Whitehall Watch

As London’s mayoral elections turn up the heat on transport policy, our national politicians need to look and learn, says Peter Madden.

Environmental issues loom larger in London’s mayoral elections than they do on the national stage. That’s partly because these are the issues where the mayor has powers, partly because this election is about a specific place, and partly because the use of proportional representation gives the Green Party greater influence than in national politics.

As London’s May 1 polling day approaches, it seems likely that the defining issue of the campaign will be transport. Incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone banked a lot of credit among environmentalists for his political bravery in implementing the congestion charge. Now he is getting a particularly rough ride from sections of the media over his plan to raise the charge for big cars to a punitive £25 a day. But the media is not without its vested interests here. Guess which industry is the largest advertiser in the world? The car industry. In the UK alone, car manufacturers and dealers spent £649 million on advertising last year.

The intense political battles in the capital on the transport front offer a taste of how tough politicians are going to find it to tackle transport issues nationally.

The UK needs to invest heavily in infrastructure to keep the country moving – a fact flagged up by the Eddington Transport Study into the interrelationship between transport and economic productivity. Paradoxically, more efficient transport doesn’t actually seem to cut the time we spend travelling – we just travel further, moving around more each year as we become an ever more mobile society. At the same time, the UK needs to deal with its climate change impacts – as flagged up by Nicholas Stern in his report on the economics of climate change – and transport accounts for around a quarter (and growing) of UK carbon emissions, even excluding international aviation and shipping.

Ruth Kelly has so far failed to reconcile these two competing agendas as secretary of state for transport. She has launched some very valuable low-carbon initiatives – more money for cycling, and a big scaling up of travel advice. But the plan she came out with late last year for the UK’s transport system fails to convince on environmental grounds.

In Towards a Sustainable Transport System, published partly in response to Eddington and Stern, Kelly suggests that we can somehow combine wider motorways, busier airports and more ports with cuts in CO2 emissions. It seems to imply that the best way to get people out of their cars is to make rail travel more expensive and to build roads. So £1.3 billion a year is being spent on some 25 motorway widening schemes, even though studies show clearly that increasing capacity does not ultimately reduce congestion – it just stimulates further demand.

I am a firm believer in technological solutions to climate change, but even I find it over-optimistic to suggest (as Kelly’s plan does) that “almost complete decarbonisation of road transport is a possibility… That would mean around a 90% reduction in per kilometre emissions would be achievable across the fleet.”

The Department for Transport seems unwilling to tackle demand management. Kelly’s predecessor, Douglas Alexander, had hoped to lay the groundwork for road pricing, but Kelly has now admitted that this policy has hit a brick wall thanks to a big online petition and a failure to face down vested interests. Despite the popular support for action on climate change, the government remains scared of the powerful motoring lobby, and its cheerleaders in the media.

In London, on the other hand, more active steps are being taken to manage transport demand. Transport for London – faced with an expanding economy and population, and the need to cut carbon emissions – has realised that it cannot keep adding capacity for ever. It is now devoting more resources to persuading people to travel differently and to travel less. It seems to have realised that it could be cheaper to promote walking, cycling and flexible working, than to build ever more infrastructure. If this approach works for London – under whoever turns out to be the next mayor – let’s hope the lessons are picked up nationally.

Peter Madden is chief executive of Forum for the Future.

24 March 2008

Peter Madden