be given to the completion of HS2 into Euston. Less has been said about what happens further north, with current plans, if you can call them that, involving HS2 finishing in a field north of Birmingham with trains crammed on to already congested tracks heading north.
It’s essential that HS2 gets completed to Crewe, though not necessarily the over-specified scheme that was originally planned and contributed to some (not all) of the huge cost over-runs. The plans now being promoted by the Greater Manchester and West Midland mayors for a less expensive, but still fast, link from Manchester to Birmingham should also be given the green light.
Investment in infrastructure is key to economic growth and Reeves seems to get that. The North of England suffers from particularly poor east-west links and proposals for “Northern Powerhouse Rail” linking Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds also require unambiguous support backed up by cash.
Whilst the disputes with the rail unions have been settled (for now) there remains a huge number of cancellations particularly at weekends, due to lack of train crew. As argued in the last Chartist, getting Sunday to be part of the working week is long overdue. Travelling by train on (state-owned) Northern on a Sunday has become a perilous venture.
But it isn’t all about fast intercity connections. A lot of the animosity towards HS2 was fuelled by the appalling state of local train and bus services, particularly in the North. Much of the self-congratulation by Labour after its first 100 days was about structural changes they were introducing to nationalise the railway companies and to give local authorities powers to run, and own, the bus services. Which is fine as far as it goes. I’ve argued in this column over the years that public ownership in itself isn’t a magic wand that will make everything OK. As noted above, Northern is state-owned and has been for quite a while, but performance has got worse rather than better in recent months.
On the buses, Greater Manchester is an example of a successful publicly-controlled bus operation. Mayor Andy Burnham was a pioneer of route franchising (based on the long-established London model). The first areas to get franchising were Bolton and Wigan and the results have been good, though perhaps not spectacular. Passenger numbers, and revenue, have gone up. Whether that increase will cover the extra costs of the reorganisation isn’t clear. But a bigger issue for bus networks generally is whether local authorities will have the resources to actually run their own services, at least on the level of current provision but we really need improved services and frequencies. Otherwise, what’s the point? The long years of cuts to local government spending have had a dire impact and councils are talking about having to make further cuts in spending. It’s hard to imagine any council thinking it would be a good idea to spend shedloads of money on running their own bus services when they’re having to close community centres, libraries and other vital services.
Most worryingly, the last Government’s £2 fare cap appears to be under threat. What sort of message would that send out about Labour’s commitment to helping those least well-off, addressing climate change and reducing car dependence?
We keep being told about “difficult choices” having to be made (Winter Fuel Allowance, perhaps the £2 fares cap, etc.) when it might be a good idea to make some not-all-that-difficult decisions such as scrapping some major road schemes that are in the pipeline, and increasing fuel tax.
As things stand, I’m finding a huge amount of anger and disappointment out there towards Labour, amongst many people who voted for them in the expectation that things would get better and – amongst transport activists – that we’d start to see a different approach to transport policy and investment decisions. There are things that Labour could do quickly, such as reforming criteria for infrastructure investment so that social, economic and environmental factors (rather than journey time savings) score highly.
Euston may get its new station. But that’s in London, innit?