Reeves talks of ‘growth’ but pays lip service to the railway

I am a member of the Labour party. Indeed, I was a parliamentary candidate in a by-election in 2016 and tried to become an MP until recently.

However, after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ exposition of Labour plans in her recent speech, the chances of me remaining a paid-up member hang by a cotton thread.

I do not mention this lightly. I have been a party member through thick and thin for decades, although I did depart over the Iraq war and later rejoin.

But Reeves’ speech showed a depth of ignorance and lack of attention to transport (and other policies) which made me consider joining the Greens or the Lib Dems, or choosing political agnosticism.

Reeves did not say much about transport, except to focus specifically on three major schemes across the various modes, as well as referring to a few minor ones.

Transport, as all readers of RAIL know, is a policy area that has been much neglected over the years despite its fundamental importance to the health of the economy. Transport, as I say in many of my talks, is not about transport - it’s about the environment, the economy, social cohesion, and much more. It is the glue that binds us together.

Our chancellor, however, in her obsession with growth, wants to do what many of her predecessors have attempted, which is to have more of every form of transport.

This is, of course, delusional. We know after more than a century of focus on the motor car that building more roads simply attracts more traffic and fails to resolve congestion.

When I first started writing about transport in the 1990s, a report called SACTRA (Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Appraisal) had just been issued, showing that adding roads or lanes to existing ones was counterproductive because of the extra induced demand.

That is clear in many American cities, where eight-, ten- or even 12-lane highways have been built in stages over time, yet congestion soon returns like the little beasties in a game of Whackamole.

And yet, first up in Reeves’ big new schemes was the Lower Thames Crossing, a £9 billion scheme to (apparently) relieve congestion on the Dartford crossing.

This seems to run counter to Labour’s initial policy towards road schemes, as soon after the election it scrapped a group of very expensive projects - notably the controversial tunnel on the A303 next to Stonehenge.

At the time, the Lower Thames Crossing decision was delayed until March, but the feeling among transport planners was that it was next for the chop. Certainly, the arguments against it are strong.

Reeves did not definitively endorse the scheme, but she clearly indicated support for it. Yet not only is this an enormous project whose cost will undoubtedly continue to rise, it runs completely counter to the idea that transport must be more sustainable.

The idea that this can be funded by the private sector through some sort of private finance initiative seems to suggest she wants to return to the bad old days of the previous Labour government, where numerous such schemes have ended up placing a permanent burden on public sector finances.

There is no magic money tree for such schemes. Already, London is about to discover this with the opening in April of the £2.2bn Silvertown Tunnel, which will charge tolls but with any shortfall having to be made up by Transport for London.

Note, too, that the bulk of traffic for the Dartford Tunnel is local, with shoppers popping across the Thames to Bluewater or Lakeside, whereas the new crossing is being sold on the notion that it is mainly for trucks going to and coming from the continent.

In fact, according to Transport Action Network, the crossing (when open) will merely provide about five years’ relief of the Dartford Crossing, precisely because it will induce more people onto the roads.

Most important, the Lower Thames Crossing will have a negative impact on the potential for transferring freight to rail, as it will effectively undermine its economic case.

The Transport Action Network, which ran a fringe meeting at the recent Labour East annual conference in Southend, is working on producing a series of rail alternatives to the road, both for freight and passengers.

On aviation, the Chancellor seemed to suggest it was open season for expanding airports across the UK, irrespective of the fact that flying is a major source of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Specifically, and unforgivably, she restarted the Heathrow Third Runway bandwagon, which had been stalled for more than a decade and even declared dead by most commentators. But now Rachel ‘Growth’ Reeves wants it built because it will be a great boost to the country.

Never mind the environment, the fact that the North Pole was 20°C above the norm a couple of days after her announcement, and that we are supposed to be aiming for Net Zero. And never mind the newts and the bats, let alone the people in the way. Turn off your heating, everyone, so that we can get more flights to China.

Except, the number one user of the runway was, in its previous incarnation, expected to be easyJet. And there is no reason to think that it will be any different in 2040, or whenever it might conceivably be finished.

But rest easy. It doesn’t take Mystic Wolmar to say it won’t be built.

It was noticeable that even the Greens could hardly get exercised about the plan, because they know full well that the third runway will never stand up to detailed scrutiny.

Moreover, Reeves got a big detail wrong, suggesting that it would be the first full-length runway to be built in the UK since the 1940s when Manchester’s second one was completed in 2001.

She also implied that the plan was environmentally acceptable owing to the use of sustainable aviation fuel, but she must know that this is nonsense.

The fuel is not only in very limited supply (it mainly comes from used cooking oil, and there are simply not enough fish and chip shops to provide for the world’s aviation needs), it is also far more expensive than conventional kerosene. Sustainable aviation is an oxymoron which only fools morons (listen to episode 2/9 of my podcast Calling All Stations for a debunking of the concept).

And then, almost as an afterthought, Reeves mentioned railways. Nothing new for us there.

Did you know that Wigan-Bolton is being electrified? Well, that was first announced by Andrew Adonis a decade and a half ago.

And that the line between Oxford and Cambridge is being revived? Well, since that is half under construction and has long been given the go-ahead, that is not exactly news either. OK, work on the station on the East Coast Main Line will be speeded up, but that was of little cheer.

It was, as ever, one of those speeches by politicians which says we want a bit of everything. There was no insight, no strategy, just a bunch of ideas which she thinks will be best for ‘growth’, with little consideration of the need to choose between modes to ensure the best environmental outcomes.

Now, where’s my Labour membership card, so I can consider whether to tear it up? Blast, it’s plastic…