Groundhog Day

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In July 2009, the M4 relief road scheme “was pronounced dead”, according to the Western Mail.  The scheme was, according to the then Transport Minister, too expensive, partly as a result of the extra cost of protecting the population of twaite shad.  It turns out, though, that it wasn’t dead but merely sleeping, waiting for another minister, ten years later, to pronounce its death for a second time, because it’s too expensive and would cause too much environmental damage.

The problem with the ‘too expensive’ line in 2009, and again this week, is that costs and benefits can change.  Twice now, ministers – of two different parties – have overplayed the cost argument in order to avoid coming down firmly against the scheme on grounds of policy, especially environmental policy, which in both cases has been seen essentially as a secondary consideration.  As a result, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the reports of its death have, once again, been exaggerated.

Depending on dodgy figures

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I’m not an expert on predicting traffic flows, and I won’t pretend for a moment to understand the detail of the modelling which has been used by the civil servants in Whitehall to arrive at its estimates of the likely increase in traffic over the Severn Bridges after the abolition of tolls.  So, it’s not expertise which makes me sceptical about their conclusions, it is, rather, the application of a simple test to the outcome of the calculations – ‘does this result look reasonable?’.  It’s an approach which mathematicians often use, and if the result does not look ‘reasonable’ then it’s often a sign that there’s something wrong – either with the initial data, or with the methodology applied to it.  Treating the model as an unchallengeable ‘black box’ isn’t enough; the fact that ‘the computer says’ something doesn’t make it right.

As I understand the numbers set out here, the conclusion is that in 2022, 24 million vehicles would use the bridges every year without tolls, but only 18 million with tolls, or, put another way, without tolls, traffic will increase by 42% but if tolls only slightly lower than today are retained, it will increase by only 4%.  One corollary of that is that 6 million journeys each year – or 1 in 4 of all potential journeys – will simply not take place at all if they cost a few pounds more than they might otherwise cost.  Now of course it is true that according to classical economics an increase in price results in a decrease in demand, and I don’t doubt that some people or businesses will be deterred from using any stretch of road by a toll.  But it just doesn’t feel at all reasonable to me that such a small (in relative terms) toll makes such a huge difference – I just don’t believe the figures and suspect the validity of the model being applied.  A marginal variation in cost ought to lead only to a marginal variation in traffic flows; and the assumption that cost is what drives the volume of traffic flows is itself somewhat dubious.

There’s another corollary as well.  If tolls of a few pounds are really so effective at deterring people from making journeys, then there is perhaps an easier solution to the problem of the Brynglas tunnels than building another motorway – we can deter a quarter of the potential journeys by imposing an extra toll.  In reality, that doesn’t feel reasonable to me either – I don’t believe that it would have that effect in practice.

Llanelli AM, Lee Waters sees these figures as a way in which the UK Government is trying to dictate transport policy in Wales, by forcing the Welsh Government to build extra capacity – the new M4 link – in order to cope with all the extra traffic.  I’m not sure that they are quite that devious, but I have a lot of sympathy with the underlying assumption that the government’s figures are produced in a way which supports its policy objectives – by which I mean that the assumptions built into the modelling are those likely to produce the preferred outcome.  I disagree with Lee’s suggestion, however, that the solution is to retain tolls, albeit at a lower level, in order to obviate the necessity for the new M4 link.  Not believing that the removal of tolls will directly lead to a given increase means that, logically, I also don’t believe that retaining them would prevent that level of increase.

If the problem is that dodgy figures are being used to justify a particular policy, the solution is not to use those same dodgy figures to justify an unpalatable alternative – it is to challenge the dodgy figures themselves and the basis on which they have been prepared.

Tolling for a purpose

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The willingness of the Welsh Government to consider the proposal made yesterday by Gerry Holtham that the new M4 link should become a toll road was disappointing.  It’s not that I’m opposed in principal to road tolls.  They’ll always be unpopular, of course, but as a means of seeking to deter private transport, encourage the use of public transport and re-localise important aspects of the economy, I can see a potential role for a properly thought-through system of road tolls.  My problem is that that isn’t what was being proposed here.

Professor Holtham asked “Why should the taxpayer finance the construction when road-users, who benefit, can do so?”.  I have two objections to that line of argument.  The first is related to the idea that shared infrastructure costs should be paid for only by those who use them.  What if we apply the same argument to a new hospital for instance?  Why should the taxpayer finance the construction, when the sick people who benefit could do so?  And the second point is that it isn’t only the users of a road who benefit from it, as we can see if we turn the question around and ask who really pays the tolls for the businesses using any new road.  The answer is, ultimately, the customers, of course.  Although charges and taxes appear to be levied on businesses, the costs of those businesses always and inevitably get passed on to the customer.  And insofar as there is any selectivity as to which customers pay, it’s the ones at the ‘far end’ of the tolled road.

And that brings me to my main objection to selective road tolling rather than tolling as a part of a package of measures with clear social and environmental benefits in mind.  Just as the Severn Bridge tolls have been a disincentive for some businesses to establish themselves on the ‘wrong’ side, preferring to be on the side where they have the greatest number of customers, so tolling any road in isolation creates a disincentive for businesses to find themselves at the ‘wrong’ end of that road.  No sooner do we get rid of one set of disincentivising tolls than we are faced with the possibility of another.

There is a difference between the two cases, of course.  The alternative to using the Severn Bridge is a long diversion, whilst the alternative to using the proposed new M4 link is to continue using the old untolled road - or as Prof Holtham put it, those unwilling or unable to pay the tolls could “prefer to sit in a jam”.  It sounds like a nice empty free-flowing road for those with spare cash, and a second-class route for the rest.  In a roundabout way, the provision of a better, more exclusive, road only for those who can afford it is a justification, of sorts, for the idea that those using it should pay for it.  I’m not sure, though, that a road built for the use of a minority actually answers the supposed need for the construction in the first place.

Like many others, I’m not convinced about the need for the road at all, so if the Welsh Government is serious about being ready to consider the use of tolls on our roads, why not look at how a comprehensive package of policies, including tolling, might reduce the demand for capacity on the roads and obviate the need?  I accept that it wouldn’t be an easy sell, but it would at least be in line with the fine words which the government likes to utter about the environment and future generations, as opposed to building a road which makes those words worthless.

Words, not action

Tweet Amongst the reaction to the Welsh government’s decision to blow £1 billion worth of capital expenditure on one road scheme in the south-east of Wales, questions have been raised about how the government would be able to progress other schemes, including the Greater Cardiff Metro scheme.  It’s a good question, although given the strings attached to the way in which the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition in London has “allowed” the Welsh government to borrow the money for the M4; I’m not convinced that they would ever have been permitted to borrow the money for any other scheme - perhaps not even for the 'blue route'.

The UK government has always been clear that they were only permitting borrowing because they wanted this particular scheme to proceed (which makes the Welsh Lib Dems’ apparent opposition more than a little curious, even if it isn’t exactly unusual for that party to be both for and against policies).

One option for funding the Metro scheme is the use of European funding.  Cardiff is not actually entitled to that money but it’s been suggested previously that schemes which happen to benefit a greater area might be able to tap into such funding, effectively diverting them to Cardiff.  It’s a little bit like robbing the poor to pay the rich but there’s nothing new or original about that.

On the matter of the M4 itself, Gareth Clubb has done a very effective deconstruction of the objective “evidence” (or rather total lack of) for the government’s proposed scheme.  Whilst both the government and the CBI refer incessantly to the damage which the limited capacity of the M4 does to the Welsh economy, they have no facts to back that claim.  We are all, apparently, supposed to take the claim on trust because they say it is so.

In principle, of course transport bottlenecks will negatively impact on those economic activities (and thus those companies) which depend on transport; but the leap of logic from stating that obvious truth to building a six lane highway around Newport is far from being an obvious – let alone the only – solution.  And the concentration of attention and resource on one (comparatively small) area of Wales betrays an obsession with the idea that the Welsh economy is wholly dependent on (a) what happens in one corner of the country, and (b) on the link between that corner and England.  It’s not a version of the future which offers much to those of us in the west or north of the country.  Nor does it suggest any serious intention to rebalance the Welsh economy and promote more sustainable local economic activity across Wales.

All in all it tends to confirm that “sustainability” is something to be talked about ad infinitum; something which politicians can declare themselves passionate about when seeking ‘green’ votes.  But it isn’t really anything which requires them to take any action.

Does a small tax really make so much difference?

Tweet Last week, a cross-party group of MPs urged the UK Government not to devolve Air Passenger Duty (APD).  No real surprise there – most MPs seem to be as strongly against devolving anything as I am in favour of devolving everything.  Taken in isolation, though, I find it hard to get as excited about APD as some do.  It’s a tiny part of total taxation revenue in the grand scheme of things, and the ability to vary it has little impact on total budget.  Insofar as it is a policy lever worth having, its value depends less on its revenue-raising ability than on its alleged impact on the success or otherwise of Cardiff airport.

On that point, I’m something of a sceptic. I’m simply not convinced that reducing the tax at one airport is going to result in the flow of business from elsewhere which others are predicting.

In a highly unusual show of unity by organisations which are usually at each other throats, four airlines joined forces a few months ago and commissioned a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers which argues that abolition of APD would benefit the UK economy.  It would also, of course, be of no small benefit to the airlines concerned. 

The argument put was that abolition of the tax would have a number of effects, including:

• making it cheaper for companies to physically visit their customers more often, thereby maintaining better relationships and selling more product
• making it cheaper for all of us as consumers to fly abroad on holiday and therefore encouraging us to fly more often
• encouraging airlines to invest in new and bigger aeroplanes and to open new routes.

The net effect, the report argues, would be to increase the U.K.’s GDP by around 0.45% in year one and by an average of 0.3% over three years.  Are they right? 

It’s an argument which has more than a little relevance for Wales given the suggestion that APD could be devolved.  (Although abolition of APD at UK level, should the airlines be successful with their proposal, would mean that Wales would have to set a negative air passenger duty if it wanted to use this tax for competitive advantage – in short, the government would have to pay us to fly.)

I don’t disagree entirely with the methodology used by the report.  There are however a number of caveats and unstated assumptions which are open to challenge, and which may affect the claimed benefits.  And I rather suspect that advocates of devolution of APD and subsequent slashing of the tax for flights from Cardiff are making very similar assumptions.

Firstly, it is effectively taken as read that globalisation is the way forward and that our economic model for the future should be based increasingly on travelling the world to sell our wares, rather than on a more localised approach to business.  And that, in turn, is based on the unstated assumption that fuel costs for transportation will remain at a low proportion of total costs.  In the short to medium term that may even be true; I’m far from convinced that it will be true in the longer term.

Secondly there is a question in my mind about the extent to which GDP really grows or is simply moved from one place to another.  If the sales made by jet-setting business people are truly “extra” then the overall world GDP does indeed grow; but if they simply replace goods currently being supplied from elsewhere, then we’re merely shifting someone else’s GDP to the UK.

Which brings me onto the third point – there is an implicit assumption that action by one country (or airport, in the case of the Cardiff proposals) to improve its competitive position at the expense of others does not provoke similar moves elsewhere.  It’s another example of the way in which tax reductions can simply lead to a race to the bottom.  And it’s a question which is equally valid in the case of any comparison between, say, Cardiff and Bristol airports.

The report also makes the point that air passenger duty is a regressive tax, which “impacts disproportionately on poorer households”, because the cost of an annual holiday in the sun represents a greater proportion of the disposable income of the lowest paid decile than of the income of the highest paid decile.  It’s true of course - in theory at least.  At a practical level I wonder how many people in that lowest paid decile can afford to fly anywhere anyway – with or without APD.  It also neatly skips over the corollary, which is that abolition of APD disproportionately favours those who can afford to fly off on holiday several times a year.

And somehow I rather doubt that the executives of the airlines commissioning this report would really support the abolition of all “regressive” taxes and their replacement with a more progressive income tax regime.  I suspect that their opposition to regressive taxes is confined to those taxes which are perceived to be limiting their own profits and salaries.

More generally, how desirable, in any event, is the expansion of air travel in policy terms?  Even if it does lead to a significant increase in GDP, is that enough of a justification?  Not all GDP is “good”; there are lots of things which are good for GDP but not necessarily desirable otherwise.  That’s a question which this report seems not even to ask.  And it's a question which those advocating a cut-price tax regime for Cardiff airport also seem not to be asking.

Splurging the family silver

Tweet One of the sins which I thought True Wales committed during the 2011 referendum campaign was to confuse – and I suspect sometimes deliberately – structure and process with policy and performance.  There were elements of their critique of the policy and performance of successive Welsh governments with which it was hard to disagree; but wrong policies and general incompetence do not, of themselves, justify criticism of structure and processes.  (That doesn’t mean that there’s no scope for criticising the structures and processes as well of course – merely that that scope isn’t based on policy or performance).

The issue of borrowing powers for the Welsh government is in danger of provoking a similar response, even amongst the friends of devolution.  I am deeply concerned - reading reports like this one – that the government would use those powers to splurge several years’ worth of available capital expenditure on a very short stretch of road in what is already the wealthiest corner in Wales.  Indeed for some it seems that the ability to build that one short stretch of road is sufficient argument for the borrowing powers in itself. 

The issue is, I fear, another manifestation of the way in which Welsh policy favours the south-east corner of Wales just as UK policy favours the south-east corner of the UK.

It’s a depressing prospect, but it isn’t really an argument against the Welsh government having borrowing powers.  It’s an argument, rather, for electing a government which looks at how it can spread economic wealth across Wales.  That is easier said than done.

For Wales, see England?

Tweet The Conservative opposition in Cardiff Bay last week criticised the decision by the Welsh government to buy Cardiff airport, and claimed that the purchase was a mistake.  They would, presumably, have preferred the government to stand aside and allow private enterprise to preside over further, and probably terminal, decline.

The criticism by both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems of the lack of any clear direction on the part of the government as to what it intends to do with the airport has a little more validity – but only a little.  In fairness (?) to the Labour government in Cardiff, I don’t think they’ve ever claimed that the decision to purchase was part of any grand plan or strategy; it was a purely pragmatic and opportunistic response to the situation which developed.  They purchased an airport with no clear idea of what they were going to do with it; and it seems that they haven’t inherited any real plan from the previous owners either.

Given that background, the assertion by the government that that the purchase will lead to a turnaround is, at this stage, probably as baseless as the opposition’s criticism.  It owes more to aspiration than to any concrete plan.  But my concern is more about the language being used and what that reveals about the underlying attitudes of all concerned to the Welsh economy.

Referring to the airport as the “National Airport of Wales” as seems to be increasingly common, is one of those concerns.  It is in Wales, certainly, and is now owned by the nation; so in a purely semantic sense the description is true.  The idea however that an airport in the south-east corner of Wales ever can or will serve the whole of Wales in any meaningful way is patently nonsense.

At one level that may not actually matter too much.  To the extent that air connections are important (and that’s another argument entirely), what matters is that they’re available and accessible – not which side of the border they happen to sit.  The north of Wales will continue to be better served by airports to the east of Offa’s Dyke than the one in Cardiff; short of improvements to North-South communications in Wales on a scale which the government does not even seem to be contemplating, that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

But at another level, it does matter.  Government spokespersons have talked about the airport being central to the “Welsh” economy; and about overseas investors not taking seriously any “nation” which does not have good air connections.  In both cases, the context suggests that the "nation" is "Greater Cardiff" rather than Wales as a whole.  It betrays yet again an obsession with growth in that corner of Wales rather than any attempt to distribute wealth more evenly across the nation.

It mirrors the attitude of the UK Government, which is quite happy to see growth and wealth concentrated in the South East corner of these islands.  It’s an attitude which most Welsh politicians rightly criticise.  But why are they then so keen to replicate it on a Welsh level?

Flying off on a tangent

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Last week the idea of a new airport in south-east Wales popped up again, as it does – in one form or another – every few years.  And, as is invariably the case, the coverage focused on the practical aspects and consequences, rather than on the underlying principles and assumptions.

From a UK-wide perspective, building a new airport to the west of London somewhere around the Newport-Bristol-Cardiff area makes a great deal of sense, if you believe that:

• continued globalisation is either a good thing, or else simply inevitable
• demand for air transport will continue to grow
• demand for air transport can and should be satisfied
• we will find a way of dealing with the environmental consequences of an approach to aviation policy which simply sets out to satisfy every demand

I didn’t see much attention given to any of that last week; it was all about GDP and jobs – the usual approach of those who talk green, but act rather differently when they have to make choices.

The coverage – presumably because it started in Wales – also assumed that such an airport should be on the Welsh side of the estuary.  But hold on just a minute there – why should that be?  Clearly any airport on such a scale is well beyond Welsh needs, and has to serve a wider area. Indeed, as I said above, it makes sense only when viewed as a UK-wide project.  And from a UK perspective, it is far from being obvious that the best site is on this side of the estuary rather than on the other.

Nor can such an airport, any more than the existing one at Rhŵs, ever be a Welsh National  Airport in the sense of serving the whole of Wales.  Even in a wholly independent Wales, with the best conceivable north-south links, much of the north of Wales still be better served by using airports such as Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham.

And why not?  There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people in one country depending on an airport in another.  Geneva is in Switzerland; its airport is in France.  And the proponents of a Severnside airport are depending on the assumption that large areas of England will depend on, and choose to use, an airport in Wales; so large areas in north Wales continuing to depend on airports in England is not incongruous.

So, from a UK perspective, with a number of assumptions about future transport choices, Severnside airport may indeed make a great deal of sense, even if the most logical location is on the English side.

But does it make sense from a Welsh perspective, given a government commitment to putting sustainability at the heart of government decisions?  Does it make sense if one believes that globalisation will turn out to be a comparatively short term phenomenon, doomed in the long term by environmental and resource constraints?  Scarcely.

It owes more to a preoccupation with the ‘grands projets’ so beloved of many; and a belief that increasing wealth in one small corner of Wales is the solution to poor average GVA  per head.  It is yesterday’s thinking not tomorrow’s.

It's all one railway line

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In saying that there must be a ‘business case’ for extending electrification to Swansea this week, the Secretary of State has not really said anything new.  The question needs to be asked however – how long does it take to produce one, and why hasn’t it been done yet?  After all, they’ve been in power for two years now, and as I recall, there have been some sort of figures produced before.  Does it really take two years just to review and update work done previously?

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the vogue for producing ‘business cases’ in any event.  There’s nothing wrong with the concept, but as someone who’s produced more than a few of them over the years, I’m well aware that they have more to do with justifying why the preferred option is the right one than with an objective analysis of the options.  I wouldn’t say that creative writing is the most important skill in drawing up such a document, but it’s up there somewhere.

Figures in themselves are an important part of any story; but they rarely tell the whole story.  And many figures are the result of estimates, which themselves depend on assumptions, which in turn depend on prejudices and preconceptions.  In this case, it seems to me that the government is using the current absence of a business case as a fig leaf behind which to hide whilst they continue to delay.

Another way in which the use of business cases can be used to obfuscate rather than clarify is in the definition of a project.  In the case of rail electrification, the requirement to produce a separate case for Cardiff -Swansea electrification will produce a different answer than if that section were included in a single case for the whole route from Paddington – Swansea.  So the person who decides where to draw the line between projects has a great deal of influence on the final outcome.

It might be argued that splitting the project up into a number of smaller sections is a valid way of determining which bits are or are not viable, but to take that to extremes, a mile by mile analysis would almost certainly conclude that no individual mile was worth electrifying.  And even if the route is split more rationally into station-station sections, the viability of each section will also to an extent depend on what decision is taken in regard to other sections.

The real decision which Gillan and the Government need to justify is the arbitrary one they took to electrify only part of a major route in the first place.  There is a difference between seeing individual projects as part of a wider project to electrify the whole system and seeing it as just a series of projects each of which must be individually justified, and the latter seems to be the view of the government.  It’s a short-sighted way of looking at the question.

Make haste slowly

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The Government’s proposal to increase the top speed limit to 80mph will no doubt appeal to that section of the population which regards adherence to laws on speeding as being optional.  It tends to be the same group which regards the use of speed cameras as somehow ‘unsporting’, as if the whole thing is a game in which the main object is not to abide by the rules, but simply to avoid getting caught breaking them.

I worked with someone once who was always late for meetings, because he already had nine points on his licence and couldn’t afford to drive fast enough to arrive on time.  ‘Set out earlier’ was the thought that went through my mind; but the view that speed limits are somehow an unfair and unnecessary restriction on normal business is not unlike that being expressed by the current government.

There almost seems to be a sort of collective belief amongst some that speeding – like taking home the office stationery – isn’t a ‘real’ crime.  ‘Proper’ crimes have to have obvious victims, and an apparently ‘victimless’ crime should therefore be treated differently.  In reality, speeding isn’t victimless, and never has been - but it is true that the ratio of crimes to victims is different.  Whilst there is a victim in every single case of robbery, the same is not true for speeding.  Because the overwhelming majority of instances of law-breaking on the motorways do not have a victim at all, the misguided generalisation can gain credence.

The government’s thinking appears to be rather muddled, to say the least.  On the one hand, they argue that there will be huge economic advantages in allowing people to drive that little bit faster; on the other they argue that the law as it stands is unenforceable, since half the drivers are already exceeding the limit anyway.  I find it hard to reconcile those two statements, unless the intention in reality is to increase the effective, enforced speed limit from 80 to 90mph.

I’m not convinced by the argument that so many people break the law anyway, that it’s unenforceable.  It is, again, based on the idea that there are different degrees of crime; it’s certainly not a suggestion that would be made for most other breaches of the law.  Widespread disregard of a law is not, in itself, an argument against the law, particularly if a major part of that disregard is based on an unwillingness by the authorities to enforce the law.

Nor am I convinced by the argument that it will enable people to get to their destination sooner.  Most of the motorway network is so congested that theoretical top speeds are rarely achievable anyway.  Besides, work done by governments over many years has shown that total road capacity can best be increased by maintaining a lower and more consistent average speed – it’s what has led to the variable speed control systems used in places like the M25. 

And paradoxically, increasing the speed at which some travel could have the end effect of reducing the overall average speed of all motorists – leading to an increase in average journey time rather than a decrease.  The best overall average speed for all seems to be achieved when the variation between the speed of different vehicles is reduced, not when the speed of the fastest is increased.

The one thing that no-one seems to dispute is that the fuel and pollution cost of the proposed increase is significant, and will make it harder to achieve agreed emissions targets.  For a government which said it was aiming to be the greenest ever, it’s a major step away from that aim. 

It may also affect the balance of attractiveness between public and private transport.  Although the actual impact on journey times is likely to be minimal, that will not prevent people from believing that they can achieve a journey in a shorter time, and choosing to use their cars as a result.  That belief may not be rational, but that doesn’t stop people taking decisions on the basis of it.

All in all it looks more like an attempt to be populist in order to gain the support of a particular section of the electorate than part of a coherent transport policy.

Half full or half empty

Tweet Whether or not better communications links have the business impact that is claimed is unclear to me.  I’m sure that poor links are unhelpful, but less convinced that good links, in themselves, will make the level of difference often claimed.

When it comes to rail links, I am convinced that better, faster, more reliable links will encourage a shift from road or air to rail, and are worth doing for that reason alone.  The claim that Wales could lose 21,000 jobs as a result of the HS2 link from London to Birmingham and points north is a figure which I’d treat with some caution, though.

As I recall, the French experience with the TGV services was that demand grew faster, and to a higher total level, than any of the advance projections suggested; but that the vast majority of those travelling were doing so for leisure rather than business purposes.  I rather suspect that the UK experience will mirror that - if a network is ever actually built.

And that ‘if’ was my main concern with this story today.  Although those quoted didn’t actually go so far as to say it, it almost seemed that they were arguing against building HS2 at all, because of the possible adverse impact on Wales.  It’s a tempting conclusion from a Welsh perspective – but it would be the wrong one.

The problem with consideration of high speed lines in the UK is that it’s all being done on such an ad hoc basis; there is no master plan, no vision for an integrated transport network linking up major cities across the UK as well as linking with cities on the mainland of Europe.  The result is that there is a danger of pitting areas against each other.  There’s nothing wrong with a bit of lobbying, or even a lot of lobbying, to be first in the queue; but it rapidly becomes destructive if the queue only has room for one.

I think there are good arguments for the link to Wales and the West to come ahead of the northern link, but if we can’t have first place then it’s better to be arguing for an early extension to the queue than to argue against the northern link.  An excessively negative approach could simply mean that we’d all lose in the end.

How much will we benefit?

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There seems to be a general welcome for the proposal to build a rail hub at Heathrow with a direct connection from South Wales, but I’m not entirely convinced that it will be as beneficial to Wales as is being claimed.  As with so much else, the devil is in the detail.

Whilst in principle, any improvement in the rail network will help to encourage a switch from road to rail, there have been no hard numbers in the reports which I’ve seen.  I don’t know how many people actually travel from South Wales to Heathrow in the first place, but that will surely be a key factor in determining how many trains run direct rather than involve a change at Reading, and thus how much benefit the proposal brings. 

My guess is that most of those travelling from South Wales to airports in London do so for leisure purposes rather than business purposes – which would make Gatwick a more likely destination.  It also seems that most of the services to Heathrow are likely to involve a change of train; and no matter how good or frequent the shuttle service from Reading to Heathrow, a change of train will always reduce to some extent the number of people choosing rail rather than road.

Linking into the European high speed rail network would be a definite plus, but from the information available to date, it appears that the link to HS2 is a one-way link – good for going north to Birmingham etc., but not for heading east to the Channel Tunnel, leading to a danger that the proposal encourages, rather than supplants, air travel to near continental destinations.

But the biggest claimed benefit is in terms of the boost to the economy, something for which I’ve seen no evidence at all.  Whilst it is clear that poor communications links can put us at a disadvantage, the negative doesn’t prove the positive, and I fear that the business benefits are being significantly over-hyped.

And one final question which none of the reports has answered as yet – is this an English project, which means a largish sum of capital money available for investment in Welsh infrastructure under the Barnett formula; or would I be right in suspecting that it will be regarded by the Treasury as a UK project - from which the Welsh share of the benefits is likely to be considerably less than the Welsh share of the costs?

A question of class

Tweet In times of austerity, it’s not surprising that politicians should start trying to compete with each other to see who is the most parsimonious – or at least, who can give the best impression of parsimony.  Today’s story in the Western Mail returns to the subject of our elected representatives’ use of first class rail travel.

I don’t always – or even often – agree with Tory MP Simon Hart, but there is one telling comment in his robust defence of his habit of travelling first class.  He said that “This is a hair-shirt competition”.  His comment helps to confirm the basic message of the report – that MPs still just don’t get it – but it’s also a fair summary of where the debate about the travel arrangements of public servants, elected and unelected, has got to.

Perhaps there is a deeper question here which is going unasked in the rush to criticise any public servant who dares to travel first class, and that is whether there is still any justification in this day and age for there to be a distinction between travel classes anyway.  Why should there be a distinction between two ‘classes’ of people travelling on the same train?

I used to travel extensively by train on business – sometimes standard class and sometimes first class.  I certainly understand the point made by some that it’s easier to work in a first class seat, but the main reason for that is basically the extra room and guaranteed table seat due to the smaller number of seats in a given space. 

The argument about discussing matters with constituents on the phone is surely a red herring – I would no more hold a private conversation in first class than I would do so in second.  It may seem quieter, and people may be seated marginally further away from you, but it is no more possible to have a confidential conversation.  Perhaps some of them just believe that having a better class of people overhearing you is OK.

But back to the main point.  Most local services, in Wales certainly, manage perfectly well with only one class of ticket and seat.  And the biggest challenge to the rail system at the moment seems to be providing enough capacity for everyone who wants to travel to be able to do so and to be guaranteed a seat of some sort.  Having two classes of seat – and traveller – doesn’t look to me like the best way of doing that.  A single class - less crowded that standard, but less privileged than first - might be a better and more flexible way of providing the necessary capacity.

Fewer new roads?

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There was a lengthy story in yesterday’s Western Mail about the transport experts calling for a review of all road schemes in Wales in the light of evidence that car traffic might be declining.  One thing that struck me as notable in the report was that – unusually – there was no comment from politicians of any party.  Whether they were asked and declined, or simply not asked, I don’t know. 

There are few topics on which politicians are usually reticent to rush out a quote.  Road-building may well be one of them; it’s a subject on which they know that they can’t please everyone.

In another context, it became clear to me a week or two ago that much of the economic case put forward by governments for road schemes is based on an assumption that traffic will continue to grow inexorably.  Partly this is just a result of population growth, but it’s also partly based on the assumptions that there will be economic growth, and that economic growth will of necessity lead to increased traffic.

It’s good to see those assumptions – all of them – being challenged. 

I wouldn’t support the abandonment of all the proposed road schemes though.  Although governments like to present the case in business terms, as though everything can be reduced to cost and benefit, there are other factors involved of which we should not lose sight.  Not a few of our trunk roads follow very old routes through the centres of villages and towns, and even if the levels of traffic drop from current levels, there are still valid reasons for constructing some alternative routes.

But overall, a stress on alternatives to road-building is to be welcomed, particularly if it starts to look more at freight traffic as well as passenger traffic.  Although there has been a switch in recent years from investment in roads to investment in public transport, it’s been too little too slowly.

Rail improvements are still too often the result of responding to lengthy campaigns after the demand has already appeared rather than an attempt to plan and provide pro-actively to encourage the demand.  Similarly the freight strategy for Wales is a document full of worthy sentiments, but remarkably light on hard actions which will do other than respond to demand.

The response of the Welsh Government to the report was not encouraging.  They clearly remain wedded to the idea of continuing growth in road usage.  It’s another example of a mismatch between 'green' words and 'business as usual' actions.

On the buses

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I’m not sure that it’s always helpful to refer to anything and everything which people get for ‘free’ as a ‘benefit’.  It’s linguistically accurate, of course, in the sense that people benefit from it, but it seems to be confusing – perhaps deliberately in some cases – the issue of benefits for ‘the needy’ with the issue of services provided at no cost at the point of use. 

But I’m inclined to think about the second category as being more a case of ‘collective purchase’ of services; and the reasons for deciding to purchase some services collectively can be much wider than merely the matter of whether the recipients need or deserve the services concerned.

Taking bus passes as an example, not everyone approaches the issue from the same perspective.  I don’t really consider free bus passes as being a ‘benefit’ in the narrow sense.  There are a number of reasons why we might decide to give cheap access to public transport (and ‘free’, in this context, is merely a special case of ‘cheap’) to some or all groups in society, not least the environmental advantages of getting people out of cars and into buses. 

My support for free public transport for pensioners and other groups is not, therefore, based solely on the idea of identifying ‘need’, either at a personal level or at a group level.  Nor is it based on the extent to which such a policy is popular, or even populist. 

Yet populism seems to be the main issue, when it comes down to the way in which the parties present their take on this policy; or rather, populism plus an attempt to hit the right emotional buttons in identifying which groups should receive the ‘benefit’.  It looks as though there is no longer any argument about the principle between the four parties about the question (in Wales, at least – the UK parties may be a different issue); the debate is solely about which groups should benefit. 

I suppose that we should welcome the Tories’ conversion, just as I sort of welcomed the Lib Dems’ conversion to free prescriptions yesterday; but (again, in a parallel with yesterday’s comments) I can’t help wondering if they’ve really changed their minds at all, or simply recognised the unpopularity of their previous position.

I also wonder how important this issue really is in terms of the electoral contest in May.  It no longer tells us very much about underlying values and principles, which means it’s of little real use in distinguishing between parties and their policies.

Longer term view needed

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Clearly, the electrification of the main line to Cardiff is good news.  But the decision not to continue on to Swansea is bad news for those of us in West Wales.  And the worst news of all (despite apologists for the current UK coalition government trying to claim it as good news) is the decision to go ahead with hybrid rolling stock, having both electric and diesel power.

I understand why clutching at the straw of not having to change trains at Cardiff may appear to be good news, but the choice of hybrid rolling stock has two major disadvantages, in my view.  The first is that it undermines many of the advantages of electric stock – it reduces the cost savings, the extra weight undermines the reduction in wear and tear on the line itself, and the extra complexity means that it loses the advantages of improved reliability and reduced maintenance costs which accompany the move to electric power.

But it is the second disadvantage which concerns me more.  That is that this is inherently a decision with long term consequences.  The new rolling stock is likely to have at least a forty year lifespan, and that reduces the incentive for extension of electrification to Swansea and beyond at an early future date. 

Although it would obviously be preferable to have made the decision on the whole line to Swansea now, the electrification project has such a lengthy timescale that that there is still a window of several years to enable the project to be extended, without incurring the extra costs of a whole new and separate project.  And the environmental, reliability, and cost advantages of electric power are such that I, even as a resident of West Wales, would have preferred to put up with a (comparatively, when looking at a 40 years lifespan) short term change of train at Cardiff in the hope of getting that extension.

The underlying problem is that this government, like its predecessor, is taking decisions on a case by case basis, rather than having a master plan for electrification of the whole network, which is where any government which is serious about reducing the environmental impact of transport would start.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of the announcement of a willingness to look at a comprehensive electrification of the Valleys.  It’s a bit of a mixed blessing, I fear. 

On the one hand, it is clearly a significant investment in transport infrastructure and emissions reduction in a heavily trafficked part of Wales’ rail network, and that has to be welcomed.  On the other hand – and I accept that this is very much said from a West Wales perspective – it emphasises once again a Cardiff-centric approach.

This again underlines the piecemeal approach being taken – if it were just the next step in an overall programme to electrify the whole network, I might grumble a bit about why it has to start in Cardiff, but I’d have to accept that there would be a certain logic to that.  But as a step on its own with no promise of follow-up, coupled with the limitation on the main-line announcement, those of us in the West can surely be forgiven for feeling that we are being left behind with a second class rail network.

And this is more than just a question of transport infrastructure.  It sometimes looks as though the UK policy of development concentrated in the South East whilst the rest is left behind – a policy which has been so damaging to Wales over the decades – is being repeated on a smaller scale in Wales.  I’ve commented before on the apparent emphasis in the Economic Renewal Plan on developing the major conurbation around Cardiff as a significant economic driver.  Concentrating investment in transport infrastructure on that area will serve only to reinforce that trend.

Cut somewhere else

Tweet I can't remember the exact detail, but there was a Spitting Image scene where the budget deficit was being explained to Ronald Reagan.  It went something like, "Mr President, suppose you have ten apples, and you take away three trillion; how many do you have left?", to which Reagan replied, "Oh, I don't know, but there must be a few at least".

It came to mind when I read this report, or more precisely the comments of Paul Davies AM, on rural transport this morning.  Transport is a major issue in rural areas, of course.  And I agree with him that we need to increase the frequency of train services to Fishguard in particular and West Wales in general - although I still think that his repeated calls for dualling the A40 are a completely inappropriate response.  The point is, though, that rural transport issues will never be resolved by the private sector; they require a large dose of investment from public funds.  I recognise that, and am prepared to argue for the sort of public sector spending regime which can deliver that.

Mr Davies, though, does not.  Only yesterday, he and his party were arguing that health spending - note, spending, not delivery - should be protected from any cuts at all, which means larger cuts elsewhere.  He and his party have argued consistently that the public sector needs to be cut by a large amount and in a short timescale to rectify the deficit.  I disagree with him and his party on both of those; but there's nothing at all wrong with him putting those arguments.  There's something more than a little dishonest, though, about then calling for significant extra government expenditure in his own constituency.

It smacks of the all-too-common refrain of people who support cutting public expenditure, as long as the cuts happen somewhere else, and to somebody else.

Feeling a bit like Clover

Tweet Toll Roads have never been a popular idea - particularly in this part of Wales, where Rebecca and her Daughters knew exactly how to deal with them.  And I guess that they'll never be popular with anyone who has to pay the tolls.

The main reason used by Governments in favour of tolls has been that it's a way by which users of the transport infrastructure pay towards the costs of providing it.  In short, a way of transferring infrastructure costs from general taxation to a usage charge.  I'm not a fan of that approach in general, and indeed, it seems to run directly contrary to the main thrust of the new Economic Renewal Plan which is about investing in infrastructure to enable growth.  Businesses have long argued - and I've agreed with them - that the tolls on the Severn crossings are a direct disincentive to basing their activity on this side of the estuary.

I'm more open-minded about the environmental argument (even though that is unlikely to make the concept any more popular).  Switching travel from cars to buses or rail by reducing the cost of one and increasing the cost of the other certainly has its attractions.

What I've never been convinced about is the idea of selective tolling on bridges and tunnels.  They may well be the most expensive parts of the road network, but they are still part of a whole, and treating them differently seems an odd thing to do.  It's also often taxing a 'captive customer'; the alternative to paying to cross the Cleddau or the Severn involves a lengthy detour and a lot of extra time.

Certainly, during the last General Election I argued for the abolition of tolls on the Cleddau bridge, which have become a nice little earner for Pembrokeshire County Council, used to subsidise other expenditure.  I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see in this morning's paper that Plaid Cymru are in favour of tolls, albeit set at a lower level, over the Severn estuary, as long as the money is kept in Wales and spent on other infrastructure.  It sounds awfully like the argument used by the county council for retaining tolls on the Cleddau Bridge.

I could have sworn that the sign on the wall used to read "no tolls good, bridge tolls bad", but it definitely says "no tolls good, Welsh tolls better" now.  My memory must be failing me - it must be my age.

A lot more than cuckoo clocks

Tweet The story a week or so ago about the completion of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland was a triumph of engineering; but also a triumph of vision and foresight. It dramatically highlights the difference in attitude towards rail transport between the UK and the rest of Europe. Whilst we wait to hear whether a line built over a century and a half ago will be electrified, the rest of Europe presses ahead with an ambitious, long term programme to develop a network of new high speed lines.

For us in Wales, electrification is in doubt – and high speed isn’t even a line on a map yet. There are plans for a high speed link to the north of England, and eventually on to Scotland, but where is the comprehensive vision for a rail network of the future? It requires the sort of long term thinking of which UK governments – of any party – seem to be completely incapable.

The 35 mile long Swiss tunnel was started in 1996, they’ve been drilling for 14 years – and it’ll be another 7 before the first trains will run. That’s serious long term visionary thinking about the right approach to transportation. And it isn’t the only such project – they started another, shorter (a mere 21 miles!) tunnel at the same time on a parallel route further west. But the Swiss vision isn’t just about high speed passenger transport – the line will also handle significant amounts of freight.

It will help with the implementation of the Traffic Transfer Act passed in 1999, which aims to ensure that most freight passing through Switzerland from Germany to Italy will go by rail rather than road. Another piece of visionary thinking, seeing rail as a real alternative to more road building, and removing the most damaging traffic from their roads.

It’s an idea with some resonance – imagine if all the freight from Ireland which goes from Pembrokeshire right across Wales (and across England as well, often, en route to the ferry ports) were mandated to go by rail instead of road. A few trains per day would remove a significant amount of heavy traffic from the roads, quite apart from the environmental benefits.

Of course it’s not an entirely fair comparison. Switzerland is far more ‘central’ to Europe, purely by dint of geography; and traffic flows are therefore much higher. Switzerland is also about twice the size of Wales, and their population about two and a half times ours; although if we think the terrain in Wales is difficult for construction, just take a look at Switzerland.

But the really key difference is about clear government direction and political will, and the sort of long term vision and investment which is needed to improve the rail infrastructure. I won’t hold my breath, then.

Back to the future

Tweet Conservative-leaning think tank, the Policy Exchange, have published some proposals for railways in the UK. They claim to be looking to the future - what I read was a series of unfortunate echoes of the past, most particularly the Beeching era.

The problem with their proposals is that they’re starting from what is, for me, completely the wrong place. Their basic premise seems to be that the railways are a drain on the public purse which needs to be stemmed, whereas I start from the premise that a switch to rail travel is something to be encouraged on environmental grounds.

Do we want to reduce capacity so as to service only commercially-viable demand, or do we want to add to capacity and stimulate demand? The first approach leads to a switch from rail to road, the second encourages a switch in the opposite direction.

Because they are starting from economics, rather than transport or environmental policy, some of their recommendations look positively perverse to me. For instance, heavier and faster trains cause more wear on the track, so if we use shorter and slower trains, track maintenance costs can be reduced. Another is to allow train companies to run fewer services, or stop at fewer stations if by so doing they can reduce their costs by only carrying the most profitable passengers.

Services from Aberystwyth are amongst those specifically mentioned by them as being ones where "niche operators may be willing to fill the gap..."; but if no-one wants to run such services without subsidy, then 'local people' should be free to decide what happens. "They can have a rail service, with the subsidy paid for locally, or they can choose to keep their cash and the line closes". It is a recipe for undoing the work of the last 20 years to rebuild rail services and encourage people out of their cars – and for removing rail services from much of Wales.

I wouldn’t argue that we should be running empty, or near empty, trains ‘just because’; and the report does make some sensible suggestions about flexibility in franchising and the disincentives that can exist within the franchising approach. But we do need to think about what we want the railway system to achieve – and profitability is not at the top of my list.

The report makes what I consider to be a wholly invalid comparison between the railways and low-cost air services, claiming that those air services "separate the essentials from the nice to have", and yet "still offer a product that people want to use". And that really sums up the huge difference between the approach that they adopt and the approach I think we should be adopting.

The railway system shouldn’t be seen as simply a commercial exercise in responding in the cheapest possible way to a demand for rail travel; it should be seen as something that we positively encourage people to use as an alternative to other forms of travel. And that means that we deliberately need to make it more attractive than the alternatives, not reduce it to the same level.

Attempting to run the railways as an entirely commercial operation was what led to the loss of so much of our rail infrastructure in the past. It’s a step backwards which we should reject.