Labour's transport policy focuses on public transport, primarily rail and buses. If this were a programme for the 20th century, even the late 20th century into the 1990's, this would be a rational, forward looking agenda. Unfortunately, this is supposed to be a programme for the 21st century, and, as such, it is timid, backward looking and fails to deal with the real issues.
There is a reason that railways declined in the 20th century. It is that railways are great in shifting large and heavy volumes, both of freight and passengers, over long distances from A to B. They are inflexible and costly ways of moving things over short distances, or to destinations not on a rail line. Across Britain, in the 19th century, local rail lines were able to be effective in moving large amounts of heavy freight and bulk material. For example, local lines transported coal from collieries to ports, power stations, steel plants, and coal merchants. They similarly moved iron ore to steel plants, as well as moving finished steel in the other direction. They moved clay to potteries and brick manufacturers, and so on.
But, even where these heavy finished products were transported by train, their final journey to markets usually had to be made by road. Coal merchants delivered coal to houses by road. When I was a kid, our local merchant still delivered via a horse and cart, but by the 1960's, coal was being delivered by lorry. And, as manufacturing industry expanded into a range of new products, these end products, even if they were transported over long distances by train, still had to make the final bit of the journey into shops by road. By the 1960's, local rail lines were no longer profitable, and were phased out under Beeching.
The same is true with buses. In a place like North Staffordshire, which is a long thin conurbation, strung out along the A50, it was conducive to travel by bus. If you lived in one of the villages or hamlets that straddle the A50, it was always possible, with varying degrees of difficulty, to catch a bus to somewhere on the main line route, and to continue your journey from there. But, again, by the 1960's, the death knell of the bus was already ringing. When large numbers of workers all worked at one large workplace, like a colliery, steel mill, hospital, or potbank it was possible to run works buses. But, in the 1960's, there was a large increase in the number of women workers. Many went to work in shops and offices in town centres.
At the same time, schools were being merged, as were hospitals, obtaining economies of scale. A family with two kids going to two different schools, could not simply catch a bus, dropping off one child at A, the next at B, before continuing to workplace C, because often A, B and C were not on the same bus route. I remember as a child suffering with pneumonia, and having to go to the local hospital for X-Rays, which involved a half hour bus journey for the first stage, followed by a half hour wait for a connecting bus, for another twenty minute bus journey to the hospital, and the same in reverse. That was for what was a ten minute journey, going direct by car.
In addition, in the 1960's, people began to have money to spend on leisure activities, and that was particularly notable for young people. Transport up to this point was driven almost exclusively by the needs of capital. It was about moving bulk products across the country, and moving large numbers of workers from their dormitories to the workplace. It was totally unsuited to the new freedoms that developed in the 1960's. It wasn't just TV that closed down by midnight, as bosses were anxious that workers did not stay up too late for fear of affecting their performance at work the next day. Bus services also closed down. So, even in the early 1970's, I would go dancing for five or six hours, and then have to run the five miles home, because there were no buses. Its no wonder that so many young people, in particular, were keen to get their own private transport, because it meant a freedom of movement that was a necessary corollary of the wider freedoms they now enjoyed.
And, this then created a dynamic that meant that private transport was bound to expand at the expense of public transport. Trains will continue to have a function where it comes to transporting large numbers of passengers, or large quantities of freight over long distances, where it is a matter of moving from A to B, but they do not meet the requirements of a modern networked society, where the majority of movement does not fit into this rigid pattern. The same is true of buses. The number of buses on the road today is a fraction of what it was in the 1960's and 70's, yet, even back then buses were not capable of dealing with these more complex journeys. Trying to put a sufficient number of buses on the roads, to cover even 90% of actual journeys, would be prohibitively expensive. Indeed, this is one reason that Uber has taken off along with other ride sharing systems.
If Labour wanted to have a truly forward looking agenda, it would forget about building an integrated transport system around trains and buses, and begin to develop a 21st century, flexible transport system around the development of autonomous self-driving vehicles. As a start, it should facilitate Uber drivers, and others to create their own worker owned cooperative, providing a cheap, safe and reliable ride sharing system. It should provide incentives for the use by the cooperative of electric vehicles. The world is becoming a services economy, rather than an ownership economy. People no longer buy videos or DVD's, but stream them from Netflix or Amazon. Software like Microsoft Office is no longer bought to own, but is leased and so on. Many people in larger cities have got rid of their cars, but, still unable to rely on public transport, use Uber, or else one of the schemes where they can pick up someone else's car to use. In the next couple of years, autonomous, driverless vehicles will begin to be rolled out, indeed, as I noted some time ago, an autonomous, electric flying taxi service has been established in New Zealand. A number of firms are introducing flying cars in Britain.
I'm not suggesting that Labour should promote flying taxis, though its worth looking at for the next Manifesto, but I am suggesting that, Labour's focus should now be on promoting the idea of a service based transport system that meets the needs of the 21st Century, rather than simply trying to prop up the kinds of transport systems that were relevant for the 19th and first half of the twentieth century. Autonomous, electric vehicles that can be summoned by smart phone in the same way that an Uber can be hailed, enable existing road networks to be utilised efficiently without any additional costs, and they enable the same kind of flexibility in travel that exists with privately owned vehicles, but without that private ownership. If the proper safeguards are built into these vehicles, it could also dramatically reduce the number of accidents occurring on roads.
The plans for introducing additional cycle paths and so on are all well and good, but as someone who used to cycle 7 miles to work, and 7 miles back every day, at a time when I was at peak fitness having just obtained my black sash in Lau Gar Kung Fu, I can guarantee that for many people, it would be a route to a certain heart attack, if they managed to even complete the first such journey. That is before all of the risks of death due to the state of the roads, being cut up by drivers and so on. Building physically separated cycle lanes might be one solution to the latter, but its unlikely to be done given the cost of doing it to fit into existing infrastructure.
Labour says that it will invest in Crossrail for the North. Good, but on its own woefully inadequate. Britain's, transport infrastructure is geared almost exclusively on a North-South axis. That is no accident. As with HS2, the whole purpose is to funnel people and resources into London. London is like a huge black hole that sucks life from the rest of the country. The nonsense is being promoted in relation to HS2 that it will bring economic prosperity to the North. Total nonsense. The whole history of such projects is that they enable the larger centre to be able to draw in labour supplies from further afield, thereby both obtaining cheaper labour, whilst denuding those outer areas of the labour they require. The flow is not going to be from London to Birmingham or Manchester, other than of workers who spend the day in London, and return home at night, but almost entirely in the opposite direction.
If Labour wants to promote the economy in the North, it should scrap HS2, and use those resources elsewhere. We need a whole series of East-West, rail and road links so that each region can develop the economy around regional hubs. HS2 does nothing to speed up rail freight, which illustrates its real purpose of simply providing London with additional cheap labour from the provinces. Moreover, rather than promoting additional business travel, Labour should be promoting 21st century alternatives to it, such as providing a 21st century broadband network with 2 Gb speeds like that being introduced in Singapore. As I wrote recently, Labour's broadband proposal is a step forward but way too timid. By 2030, it will be way out of date, and indeed most internet activity by that time is likely to be conducted via 5G, or even by then 6G, wireless networks. Labour's broadband proposal only makes sense if it is to be rolled out in the next 2-3 years.
Labour says,
“We will bring together transport and land-use planning to create towns and cities in which walking and cycling are the best choice: safe, accessible, healthy, efficient, economical and pollution-free. We will help children’s health and well-being by ensuring street designs provide freedom for physically active outdoor play and by introducing measures to ensure the zones around our schools are safer, with cleaner air.”
This is good, and Labour can make a start on it, by building this into its programmes for new Council House building. Residential property accounts for only 1% of land use in Britain. Golf courses account for 2%, by comparison. The Green Belt is an absurdity. It is crying out for some rational planning for developing new residential developments. More than a decade ago, as a County Councillor, I drew up some suggestions for development in my local area that suggested developing new villages, based upon a maximum development size of 250 houses, built up to modern standards of efficiency, and space. Britain has the smallest houses, by far, of anywhere in Europe. Housing developments lack adequate gardens, adequate parking space, adequate width of roads, and adequate amenities. Instead of the large amounts of wasted, sterilised land tied up in the Green Belt, we should instead build in mini-Green Belts around each of these small scale developments, with a minimum of a quarter to a half a mile of Green Space around each development. We should also begin, greening the major towns and cities, so that instead of the current policy of developing every square inch of brownfield sites, they instead be turned into green open space.
A 21st century broadband network will mean that children can grow up in these greener more pleasant environments, whilst having access to everything that would be associated with a city, at their fingertips. Labour should ensure that all libraries be available on line, so that every child or adult can obtain any book, free online, and the same with other public archives. Ultrafast broadband is already used in Singapore to provide high quality education to children in their homes. We have also had the development Mass Online Courses. New technology is making all of these services from education, to entertainment, to healthcare available online, to everyone wherever they live. Labour should champion and facilitate that development.
This ability to live locally, but connect globally would also thereby contribute hugely to Labour's plans to reduce environmental damage, and pollution.
Labour has failed to be radical enough, and forward thinking enough in these proposals.
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