This election is, perhaps, the most important election since 1910, when the House of Commons finally broke away from the House of Lords; the election could provide a similar shift in power towards the people.
With not a single question on transport in the three leaders’ debates the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) has examined all the parties’ manifestos and commented on their policies.
Director at the ETA, Andrew Davis, said: “The Labour party has addressed most issues in its manifesto and it contains many more green aspects than it did last time, but its problem is that it has had years to implement these policies and has done very little.”
| Labour Manifesto | My comments |
|---|---|
| Walking. | There is no specific mention of walking in the Labour manifesto. |
| Cycling. | There is no section on cycling here. |
| Cars. Through our investment, Labour has put Britain at the forefront of electric and low carbon vehicle manufacturing. To promote the rapid take-up of electric and low-carbon cars, we will ensure there are 100,000 electric vehicle charging points by the end of the next Parliament. | Although this administration has provided some investment to encourage the decarbonising of travel – it has merely scratched the surface. The best action would be to introduce a carbon tax. Be so doing the new administration would indicate the seriousness of its intention. Then private sector investment will flood in. |
| Freight. | No specific mention of rail freight except to say that the new high speed lines would provide extra space for freight trains on the old tracks. The rail freight industry is actually worried that the available space will only be given to passenger trains. |
| Road Congestion. Tackling road congestion is a key Labour priority | This is as true as Gordon Brown is going to swim the Atlantic. What ever else is done (short of making it unlawful to travel) without road user charging we will always have congestion. |
| Road Congestion. We rule out the introduction of national road pricing in the next Parliament. | This one sentence shows that this government is shamefully spineless. An efficient, safe, let alone green, transport system relies on road-user charging to be at the centre of any renaissance of transport infrastructure in this country. I understand that politicians are frightened of the motoring lobby but politicians have failed to sell the benefits of comprehensive road user charging. Revenue to go to the highway authority directly. Local charges to the district concerned, main road charges to the country and strategic road charges to the Highway Agency. |
| Road Congestion. We will extend hard-shoulder running on motorways, alongside targeted motorway widening including on the M25. | The ETA has welcomed the current hard-should running projects (like the M42) and these proposals but only as a temporary step while road user charging was being introduced. Had we introduced road-user charging earlier motorway widening would not have been necessary. |
| Roadworks. Too much disruption is caused by local road works: we will increase tenfold the penalties on utilities who allow work to overrun. | Local road works are the business of local government. Local government should seize the powers required to force utilities to pay fully for their upheaval to the public highway. This government has had years to solve this problem and has failed to do so. |
| Travel Concessions. Labour will continue to provide concessionary public-transport fares. | Concessionary fares are popular with those that benefit from them. They are also very expensive. In my view they should be reviewed for their merits – giving well-off fit old people free express travel (non-fare stage) might not be the best use of limited resources but I am willing to be persuaded. In any case the national government should not fund local transport – leave that to county government (in England). |
| Buses. We recognise that buses are a lifeline, having doubled investment since 1997. We will provide punctuality data on all bus routes so passengers can hold services to account. We want greater use of London style powers to regulate bus routes where local bus services are not serving communities well, and we will work with the Competition Commission to ensure that the bus companies do not make excess profits at the expense of passengers. | Buses are too local for the national administration to be involved with. Have the counties determine how they organise their transport system at the local level. This administration has had years to put this in place. Quite pathetic really. |
| Buses. We are protecting rural bus services | Best done by county government. |
| Rail. Britain needs to invest in modern, high-capacity and low carbon transport infrastructure. At the heart of our growth plan is the commitment to a new high-speed rail line, linking North and South. Built in stages, the initial line will link London to Birmingham, Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, and then to the North and Scotland. By running through-trains from day one, cities including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Liverpool will also be part of the initial network. Journey times will be slashed – those from the West Midlands to London will be as little as 31 minutes. We will consult fully on legislation to take forward our high-speed rail plans within the next Parliament. | In other words the Labour party does not plan to invest in transport much at all over the next few years. So this is window dressing. If you want high speed rail – and I do – then it should be between all the main cities of Britain and the Chunnel. The stations should only be in the heart of each city (no more Ebbsfleets). Introducing road users charging and airport charges on polluting air travel will encourage greater investment in high speed rail. |
| Rail. High-speed rail is not just about faster journey times. It will free up capacity on existing intercity rail lines, enabling more rail freight, commuter and local services We will press ahead with a major investment programme in existing rail services, hugely improving commuter services into and through London, and electrifying new rail-lines including the Great Western Main Line from London to South Wales. | Non-national lines are important to the integration of public transport and much of the backbone of the current rail system will be freed up by building high speed rail. The national government would be wise to fund (if required) only those lines linking national destinations. Local lines are best funded by a beefed up local government. |
| Rail. We will complete the new east-west Crossrail line in London adding ten per cent to London transport capacity. Rail passenger numbers have increased by 40 per cent in the last ten years and punctuality and quality of service are improving steadily. | This highlights one of the problems we face with infrastructure projects – funding. London has a huge economy but is not allowed to raise funds for its own development. There are many worthwhile transport projects – not all as expensive as Crossrail – which could have been built years ago if the national government did not poke its nose into local affairs and by so doing stifle development. |
| Rail. We will encourage more people to switch to rail with an enforceable right to the cheapest fare, while trebling the number of secure cycle storage spaces at rail stations. We will welcome rail franchise bids from not-for-profit, mutual or co-operative franchise enterprises and will look to remove unfair barriers that prevent such bids benefiting passengers and taxpayers. | Trebling cycling facilities seems a big deal but it is not. Again whilst cycling is a vital part of a good quality of life – let alone good for climate change – national government should purely emphases good practice in this area. County government is best placed to progress cycling provision. |
| Waterways. | I could not find anything on waterways. |
| Air. Heathrow is Britain’s international hub airport, already operating at full capacity, and supporting millions of jobs, businesses and citizens who depend upon it. We support a third runway at Heathrow, subject to strict conditions on environmental impact and flight numbers, but we will not allow additional runways to proceed at any other airport in the next Parliament. | Heathrow operates at more than full capacity because the government has failed to properly price the phenomenal valuable landing slots available. Heathrow should operate at 80% capacity – a similar rate as other airports – to make the experience of using the airport more pleasant and to reduce the environmental damage caused when aircraft stack waiting to land. Pricing access to Heathrow (which is a benefit of a monopoly so should not go to the airport operator) at market rates will ensure that only those who really need to use Heathrow will use it. |
| Land-use Planning. The newly formed Infrastructure Planning Commission will – within a democratically determined framework – help streamline and speed up decision-making on major projects. | This commission should be abolished. No locality can hold the rest of the country to ransom when networks (cable, rail, road or pipeline) require access. But single developments, for example, incinerators or power stations would have to find a locality which would give planning permission. |
| Land-use Planning. Rural villages should never be left without essential services. Councils now have to ensure that the importance of local services to the community is taken into account before granting planning permission to change their use, and we will strengthen this to protect viable shops, pubs and community facilities | A village needs to be self governing. It must be sustainable too. If a village no longer has the economic vitality to survive and there is not prospect of it so doing in the long term then it must be demoted to a hamlet. Villages must maintain their own facilities as they can and they must have the powers required to do so. |
| Taxes. If it forms the next administration the Labour party will not extend VAT to public transport fares | In principle a general tax like VAT should be applied to any service which has value added. Most people would agree however, that some exceptions are reasonable: like public transport. But VAT is applied to cycling but not air travel. Having exceptions always produces anomalies. |
| Local Government. A regional growth fund will be established by the regional development agencies with regional ministers given an enhanced role, and we will help our core cities and city regions to become powerhouses of innovation and growth, with a major devolution of power to shape local transport and skills. | All my adult life I have been keen on a regional level of government in Britain but outside of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales it doesn’t not appear to be popular. Better then to build on the conservative nature of the English people and help them define new counties via a referendum process. These beefed up counties (minimum 500,000 people and 1,000km2) would have the same powers as Wales and Scotland. |
| Local Government. We will also extend the powers available to our major city regions, building upon the pioneering arrangements in Greater Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham. City regions will be able to gain additional powers to improve transport, skills and economic development and acquire greater borrowing flexibility. Where new city-region authorities are created, we will give residents the opportunity to trigger a referendum for directly electing a Mayor, with London style powers. More towns should be encouraged to apply for city status and have the chance to acquire it in future competitions. Our towns and cities need modern, sustainable transport infrastructure. We will support tram schemes into the major cities, including upgrades to the Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Tyne & Wear light-rail systems, a modern trolley bus in Leeds, and more Oyster-style electronic ticketing promoting cheap and easy interchange between public transport in cities. | As above but using counties and parishes instead. Cities like Birmingham and Leeds are far too big to be the lowest level of government and too small to deliver area wide transport policies. They need to be broken up before people get completely disenchanted with local politics. The counties must regain their powers to raise taxation and attract borrowing. |
| Local government. We have increased funding for local government by 45 per cent in real terms since 1997. Through tough capping powers and efficiencies, this year we have seen the lowest Council Tax rises on record and we expect them to stay low. Excessive rises will be capped. We will not hold a Council Tax revaluation in the next Parliament and we will establish a cross-party commission to review the future of local government finance to ensure it is meeting our goals of accountability, equity and efficiency across the country. | In England at least, we live in a very centralized state. The national administrations since the war have taken control over most of our day to day needs. We do need to review what is important for the European government to decide upon, what is best at the national level and what is most appropriate at the local level. We need local people to determine local taxes and we need a flexible election system to stop the current proliferation of rotten boroughs. I would put the boot on the other foot. Let us assume the our village, town or city preside over most government and when a town is too small to deal with a function it passes it to a large area government – counties. They in turn, if decision making need to be over a wider area, will push the decision making to the national government. |
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