Public transport and sustainability: challenges for the next government

1. Public transport and sustainability: challenges for the next government Stephen Joseph, Campaign for Better Transport

2. Campaign for Better Transport • Charitable trust promoting sustainable transport • Support from wide range of interests • Co-ordinates environmental and other NGOs concerned with transport • Commissions and publishes research • Conducts public campaigns • Promotes pilot projects and good practice

3. Challenges for next government • Improve everyday transport • Smarter transport spending, pricing and taxation • If high speed rail goes ahead, maximise its sustainability

4. Principles • Transport should play its fair share in reducing greenhouse gas emissions • With budget constraints, focus on improving and maintaining what we have • Give people real transport choices including reducing need to travel

5. Improving everyday transport • Provide sustainable jobs • Tackle climate change • Increase opportunity • Improve health and quality of life • Connect communities

6. Provide sustainable jobs • Support smarter choice initiatives: mainstream in local transport plans • Invest in off-road walking and cycling routes • Green buses • Continued rail investment

7. Sustainable Travel Towns 2004-6 – can these be rolled out?

8. Tackle climate change • A “transport test” for all new government policies and measures • A “walkability test” for public services (as with post offices) • Cut car travel for commuting and business with real tax relief for greener commuting; public sector should lead by example (teleconferencing, travel plans, car allowances)

9. Where’s the carbon? Mainly single car drivers

10. Opportunity: removing transport as a barrier to employment • Workwise programmes • Wheels to Work • Support bus pathways projects like Merseyside’s

11. Health and quality of life • Continue funding for school travel plans so that by 2020 every child who can walk or cycle to school is doing so • Make walking and cycling part of health promotion and anti-obesity strategies • Make 20 mph the standard urban speed limit where people live work and shop • Improve driving standards and increase traffic policing

12. Connect communities • Provide transparent and comparative information on local bus performance • Review rail fares regulation • Support demand responsive transport and taxiplus services across rural areas

13. Door to door public transport Information: needs to be high quality, accurate, real time and easily available Network-wide ticketing/ national smartcard Guaranteed connections Marketing: “metro” maps, branding etc Personal security: CCTV, policing priority Good interchanges and access to stops/stations End to end bus priority Above all treat public transport as a priority network that decision-makers and car users might want to use

14. Smarter spending • “Fix it first”: give priority to improving and maintaining the transport networks we have • Shift from capital to revenue funding • Join up local budgets with more devolution (local rail?) • Save the bus! • Reform transport appraisal: reliability, carbon, distributional impacts • Continued rail investment : new/refurbished trains, freight upgrades and grants • Rail reopening not closures: they save little (and nobody ever proposes shutting rural roads, telecoms, water, energy!)

15. Why spending on big roads is poor value • Inaccurate forecasts and modelling • Poor cost control • Latest appraisal downgrades roads and makes other investment better value • In particular, spending £1.3bn next year on upgrading 21 miles of the A14 looks questionable

16. Price is critical • Past trends show motoring and aviation costs have fallen in real terms, public transport costs have increased • Any transport policy taking carbon seriously must reverse this

17. Fares and costs If fares were reduced by 20%, a level more in line with the European average, bus travel would increase by 13% and rail travel by 17% by 2015 Reducing bus and rail fares and increasing motoring and aviation taxes could cut carbon emissions from transport by 13% by 2025. Review regulation of rail fares (including RPI+1%) New offers: “green miles”, carnets, smartcards, tax relief for greener commuting

18. New opportunities for transport taxation and funding • Lorry road user charging • Tax fuel on domestic flights • Per plane taxes • Business flights • New forms of transport funding such as tax incremental finance

19. High speed rail – can it be sustainable? • Extra funding, not abstracted from existing transport spending • Accompanied by measures to restrain rather than expand road and air travel • Linked to local regeneration and upgrades of local transport • City centre stations not parkways • Linked to upgraded services on existing lines and land use policies to focus development on those • Part of existing rail network, not separate from it • Landscape and biodiversity impacts must be avoided/minimised • How high speed is high speed?

20. Conclusion • Focus on everyday transport, not just big schemes • Join up transport with other measures, policies and budgets • Smarter spending, pricing and taxation needed • Accept that new communications technologies will change travel demand and can be used to improve travel for users: seamless door-to-door journeys • And remember: transport isn’t a high profile political issue – but it can bite (Railtrack, road and fuel protests) and is a big local issue

21. For more information • Campaign for Better Transport • bettertransport.org.uk • stephen.joseph@bettertransport.org.uk • 020 7566 6480