A Year of Upheaval – but not much Progress

THE YEAR END is generally seen to be a good time to take stock. And for those interested in transport in the UK, perhaps this year, to draw breath and clear their heads too. Certainly 2023 has had more than its fair share of major twists and turns which leave us in a significantly different – and largely unexpected – place to where we were just 12 months ago.

At this time last year, one of the key issues LTT was covering was Professor Greg Marsden’s successful Freedom of Information request to the Department for Transport for more detail and greater clarity on how its projections for the pathway to net zero as set out in its Transport Decarbonisation Plan would be achieved.

The Department had announced in December it would appeal the Information Commissioner’s decision to require its release. Then, in January, came the surprise decision by the DfT to publish the assumptions underpinning its projections in the Transport Decarbonisation Plan as sought by Professor Marsden. Intense scrutiny of the coherence and consistency of the Government’s plans to meet their climate change and net zero commitments for transport, seemed set to follow.

Indeed, climate change and net zero and their implications for transport strategy at national and local level were core matters driving discussions amongst professionals, hoping to get stuck in to the next round of Local Transport Plan preparations, on which guidance from the DfT was still awaited.

Connected issues included how the Government would effectively support the roll-out of electric vehicles, and revise road user taxation to cope with the reduction in fuel duty income being brought with a switch to electrics. There was also discussion about potential local level road user charging schemes, like that mooted for Cambridge as part of a sustainable transport strategy linking an improved upfront alternative to car use, through public transport enhancement and better provision for walking and cycling, to the revenue that charging would subsequently bring in.

Also potentially signalling a new era of environmentally-led policy, London Mayor Sadiq Khan went further than the range of Clear Air Zones being introduced around the country and had confirmed London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) was to be extended to cover all boroughs from 29 August this year, with non-qualifying vehicles facing a daily charge of £12.50.

Whilst the debate on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods continued, schemes were still being introduced and proving successful. The state of public transport however remained very fragile, with buses still on life support funding in the wake of the pandemic, though there were hopes that the Government’s willingness to underwrite a £2 maximum fare in England, as a contribution to cost of living pressures and to encourage patronage, would maybe kick start a new era. Though initially only a three-month project it was twice extended, and is now due to run through till the end of 2024.

It wasn’t long before a series of major reverses began. First came a new version of the very thing Professor Marsden was challenging, with the Transport Decarbonisation Plan replaced by the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan just before Easter, which downgraded the aspirational agenda, and bet the house on an EV fix to transport’s Net Zero problems.

The line the government was now planning for transport showed an acceptance to go well above the Climate Change Committee’s pathway for the sector, and to make the savings ‘elsewhere in the economy’, cutting off 73% of the outcomes that were seen to be plausible in the TDP just 21 months previously, according to Marsden’s new calculations. Both modal change and Active Travel targets were relaxed, and the support for the latter cut back too via ATE’s reduced government funding.

The other important document that came out at the same time was the final consultation on the ZEV mandate, and how it was planned to phase out fossil fuel vehicles and at what rate.

Looking back, this change of direction on the carbon strategy might now perhaps be seen as the signal that the Government was off in a new direction on a range of matters directly or indirectly affecting transport.

By the middle of the year, we had also had the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, and the high-profile attention paid in the campaign for the seat, and in the aftermath, to the role played by the extension of the London ULEZ scheme. This not long after led to the Prime Minister postponing some of the plans for achieving the nation’s 2050 net zero deadline, and in particular the 2030 end date phase out of fossil fuel cars, now pushed back to 2035.

Then came the strange and embarrassing compilation of ‘motoring-friendly’ policy elements that was ‘The Plan for Drivers’, and associated sneering and sniping at Low Traffic Neighbourhood measures, which in turn swept up for further criticism the introduction in September of the default 20 mile per hour urban speed limit in Wales.

Meanwhile the Greater Cambridge Sustainable Local Transport Strategy was in big trouble politically, with all three major parties walking away from the road user charging idea, whilst Low Traffic Neighbourhoods took a big knock as a number of local authorities decided to end schemes, most notably the wholesale withdrawal of all of them in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, now led by Mayor Lutfur Rahman and the Aspire party.

The Conservative Party conference was also the stage for the Prime Minister’s most dramatic transport policy reversal – cancellation of the two northern legs of HS2 and the launch instead of the Network North Plan for more local transport improvements across the North, Midlands and beyond, paid for by the £36 billion savings.

Everything seemed to be heading completely the wrong way.....

Perhaps not fully recognised at the time, though, was the detailed analysis of the increasingly questionable benefit cost ratio that would have been delivered with the mounting cost of HS2, and a parallel, strongly-put, comparative case for more local transport system improvement in, and between, urban areas regionally. Also stressed was the importance of buses in which Prime Minister Sunak has taken a greater apparent interest than might be expected of most Prime Ministers – at least not until Boris Johnson had displayed the same tendency.

Could this be seen as the basis of a more helpful grasp of what really matters for local transport in most areas, equally rare amongst politicians at national level, so often accused of being obsessed with the railways? It’s just an equal obsession with building major roads that needs addressing now.

In this regard the transport appraisal controversy has been on the boil all year, as it always seems to be. The key issues were perhaps best crystallised in the draft revised National Networks National Policy Statement for major schemes, published in the Spring, and effectively air brushing out the carbon-creation issue for roads, by giving them a free pass on the basis of the de minimis contribution criteria. By the year end a whole new raft of Transport Appraisal Guidance documents had appeared from the DfT’s ever active TASM division, further adding to the huge compendium of information that seems to be able to justify any kind of decision as long as there is someone who knows where to find the right piece of the toolkit to use.

Still grinding their way through the system on this basis are controversial schemes like the Stonehenge A303 tunnel upgrade and the Lower Thames Crossing – and the inevitable legal challenges accompanying them. Both, with highly questionable BCRs, don’t they too deserve the forensic analysis that HS2 got?

On the legislative front, meanwhile, rather concerningly, the Government seemed to reveal another current technology-driven obsession in rushing to facilitate driverless cars as a priority, seemingly much more on industrial policy, rather than transport grounds. There is surely a significant wider debate still to be concluded about the implications of both such autonomous system innovations, on the road and in the air, and other applications of AI for the transport sector – and indeed across society more generally. The wish ‘to lead the way on technological innovation’ may mask a lack of inquiry into ‘where is all this taking us’.

In the context of the many changes taking place, this year’s Local Transport Summit in Sheffield in October took the chance to look hard at the political landscape and the public mood as they are affecting transport. This saw a wide-ranging discussion embracing some new concepts of how to think about transport issues, and apply the expertise of the professional transport community in new, perhaps more effective and searching ways. This theme has been taken up by LTT’s long standing and always thoughtful and challenging columnist, John Dales, in the 200th contribution to the magazine he celebrates in this issue, providing his own manifesto for such professional priorities.

And now, at the year end, to add more perplexing conundrums, the COP28 event has been taking place in Dubai. As this editorial was being written it was unclear if there would be any meaningful agreement on material measures to toughen up inter-governmental commitments to addressing climate change and supporting decarbonisation by ending fossil fuels. At least the COP this year was for the first time tackling local transport and urban planning as formal Climate Change issues, with their own day of discussion, as explored in this issue in our report from Martina Juvara.

As often, it seems there can only be hope, rather than confidence, that words and resolutions will be turned into actual hard practice and effective action.

Things have definitely moved on dramatically in the world of transport in many ways this year, but whether for better or not is not at all clear. Much of what has happened seems to reveal a state of frenetic schizophrenia and denial amongst leaders at international, national and local levels, wanting incompatible outcomes, infinite resources, and actions that bring gain without pain to themselves, the electorates and other established interests. If nothing else, these irrationalities seem like both a massive self-delusion, and huge waste of energy.

One constant with last year, and indeed the year before, is that local transport professionals are still waiting to see the long promised revised Local Transport Plan Guidance from the DfT. Please don’t hold your breath that it will be with us even by the end of next year.

In the meantime may we wish you an enjoyable and refreshing Christmas and New Year break and look forward to picking up on all these issues and more when we return in January. It’s been quite a journey this year – and probably will be in 2024 too.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTTmagazine, LTT882, 13 December 2023.