Comment: Driverless taxis and the madness of a 28,000 jobs claim

Regular readers will know I have an obsession with driverless cars, so you will have to forgive me going off-message on a topic that has little direct relevance to rail - although the government research money being poured into the driverless fantasy is another way that money is being diverted away from far more worthwhile schemes.

But it’s another reason to mention the complete insane press release from Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander, which spoke of Uber being allowed to run driverless cars, without a safety driver, in 2026.

It suggests that the Department for Transport is in hock to the tech brothers who are fundamentally opposed to any form of public transport.

This is despite a series of failures of projects for self-driving vehicles, ranging from the cancellation of a test of lorries being self-guided to the recent abandonment of a driverless bus service over the Forth Bridge.

Pursuing the idea of a technology which will solve transport problems may be tempting, but it is fatuous.

That is not being Luddite. Technology can make a difference, but the idea that driverless cars will become ubiquitous is a distant prospect, and the concept is unlikely to ever achieve the goals which the tech brothers claim for it.

The notion that the government can say that there will be 28,000 jobs created by 2035 by supporting driverless cars, which will in turn generate £42 billion in extra income, is just patent (and dangerous) nonsense - random figures plucked out of the air to support a fantasy.

It does not take a genius to note that if there really were to be robotaxis driving around our streets, thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of drivers would be displaced from their jobs.

So, the notion that this would be good for employment and growth makes no sense.

Therefore, the fact that the Transport Secretary can make these ludicrous claims undermines my faith that she will make rational decisions over other aspects of her role.