This consultation is unlike any I have seen in decades of responding to local, regional and national consultations: there is no guidance note, briefing, report, technical assessment, or anything at all to suggest what this government sees as part of an integrated transport strategy.
“A call for ideas” is, in this case, a call to respond to a blank screen. Some ideas the government ought to consider follow. The reader may wish to send in their own.
A joined-up transport network
Joining up transport is not purely physical or technological. It requires guiding values. In this case, primacy of sustainability should be an overall principle. In practice, this means recognising the current climate and ecological emergencies and the substantial contribution of the transport sector to them.
This implies priority for walking and cycling networks, and active travel investment in England alone of at least £1.5bn per year. Buses should be free of charge to maximise use in preference to continuing growth in cars. Given discouragingly high rail ticket prices, cutting rail fares by 50% and freezing them for five years or longer is desirable. This would require increasing numbers of rail carriages, lengthening platforms in some stations, and moving towards full railway electrification.
No more trunk road building
Trunk road building and road widening are not sustainable and should cease. We need more bus lanes to expedite bus movements and make more express services possible. The above means taking rail and buses into full public ownership – integration is not going to work unless key elements are under local, regional or national statutory control – as part of ensuring hubs for switching between transport modes.
Given increasing numbers of vehicles moving around neighbourhoods, and with as much as 40% of car journeys under two miles, systematically reducing public car parking within settlements is essential. We should also be building apartments above the surface level of car parks to ensure new homes are nearer to existing facilities. This is preferable to permitting even more urban sprawl and satellite settlements which regularly suffer from limited facilities not delivered by developers or planning. New homes inside urban settlements should be car free by covenant.
In the long-term absence of purely electric aviation, and with the infeasibility of increased use of biofuels given land use implications, governments should stop all airport expansion. They should begin with increasing Air Passenger Duty (APD) by 20% immediately, and subsequently above the rate of inflation each year, to secure reductions in flying.
A programme for converting existing small airports into combined employment and housing sites is needed and this means integrating such areas into public transport, walking and cycling networks. There is, after all, no sustainable use of existing greenfield sites which can be contemplated in this country, one of the poorest states in Europe for nature and environment. And there is no sustainable use of conventional jets of any size in relation to the climate emergency.
Ports and the climate
Developing a sustainable ports policy that takes full account of sea level rise (SLR) means identifying how, and whether, extant infrastructure and homes may be protected against SLR and the increasing number of extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.
This offers opportunities to decide whether existing coastal walking and cycling routes, roads, and rail lines are maintained, or whether alternatives need to be developed. Air pollution in ports due to the nature and scale of fuels used requires a more rapid implementation of alternative – including hybrid – technologies which do not create greenhouse gas emissions. Forty percent of all shipping cargo consist of fossil fuels, which accounts for about 3% of global carbon emissions.
A big change coming soon
There is a high risk of the decline and collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) during the next 40 years. This will confer potentially far colder winters and hotter summers if England is dominated by continental European weather systems. Integration of transport, including transfer hubs where transfer between rail, bus, cycling, and walking is seamless, requires consideration of how long-term investment will ensure infrastructure is proofed against a variety of more extreme weather conditions. Given the poor performance of current infrastructure in such conditions, this is worth doing in any case.
Could data be used to improve the transport network?
Data which provides guidance for walking, cycling, and public transport must be prioritised over investment in other forms of surface transit since this has never been adequate. Local government should be empowered and funded to lead on this, in cooperation with relevant partners, statutory and otherwise.
Technology to enhance the overall transport network
Introduction of electronic road pricing (ERP), as has been in use in Singapore since 1998, is a vital step to provide income to invest in alternative modes of transport, including walking, cycling, electric buses, and cargo bike facilities to reduce delivery vehicle movements inside settlements. Given that electric vehicles accounted for a quarter of car sales in November 2024, it is clear that diminishing income from fuel duties must be replaced.
The government sustained an own goal in transport policy by freezing fuel duty back in 2011 and as a result have lost about £80bn so far for the transport system. Road and pavement repairs have been significantly neglected as a consequence.
Who needs the self-driving car?
Thus far, research on self-driving vehicles suggests practical problems in implementation. Extra vehicles create more congestion and more pressure for parking spaces, so why invest in self-driving vehicles at all unless these are specifically for people who cannot use any other means of transport?
Bicycles and e-bikes are superior by far to e-scooters as they are safer, more manoeuvrable, and faster. E-scooters and hire e-bikes littering pavements suggests that these technologies need racks installed in public places. Technical improvements to pavements can follow from an all-England pavement parking ban and a new standard Dutch entrance kerb for driveways to gradually remove conventional cambered pavements. This is a network issue, improving routes to increase the amount of walking people do for short journeys to facilities close by.
Online maps are of variable quality, especially when used on mobile phones. People should be able to access arrival/departure boards at rail stations. Far more electronic display boards should be added to bus stops both in urban settlements and along key rural to urban and cross rural bus routes.
More underground rail lines
There should be consideration of criteria for the selective creation of new underground rail lines to provide alternatives to road use in high traffic areas. The advances in technology arising from the Channel Tunnel’s development have made underground development easier and cheaper. But the main sustainability concern here is to get people out of cars by giving them fast and reliable transit to key destinations, cutting emissions and noise in the process.
Decisions, decisions
England is appallingly centralised, and this is reflected in long-term cutting of local government funding since the 1970s. Devolvement to local government of budgetry control and borrowing should be done quickly, including setting of council tax levels with new upper bands to make it more progressive, although land value taxation (LVT) could be more progressive in practice.
Only long-distance infrastructure such as motorways, dualled A roads, the rail system, and airports should be in regional or national control. Airports and ports need regulation which radically and rapidly reduces emissions to as low as possible by 2050, and which recognises obligations placed upon the UK as a long-term source of greenhouse gases.
Everything useful costs money
Implied costs above can be addressed by:
- a steady roll-out of ERP to provide more resources for transport as these are too low for a modern, industrialised society at present;
- introducing LVT – after revaluation of properties in England – to replace council tax and business rates. This might mean lifting the lower threshold for income tax and ensuring a highly progressive LVT;
- ending subsidies to fossil fuels industries;
- stopping trunk road building;
- more low traffic neighbourhoods and school streets to reduce impacts of traffic within communities long-term;
- ensuring that the full costs of maintaining transport infrastructure serving airports are borne by airport operators and that the existing forms of subsidies cease;
- ensuring the goals of 15-minute cities and 30-minute territories are developed into a series of guidance notes for local authorities; and
- abolishing Freeports ensure full conformity with general laws including those aimed at the basic goal of sustainability, as well as social justice and forward planning for SLR.
Conclusion: it can all be done
The above suggestions can be implemented. They are ‘sustainability-effective’ and that means they are cost-effective. Initiatives like ERP and LVT can change who pays for what they use or what they own.
Since many car journeys are short, some are made unnecessary by online shopping, and e-cargo bikes are making more deliveries traffic free, the real economic impact of people cutting some of their journeys is likely to be small. Integrating transport with the needs of society must mean statutory rights to remote working and to flexitime. This can reduce pressures on the transport system, as could a four-day week.
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
