Spare us the baskets...
May 1st 2010 How will the differing views of the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems be moulded into practical policies for transport? Will we win or lose? Geoff Dossetter explores
So, what’s the new coalition Government and its Tory Secretary of State Philip Hammond going to do about transport? Nobody knows yet. But the signs are not good. The pre-Election manifestos gave us a depressing clue. Transport did not receive high priority in any of the major party agendas, which were, however, more or less in agreement. They said no, or at best, very limited, road building. There was no enthusiasm or immediate plans for road pricing. No suggestions for any alternative means of raising dedicated funds for infrastructure investment. Disagreement about runway capacity.Warm noises about the environmental benefits of rail. Between them they amounted to a recipe for little or no positive action. As usual transport would have to take care of itself.
The Labour Party had made it unpleasantly clear that it regarded all road users, including road haulage, as cash cows for funding the general economy. Labour views the road freight logistics industry as a captive market which has no choice but to pay up due to its essential diesel needs and, in the process, contribute a totally disproportionate, and ever increasing, level of taxation.
The Tories offered to consult on a ‘fair fuel stabiliser’, presumably designed to take some of the sting out of high oil prices and the eye-watering levels of fuel duty we presently have. They also promised to introduce a lorry road user charge in order to make foreign lorries pay some tax when using UK roads.
The Lib-Dems suggested that a tax on HGVs would be used to fund high-speed rail investment and said that they would be reopening closed rail lines, paying for it by cutting the major roads budget! What planet are these people on?
Oddly, it was rail, and in particular, high-speed rail, where there was some agreement for positive action. A bit weird this, bearing in mind that constructing a high-speed rail network would take decades to complete, and cost many billions of pounds to fund. That is cash that we do not have. The more cynical of us might say that this was just cheap political talk designed to suggest that its authors had a vision for the future. Will it ever really happen? I doubt it. And, in real life there are more important needs.
None of which helps us with our immediate and practical post-Election needs for dramatic action to patch up our pock marked and increasingly dangerous roads network, and for actually building some new road capacity. Capacity soon to be required in order to reduce, as far as possible, the inevitable increase in congestion and its consequential waste of man hours and money when the recession ends. After all, if the economy is going to revive and grow – and we are all doomed if it does not - then we will need an efficient roads infrastructure fit for the purpose of moving goods and transporting people.
Despite the fact that on the first day of the coalition one of the immediate actions of the new Government was a transport issue – the scrapping of Labour’s plans for the third runway at Heathrow – in the short term future, transport will surely be low priority on their action list. The truth of it is that the appalling state of the public finances mean that every sector, with the possible exception of health, is going to have to take the cuts hit.
Common sense says that infrastructure investment is a vital and necessary component in both our quality of life and our efficient economy. Transport is the facility which underpins almost everything else. At the same time, money invested in the road and rail networks actually produces a payback in the form of long term reduced operating and travel costs, and shorter journey times.
But, given that transport investment comes out of the central pot, and is not seen to inflict personal cost or loss on individual taxpayers, then it must be a prime target for spending cuts. It’s an easy hit. The real challenge for the transport lobby is to ensure that current budgets are maintained as far as possible, and that cuts are avoided or kept to a minimum.
I am personally uneasy about the prospect of the Lib-Dem influence on transport policy – previous attitudes suggest that they would probably like UK industry to deliver its produce in baskets on the front of bicycles! OK, I exaggerate a bit but their past suggestions have been a touch idealistic rather than practical. Our new Government is undoubtedly facing monumental challenges across the board, and the post-Election scene is a major cause of worry for transport. The economic situation means our essential sector will see its tax and duty bills get bigger, while it is expected to get greener and improve its operating performance. Hard times are no doubt ahead, just spare us the bikes and the baskets... More articles from Handling & Storage Solutions: | 
