False Dawns familiar for new transport thinking

NEARLY SIX MONTHS into her tenure of the post of Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander has at last set out some of her policy priorities. It wasn’t in the speech that the Department for Transport communications team had presented as her ‘personal vision’, given to a selected audience at the National Railway Museum earlier last month, which actually contained very little of substance, but in her evidence to a special session called by the House of Commons Transport Committee to examine her plans.

In that hearing last week, a number of significant things were revealed in answer to some fairly forensic questioning by the committee’s quietly effective chair, and sparky and well-informed members, most of them cutting their teeth after becoming MPs for the first time at last year’s General Election. Their key asks included the priorities that Alexander was setting in her negotiations with the Treasury about the Transport Department’s future spending allocations, due to be announced in June, along with her plans in a substantial range of specific areas ranging from rail electrification and road safety to the bus fares cap and pavement parking.

It was a very content-rich, and somewhat rare occurrence, which we felt deserved some significant coverage in this issue of LTT, and must be regarded as a credit the The Transport Committee itself, and indeed its role as an element of our Parliamentary system.

Although not specifically the thrust of many individual questions, the session also served to distance Alexander from her predecessor, Louise Haigh, as most directly evidenced in the winding up of the Roads Review Panel Haigh had established soon after taking up her Cabinet post last July.

It was on this particular point that much was revealed at the Committee hearing about the new core agenda for the Department under Alexander’s stewardship, carefully directly aligned with the Prime Minister and Chancellor’s key missions of achieving sustained and substantial economic growth, and facilitating the delivery of 1.5m new homes ‘during this Parliament’, in both areas for which transport infrastructure development is seen as a key enabling and supporting function.

Any expectations of more radical changes to transport policy - particularly in terms of stating firm objectives regarding decarbonisation or influencing travel choices and modal split - were noticeably absent from Alexander’s answers. And she clearly confirmed that the Integrated National Transport Strategy,now in preparation, would not be a wide ranging strategic view of how the transport system should be planned, but be limited to the delivery, management and presentation of it to improve the travelling and journey experience of users. It was also clear that Alexander sees an infrastructure pipeline of transport construction and engineering activity as more a contribution to wider economic development, than a master plan for careful multi modal capacity planning She noted that alongside the Chancellor’s announcement about the public spending review, the Government’s 10-year infrastructure strategy will also be announced, and that would be the place to find a list of the Chancellor and Prime Mister’s preferred transport projects - and how they would be funded.

The Transport Secretary was pressed by MPs from around the country on the need to spread spending fairly amongst the regions, and indicated she was cognisant of that requirement, particularly through the increasingly vocal Combined Authority Mayors. She even noted that she had her ear bent by the Welsh Government Transport Minister,and Welsh Secretary for more money for rail in Wales.

It seems that the big ticket transport investment priorities will continue to be as much matters of political and industrial policy preference, as part of any sustainable mobility and spatial connectivity plan.

In that regard the full story of how the DfT Capital Review Panel, chaired by Rachel Skinner, was conceived by former Transport Secretary Haigh, and had begun to approach its task of considering the relative importance and justification of the DfT’s existing portfolio of road projects, remains still to be told. Little had in fact emerged of their work, as its members had been warned to not talk about any of their activities, let alone any proposed outcomes. Its work is now over, Alexander made clear, with all of its responsibilities re- absorbed into the mainstream activities of the Department itself, and there would be nothing published of it. She pointedly identified its existence and mission as being the creature of ‘my predecessor’ and seemed to imply that it was of little consequence compared with the ongoing processes and mechanics of the Department, and delivering the Government’s over-riding ‘Plan for Change’ priorities.

In truth, the composition of the panel was rather strange, and invited criticism in some quarters as being made up of too many overt campaigners and challengers to conventional thinking. Whilst some have seen their selection as a breath of fresh air, and an opportunity for a new look at established thinking and legacy projects, it was always rather unlikely that their recommendations would resonate with the establishment mindset of either the DfT or Treasury, and this be readily taken on board as policy. Certainly, at least, if their sponsor, Louise Haigh, was no-longer in place to support them.

So it all appears to have been another chapter in the story of the struggle for radical change in transport policy - one of small steps on a long journey. And of many much anticipated, but quickly interrupted, great leaps forward.

An interesting parallel has been the outcome of a similar initiative in Wales, where a roads review panel was established by another energetic and feisty transport political character, Lee Waters. In this case it was the radical transport policy advocate Lynn Sloman who was asked to ‘think the unthinkable’. As we record in this issue, her panel’s recommendations two years ago that many pre-existing proposed road projects in Wales be not proceeded with, or significantly modified, and a new set of criteria be put in place for the authorisation of schemes henceforth, though adopted by the Welsh Government at the time, now seem to be gradually unwound. A number are re-appearing in regional transport strategies and getting the support of Senedd members.

Is there a message or a moral in these reversions of policy in both England and Wales, and something not entirely dissimilar that has happened in Scotland? One apparent reality is that any individual political post-holder can only achieve a limited agency for a limited period, and anything new and disruptive they introduce into ‘the system’ can equally readily be taken out. Another truth is that transport considerations — or even wider transport impacts — are not the master of the agenda, and transport is often merely treated as the servant of other considerations — political, economic, or industrial.

For those working in the field, or with idealistic hopes and aspirations for significant changes in transport policy and provision, the message might best be ‘take your small victories where you can’ and hope that they demonstrate the possibilities for others to replicate. But meanwhile to accept that the idea of a new dawn for the whole way transport is considered, planned, and delivered is best kept as a satisfying prospect rather than an impending reality.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTT magazine, LTT914, 1 May 2025.