Category Archives: Public Transport

London is Pampered while the Mayor Whinges about Lack of Money

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The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is repeatedly saying that he does not have enough money to support his transport plans and develop high quality public transport services. This is very clear from the last two articles posted on this blog – on the ULEZ finances and on the Mayor’s Business Plan for the next few years. But in reality, London gets more money than all other parts of the country.

Both ITN National news and the Sun covered a report by think tank IPPR North. They said that per person London gets twice as much as the North in terms of transport funding – £4,155 per person versus £1,600 as an average for all other regions. In some areas such as the North East and South West it is less than £1,000 per person.

Those “up north” in such major conurbations as Leeds and Manchester are complaining of gridlocked roads and very poor services on public transport which is the result of this lack of investment. A typical example of the bias is given as the decision by the Government to fund the Crossrail 2 scheme in London at a cost of £30 billion, while electrification projects in Wales, the Midlands and the North were scrapped or downgraded. The Government disputes the analysis by IPPR.

The breakdown by region according to IPPR is as follows (infrastructure spending from 2017/18 onwards per person):

London: £4,155

West Midlands: £3,029

North West: £2,439

South East: £1,307

East Midlands: £1,134

East of England: £1,134

South West: £984

North East: £855

Comment: Unfortunately this is the result of the London-centric political scene and the fact that the key decision makers (politicians and civil servants) tend to live in London and the South-East. Certainly the economics of Crossrail 2, and even Crossrail 1, in terms of the cost/benefit have been dubious in the extreme. HS2 shows the same effect – enormous expenditure just to enable a few business people to get from/to London somewhat quicker. But the road network in the South-East gets less investment than in the North, with most of the money going on train and underground schemes beloved by the central London intelligentsia. A more rational approach would make a lot of sense, but there is no sign on either major political party taking the lead on this subject. They are both stuck in past ways of thinking.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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TfL Business Plan – Mayor Sadiq Khan Wants More Money

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Just before Christmas, Transport for London published their proposed Business Plan for the five years to 2022/23. See http://content.tfl.gov.uk/fc-20171205-item10-draft-business-plan.pdf for the details, but what follows is a summary, with some comments.

The foreword by Mayor Sadiq Khan contains the usual whinging from him about the lack of central Government subsidy and his budget difficulties. It is true that TfL no longer receive a central Government grant for operating subsidies, but that was agreed by Boris Johnson on the basis that they would obtain extra income from the new Elizabeth line. There are still substantial capital grants though.

The Mayor is of course suffering from his self-imposed hair-shirt by promising to freeze public transport fares in London when campaigning to get elected. He has implemented that, at least as far as TfL controlled fares are concerned. He even goes so far as to say that this “will put £200 back in Londoners’ pockets by 2020”. Surely he is confusing stopping increases (which mainly covered inflation), with reducing fares?

TfL’s latest budgets are particularly constrained by a reduction in forecast public transport revenues. Bus usage for example has been falling, so revenue growth is anticipated to be lower than expected in previous budgets. Bus operating deficit was £599 million in 2016/2017 but will rise to £632 million this year and be has high as £647 million in 2022/23. These are enormous numbers.

Looking at the Financial Summary (page 30), shows that overall TfL will show an operating surplus before “capital renewals” and “financing costs”. After the latter they are running big deficits up until 2020/21. This is what one might term “political presentation of finance data”. Cash flow was negative to the tune of £1,353 million in 2016/17 and it only really becomes positive 4 years later. For someone with experience of looking at the finances of organisations, as this writer has, this looks a very unhealthy financial profile.

One result of this financial plan is that the Mayor is cutting funding for road maintenance that goes to local boroughs. This will not necessarily affect minor road maintenance but it will mean cuts to major projects. Part of the reason is because a lot of the money is going to support cycling initiatives, the redevelopment (pedestrianisation) of Oxford Street and other major projects that are mainly in central London.

Local boroughs are likely to be very unhappy with the cuts to funding of Local Implementation Plan (LIP) programmes, particularly as projects tend to be planned years in advance so abrupt changes in funds available may mean a lot of planning work is wasted.

The lack of major renewal work on roads will surely cause the proverbial “stitch in time” to come true. It will lead to expensive short-term fixes, and more major work in due course if proper maintenance is delayed. For example, bridges often require substantial work after many years of use and that cannot be deferred forever.

Big projects that are consuming the funds are more cycle superhighways, Vauxhall Cross, Wandsworth Gyratory, the Silvertown Tunnel and the Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf bridge (which I commented on negatively as regards its’ financial wisdom in a previous blog post).

The Mayor and TfL are complaining that the cost of operating and maintaining London’s roads of up to £350m per year are effectively being cross-subsidised by public transport fare payers and they need some of the money raised from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) to pay for it. This is nonsense. The Mayor has very substantial income from business rates and other sources (such as congestion charging) – these more than cover the costs of operating and maintaining the road network.

All that is happening is that the Mayor is choosing to spend large amounts of money on cycling, on his “healthy streets” projects, on expensive remodeling of gyratories (past ones have introduced congestion where none existed before), on massive subsidies to bus travel when nowhere else in the country does this take place and while removing budgets from local London boroughs. This is not a formula that will please Londoners who understand what is happening, nor improve TfL’s financial position.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

 

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Mayor’s Transport Strategy – Feedback

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We have received a lot of comments from the general public on our campaign against the Mayor’s Transport Strategy. Many were not aware of what was proposed and those particularly concerned were the elderly and disabled. This is a typical example recently received:

“I’ve just received your leaflet re the above and I’m aghast at the mayor’s proposals you’ve listed.  I rarely use my car to pop to the local shops, preferring to walk, for the exercise.  However, it’s much more convenient and quicker to drive to the nearest swimming pool (for more exercise!) than it is to get the bus (which I know I could do).  I also do the weekly shop once a week after swimming and this would not be possible without using my car.  I know I could do it online but I prefer to choose my own products – and anyway it still requires a vehicle to do the delivery! 

I certainly don’t see why I should pay more than I already do for this!  

We also get frequent visits from carers who help look after my wife – a lot of them use the bus but some of them use cars and I think it would be unfair for them to have to pay more. 

Perhaps you would be kind enough to send me the link to the relevant detail and proposed timetable for implementation and also details on how to object please.”

There are of course enormous numbers of elderly and disabled people living in London who often rely on cars and PHVs (minicabs) for day to day transport. Suggesting most of them can walk or cycle is simply nonsense and even using buses can be impractical for them due to the instability of such vehicles.

In addition, there are large numbers of ladies who feel insecure walking the streets at night and using public transport can be seen as risky.

Another group of objectors are those running small businesses who have to transport goods and those with large families who do a “bulk” shop at a supermarket once per week. The load that results is too large to carry other than in a vehicle.

The Mayor’s Transport Strategy focuses on the young and healthy who have office jobs in central London to which they commute via public transport, or those fit enough and willing to cycle in all weathers, while it ignores a very large proportion of the population. It needs to be scrapped and a new plan put forward!

Roger Lawson

 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

 

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Sadiq Khan Plans Your Life

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If you live in London, you should pay attention to the “London Plan” that Mayor Sadiq Khan has recently published. Indeed if you live in other large conurbations you might wish to review it also because the policies he is promoting might spread elsewhere.

What’s the London Plan? It’s a document that sets the “spatial development” strategy for London over the next few years and has legal implications for planning developments, housing construction, transport infrastructure, and many other aspects of our lives.

The Mayor makes it plain that London needs to cope with the rapidly expanding population and business activity. The population of London might reach 10.5 million by 2041 he says (currently 8.8 million). That means a lot more houses have to be built (66,000 per annum he says) and support for more workplaces.

In addition it has major implications for transport infrastructure while at the same time he wants to clean up London’s air. He wants to make London a “zero carbon” city by 2050, although no doubt he will be long gone by then. As part of this he aims to reduce “car dependency” (an emotive and inaccurate phrase disparaging people who have made a rational or personal choice about how they travel when you don’t see this said about those who rely on cycles for their daily travel needs).

Why has the population of London grown so rapidly in recent years and continues to do so? Page 12 of the Plan explains why. It says 40 per cent of Londoners were born outside the UK, and the city is now home to 1 million EU citizens, no doubt attracted by the vibrant London economy. This has put a major strain on housing, transport, social services and other infrastructure (incidentally an unbelievable 1.2 million Londoners are apparently “disabled”).

This state of affairs has come about because of national policies on immigration with no effective policies to distribute that more widely across the country compounded no doubt by a desire by some politicians to improve their chances of being elected.

Specifically looking at transport, the Mayor’s target is for 80% of all journeys to be made by walking, cycling and public transport (that of course includes the 14% of Londoners who are disabled!). It’s currently 64%. This is going to mean an aggressive set of policies to reduce car use – hence our campaign against the Mayor’s Transport Strategy which supports the London Plan – see http://www.freedomfordrivers.org/against-mts.htm

The Mayor highlights the health inequalities in London, with deprived areas of London having reduced life expectancies (as much as 15 years for men and 19 years for women) surely an astonishing statistic. What is the reason for this? Poor housing conditions are certainly one, but lack of daily activity is allegedly another so the Mayor wants us all to be walking and cycling.

The Mayor does have plans to improve public transport including proposals for Crossrail 2 and extension of the Bakerloo line but these proposals will do relatively little to soak up the increased demand, and with no proposals of significance to improve the road network, hence no doubt the need to encourage us all to walk or cycle.

The Mayor’s plans to support the need for more housing include targets for every London borough (for example over 2,000 new homes every year in Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Greenwich, Hounslow, Newham, Southwark, and Tower Hamlets). This includes high concentration developments in locations with good public transport access levels (PTALs), particularly inner London boroughs. Outer London boroughs might see a relaxation of planning regulations to allow more “in-fill” developments including building on back gardens as the Conservatives promptly complained about. There will be more encouragement for smaller builders, more efficient building techniques and “proactive” intervention in London’s land market (more “compulsory purchase” perhaps).

One aspect of transport infrastructure that the London Plan covers is that of parking provision for new housing, office or shop developments. It wants most developments to be “car free” (i.e. no parking provision), particularly those with high PTAL levels. The details of what this means in practice are not clear, but it looks like the intention is to reduce parking provision substantially, thus resulting in more on-street parking and obstruction.

The Mayor concludes his near 500-page tome on the subject of the “Funding Gap”. By this he means the gap between the public sector funding required to support London’s growth (and his plans) and the money currently committed. In other words, he wants more money, including a bigger share of taxation collected from Londoners. For example, he repeats his call for control of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) which any right-thinking person should surely oppose. Yes the Mayor wants more money and more power. Unfortunately the establishment of directly elected Mayors such as Mr Khan has resulted in empire building of the worst kind. They are effectively dictators within their realms with no effective democratic constraints on their policies and negligible public accountability.

In summary, it is not clear that the building of lots of new homes (which of course will emit more pollutants, particularly during constructions, more than offsetting any reduction from restraining car use), of a fairly low standard in dense conurbations, is going to improve the quality of life for Londoners. It is undoubtedly the case that more new homes are needed in London but building new homes without complementary improvements to the transport infrastructure, which has consistently lagged behind the growth in London’s population, does not make much sense.

As is already seen in the statistics, older London residents are moving out and being replaced by immigrants. Some readers might wish to consider doing the same given the outlook for the quality of life in London. Simply reacting to the population growth in London without trying to constrain it, or divert it elsewhere, is surely a mistake.

You can submit your comments on the London Plan to the public consultation by going here: https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/planning/london-plan/new-london-plan/comment-draft-london-plan . Please be sure to do so.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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The Disabled and the Mayor’s Transport Strategy

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As readers will probably be aware, we have been running a campaign against London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Transport Strategy for some months (see http://www.freedomfordrivers.org/against-mts.htm ). It has been remarkable that a large number of the responses came from disabled people, or those caring for them. Below is one example of a letter sent to the Mayor on this topic. 

Subject: objection to tyrannical taxes

Dear Mr Khan,

I wish to object to your Stalinist policies intended to impose even more taxation on already monumentally taxed motorists driving in London. Can I remind you that in this country it is not yet a criminal offence to be a motorist, and your treatment of them as virtual criminals is a scandal.

My wife is disabled and moving around for us has become a nightmare in London. Successive ideologically obsessed, national and London Mayoral governments have ramped up the difficulties of driving in London and have imposed punitive measures on anyone who has the audacity not to walk or ride a bike or travel on the dysfunctional public transport system.

Do you, Mr Khan, intend to make life even more difficult for disabled people like my wife, as well as for millions of able-bodied people whose lives are not so cushioned as yours?  How would that look on the election posters?

Soviet style dictats which sneer at democracy are imposed without regard for those whom governments are supposed to serve.  Public opinion is swept aside in a cynical, Stalinist, totalitarian, environmental policy, in the formulating of which hardly any rigorous scientific expertise has been used – merely the intolerant, doctrinal posturing and ignorant polemic of bullies.

You are supposed to represent ALL Londoners, not merely your tiny political clique and your sycophantic fan-base in the East End.  A majority of London taxpayers live outside your exclusive and introspective inner-city bubble; do their interests not count?  Or are they just tax-fodder?  There is a fundamental democratic principle which seems to have escaped you – ‘No taxation without representation’.  It is the principle on which Americans parted company from Britain.  You certainly don’t represent me, a London taxpayer, and I suspect there are many others who would say the same.

If I’m wrong, Mr Khan, challenge me – though I doubt you will consider a mere taxpayer worthy of an answer.  I know what I expect from the London Soviet, but I’m quite prepared to admit I’m wrong if you can demonstrate that you are a democrat.  If you aren’t a totalitarian, Mr Khan, then come and talk to me – and millions like me in London who are sick of Soviet government.

I’ve thrown down the gauntlet and all that remains is to see whether you have the honour, the sense of democratic obligation and the justice to pick it up.  I await your reply.

Yours sincerely, Peter Newsham

<END>

We will advise readers if any response is received, but I doubt there will be one of any substance.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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National, and London Infrastructure, Both Deplorable

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Just to emphasise how bad the transport infrastructure is in this country, and particularly in London, here are some recent comments from Lord Adonis, Chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission (a think-tank set up by the Government to advise it).

He said traffic speeds in London had fallen dramatically over the past five years and in much of the City were lower than in 1914. In addition, between 2012 and 2015, speeds on inner London roads fell by up to 9% (and that’s before the full impact of the Cycle Superhighways).

Another example is that overcrowding on rail services in London was up by 45% between 2011 and 2016.

He especially pressed the need to address “perhaps the most serious infrastructure failure of all” and reach a firm decision on expanding Heathrow Airport – an issue yet to be resolved 13 years after the initial statement of policy for a third runway.

He effectively suggested that without action the UK faced gridlock accompanied by worsening air quality and that “we’ve got to get real about tackling congestion and with it, air pollution….”.

Comment: There are two things that are required to solve these problems: a) Government commitment and real action rather than more debate; b) sensible plans that might improve matters rather than political gestures that talk about making “London’s streets places for active travel and social interaction….” which is the key foundation of Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London Transport Strategy. That has little to do with improving the transport network for the efficient movement of goods and people which is what it should really be for.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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Transport Costs in London – A Begging Letter from the Mayor

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The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has recently published a document entitled “Transport expenditure in London” (from the GLA Economics Current Issues Note 54). It claims to be an analysis of how much money is spent on transport in London in comparison with other parts of the country. But in reality it repeatedly simply argues that London needs more. Unfortunately, the facts presented, which is useful information in many ways, actually tend to show that London is already very well funded as regards rail transport, but that the road system has been neglected of late. Here are some of the key points from the document:

It says “Comparing regions based on how much transport expenditure they receive on its own or on a per head basis does not properly account for the need or demand for transport” (page 2). It suggests that rather than using a “per head” basis, it should be on a “per user” basis and proceeds to say “On this basis, the amount spent on railways per passenger journey and the amount spent on roads per 1 million vehicle miles in London were one of the lowest among the GB regions.”  

Now there are of course many more “commuters” who travel into London by train and other public transport on a daily basis than you get in the other major UK cities, let alone in the more rural areas. In addition many of these journeys in London involved multiple stages, i.e. separate trips, including changes of mode, which they are probably counting as separate journeys because they are otherwise difficult to measure. So they are selecting a measure that favours their argument.

In addition, they say that “In particular, London has seen the largest decline in road expenditure per 1 million vehicle miles since 2007-08”. Well one can quite believe that when London has had minimal expenditure on roads while cities like Birmingham have greatly improved their road networks in recent years.

They do point out that the number of passengers using public transport in London at peak hours far exceeds that of other major cities but their table of numbers of trips by mode shows that almost as many get made by car as by bus/tram and they are more than double those by rail. Mr Khan wants to change that of course, and the Mayor, and his cycling mad predecessor, have been increasing the number of cycle trips but they are still a small fraction of those by other modes (see page 9).

The report gives some figures on public sector expenditure by region, and London receives 29% of all of it, plus another 11% is spent in the South-East. The North-West is the next biggest at 11%. This just shows how much more subsidies, both capital and current expenditure, is spent in London and the South-East than the rest of the country – but the Mayor would like even more! See page 12.

In terms of expenditure per head, London is about twice as high as any other region and amounts to about £981 in 2015-2016 per head. To look at this a different way, the expenditure per passenger journey on the railways in London was approximately £6.94 in 2015-16. Bearing in mind that most rail trips within London probably cost less than £7 you can see how massive these subsidies are (i.e. more than 100%).

The rest of Great Britain gets even bigger rail subsidies per trip at £10.30, but one has to bear in mind that many such trips would be much longer and more expensive.

In terms of road expenditure per region per user, London is relatively high but Scotland is even higher (see page 21). But London’s has been declining and has “one of the lowest spends per vehicle mile in Great Britain”.

Page 25 of the report also gives a useful breakdown of “Sources of Funding for Transport for London”. Some 47% comes from fares, 25% from central Government grants (i.e. out of taxes), 17% from borrowing, and 11% from “other income” (that would include the Congestion and LEZ charges). So Londoners get a subsidy equivalent to 53% for public transport. But this report argues Londoners pay proportionally more for its own infrastructure investments in comparison to other regions.

The recently published Mayor’s Transport Strategy argued that public transport users subsidise car drivers. On the data contained in this report, that is clearly nonsense. Public transport users are massively subsidised and the Mayor is asking for even more. See here for more information on that and how you can object: http://www.freedomfordrivers.org/against-mts.htm

The full report on Transport Expenditure in London is present here:

https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/transportexpenditure_final_cin54.pdf

Roger Lawson