I am a member of the Labour party. Indeed, I was a parliamentary candidate in a by election in 2016 and tried to become an MP until recently. However, after Rachel Reeves’ exposition of Labour plans in her recent speech, the chances of me remaining a paid up member hang by a cotton thread. I do not mention this lightly. I have been a party member through thick and thin for decades, though I did – rightly as history shows – depart over the Iraq war and later rejoin. But Reeves’ speech showed a depth of ignorance and lack of attention to transport – and indeed other policies – which made me consider joining the Greens or the Libdems or choosing political agnosticism.
Reeves did not say much about transport except to focus specifically on three major schemes across the various modes as well as referring to a few minor ones. That in itself is a depressing lacuna. Transport, as all readers of Rail know, is a policy area that has been much neglected over the years despite its fundamental importance to the health of the economy. Transport, as I say in many of my talks, is not about transport, but about the environment, the economy, social cohesion and much more. It is the glue that binds us together.
Our chancellor, however, in her obsession with growth wants to do what many of her predecessors have attempted, which is to have more of every form of transport. This is, of course, not only delusional as we know after more than a century of focus on the motor car that building more roads simply attracts more traffic, and fails to resolve congestion. When I first started writing about transport in the 1990s, a report called SACTRA had just been issued, showing that adding roads or lanes to existing ones was counterproductive because of the extra induced demand. That is so clear in many American cities where eight, ten or even twelve lane highways have been built in stages over time and yet congestion soon returns like the little beasties in a game of Whackamole.
Yet, first up of Reeves’ big new schemes was the Lower Thames Crossing, a (at least) £9bn scheme to, apparently, relieve congestion on the Dartford crossing. This seems to run counter to Labour’s initial policy towards road schemes as soon after the election it scrapped a group of very expensive projects, notably the controversial tunnel on the A 303 next to Stonehenge.
At the time, the Lower Thames Crossing decision was delayed till March, but the feeling among transport planners was that it was next for the chop. Certainly, the arguments against it are strong
Reeves did not definitively endorse the scheme but she clearly indicated support for it. Yet, not only is this an enormous project whose cost will undoubtedly continue to rise, it runs completely counter to the idea that transport must be more sustainable. The idea that this can be funded by the private sector through some sort of private finance initiative seems to suggest she wants to return to the bad old days of the previous Labour government where numerous such schemes have ended up placing a permanent burden on public sector finances. There is no magic money tree for such schemes. Already, London is about to discover this with the opening in April of the £2.2bn Silvertown Tunnel which will charge tolls but any shortfall will have to be made up by Transport for London.
Note, too, that the bulk of the traffic on the Dartford Tunnel is local, with shoppers popping across the Thames to Bluewater or Lakeside whereas the new crossing is being sold on the notion that it is mainly for trucks going to and coming from the Continent. In fact, according to Transport Action Network, the crossing, when open, will merely provide about five years relief of the Dartford Crossing precisely because it will induce more people onto the roads.
Most important, the Lower Thames Crossing will have a negative impact on the potential for transferring freight to rail as it will effectively undermine its economic case. The Transport Action Network, which ran a fringe meeting at the recent Labour East annual conference in Southend, is working on producing a series of rail alternatives to the road, both for freight and passengers
On aviation, the Chancellor seemed to suggest it was open season to expand airports across the UK, irrespective of the fact that flying is a major source of CO2 in the atmosphere. Specifically, and unforgivably, she restarted the Heathrow Third Runway bandwagon which had been stalled for more than a decade and even declared dead by most commentators. But now, Rachel ‘Growth’ Reeves wants it built because it will be a great boost to the company. Bugger the environment, the fact that the North Pole was 20C above the norm a couple of days after her announcement and we are supposed to be aiming for Net Zero. And ignore the newts and the bats, let alone the people in the way. Well turn off your heating everyone so that we can get more flights to China. Except, the number one user of the runway was, in its previous incarnation, expected to be Easyjet and there is no reason to think that it will be any different in 2040 or whenever it might conceivably be finished.
But rest easy it doesn’t take Mystic Wolmar to say it won’t be built. It was noticeable that even the Greens could hardly get exercised about the plan because they know full well that the third runway will never stand up to detailed scrutiny. Moreover, she got a big detail wrong, suggesting it would be the first full length runway to be built in the UK since the forties when, in fact, Manchester’s second one was completed in 2001. And she implied the plan was environmentally acceptable thanks to the use of sustainable aviation fuel, but she must know that this is nonsense. The fuel is not only in very limited supply as it mainly comes from used cooking oil and there are simply not enough fish and chip shops to provide for the world’s aviation needs, but it is also far more expensive than conventional kerosene. Sustainable aviation is an oxy-moron which only fools morons (listen to episode 2/9 of my podcast Calling All Stations for a debunking of the concept).
And then, almost as an afterthought she mentioned railways. Nothing new for us there, though. Did you know that Wigan Bolton is being electrified? Well that was first announced by Andrew Adonis a decade and a half ago. And the line between Oxford and Cambridge is being revived? Well since that is half under construction and has long been given the go ahead, that is not exactly news either. OK work on the station on the East Coast Main Line will be speeded up, but that was of little cheer.
It was, as ever, one of those speeches by politicians which says we want a bit of everything will sort itself out. There was no insight, no strategy, just a bunch of ideas which she thinks will be best for ‘growth’ with little consideration of the need to choose between modes to ensure the best environmental outcomes. Now where’s my Labour membership card so I can consider whether to tear it up? Blast, it’s plastic….
Language please
Oh dear Network Rail has fallen foul of the anti woke police. The company has produced a booklet, oddly entitled ‘Speak Passenger’ about the language and tone staff should use when talking to euh, passengers. But NR advocates not using the word passenger wherever possible and in fact suggests using ‘you’ instead – presumably not as in ‘you there, what the hell are you up to?’
This issue has only recently been covered in the media following a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Telegraph but the booklet was issued in 2020 and there is actually a 60 minute video to go with it. As someone who has numerous woke – it means awake to various prejudicial views, and used to be called PC, politically correct – opinions, I would instinctively want to side with Network Rail over this attack.
However, the authors of the booklet have fallen into all the traps that anger people who think that supposedly liberal values have gone too far. And I must say, there is a lot of nonsense in it. It suggests that pregnant women should be called pregnant people presumably on the basis that just perhaps there may be a pregnant man somewhere. It counsels against using mother and father, and suggest parent, and says partner should be used instead of husband and wife.
This is all nonsense, and predicated on the notion that ordinary people might get upset if the wrong term is used or that they may be of a different gender than the railway person talking to them has assumed. Much of this supposed oversensitivity is the result of a very aggressive campaign by a few – a very few – transgender activists to push for ‘trans rights’, a nebulous concept that seems to want men to call themselves women and thereby frequent female only places. This swept through many organisations in the past few years, but there has now, thankfully, been a lot of pushback and the requirement, for example, to cite how one want to be address (e.g. he/him) is now thankfully being ignored even among left and liberal circles.
Network Rail should therefore scrap this ridiculous document, simplify it – why is it 124 pages long? – and move away from woke excesses to rational thinking –liberal values and common sense are not incompatible. And cut out all this stuff about offending people. Most people are tolerant and thick skinned.