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Failings in U.K. transport planning
Failings
in U.K.
Transport
Planning
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Failings in U.K. Transport Planning
This discussion of British Government policy on transport, highlights the absence of a coherent strategic plan as a guideline for individual decision-making. Without this framework and a recognition of the close connection between transport and land use planning. conventional methods of project appraisal produce an unsatisfactory piecemeal transport system. As an example, the 1973 Channel Tunnel proposals are examined and found inappropriate for either of the main possible directions of progress sketched out.
Transport Planning Now ‘Transport projects involve sinking money in expensive capital investments, which have a long life and wide repercussions.‘l This characteristic of durable infrastructure involving long construction times means that transport planning is almost inevitably of a long term nature, particularly with respect to the appraisal of major projects. Decisions taken now will have an effect lasting for generations, just as the railway network we have today is essentially a legacy of Victorian ‘railway mania’. It is therefore distressing to witness the lack of strategic vision that characterizes the published views of successive governments on transport matters. The last decade has seen an upsurge in nominal strategic planning, with the Transport Act of 1968 designed to ensure co-ordination in planning of public and private sectors, road and rail, and local planning developments requiring local authorities and joint planning teams to produce a succession of Development Plans, Strategic Plans, Structure Plans and so on (many of which were disrupted by the local government re-organization of 1974). Now we have the Transport Policy Consultation Document,2 a not-even-Green Paper giving the government’s thoughts on development of the transport services, which has run into a storm of criticism since its publication last Easter, not least from the Labour Parry itself. The problem with all these documents is that they arc basically derived from what might be termed macro*Since writing this paper at the University of Lancaster, has joined Atkins Planning, Epson, Surrey.
the author
tactical inspiration. This is the line of thought that extrapolates from current palliatives to ever more grandiose schemes to improve travel conditions. Thus if traffic growth in a provincial town justifies the building of a by-pass in the next 5 years, so the projected strangulation of the capital city by motor vehicles is seen as necessitating the construction of a three-ring motorway network by the year 2000. Similarly the expansion of cross-Channel traffic in the sixties is taken to imply that such a high proportion of the population will be holidaying abroad in 20 or 30 years time that the ferries would sink and a fixed link is therefore required. Furthermore, the planning is frequently distorted by the financial interests of the body concerned. Thus the Greater London Development Plan and the Strategic Plan for the South East are diametrically opposed on policy concerning industry and the associated transport demand. The GLC wishes to retain substantial industrial activity within Greater London, largely to maintain its rates base, while the South East Plan sees no justification for this on planning grounds, except for the City and its essential service functions. Project appraisal
When it comes to the assessment of major projects, mostly financed by central government, the concept of return on capital investment has taken a long time to die. The 1963 Channel Tunnel proposals3 introduced discounted cash flow analysis to determine the viability of a fixed link, while in an unofficial paper Foster and Beesley had a tentative stab at cost-benefit analysis in evaluating the returns from building the Victoria Line.4 They concluded that ‘benefits accruing to transport users from investment in improving urban transport are greater than are indicated by purely financial calculations’, but were forced to admit that ‘some categories of benefit and cost are excluded because we could think of no way of valuing them at present’. A major step forward in government attitude was marked by the setting up of the Roskill Commission to consider the Third London Airport, one of the most comprehensive cost-benefit analyses ever: remarkably. even then the findings were rejected on the grounds of an overriding but unquantifiable environmental advantage associated with Mapiin (Foulness).
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In the main, it has proved very difficult to attribute monetary costs to environmental damage, accident rates and other intangibles. Little better are estimates of the value of time-source of much contention in the Third London Airport study.5 Further, the correct approach of including as a cost the opportunity cost of losing alternative uses of the assets tied up has only been applied over a very narrow range of choices. The Roskill Commission was not asked to consider whether a third London airport was a better way of spending money than, say, a Maplin seaport, better schools, improved health facilities or tax cuts. Similarly the cost-benefit comparison of road improvement projects is made within a predetermined overall budget, the size of which is not subject to this kind of analysis. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to take decisions such as that to go ahead with the Fleet Line-which has been described as unjustifiable on conventional cost-benefit grounds-provided they form part of a coherent transport strategy. This, however, seems to be lacking. It is inevitable that some intuitive assessment of major projects will have to supplement cost-benefit analyses and other indicators of performance. As in most long range exercises, there are four stages that should be adopted in this review: (1) Identify objectives and current shortfalls. (2) Identify alternative strategies to meet these deficiencies. (3) Predict the outcome of following these strategies. (4) Compare the predictions with the objectives, modifying strategies as necessary to find that which gives the closest fit. Stage (3) is a mostly technical field, which has been receiving much study in recent years with the development of ever more sophisticated forecasting models for determining demand levels, modal splits, etc. The foundation for most of this work, however, is what has been termed ‘trend planning’; the practice of projecting car ownership and usage figures, population drift etc., over the next 10, 20 or 30 years and using these as indicators of the requirement for transport facilities. This is a practice that has historically proved unreliable, yet underpins most government transport policy, right through to the latest Green Paper. The issue was brought forcibly to public notice recently at the Aire valley motorway enquiry, at which a strong challenge was made to the Department of the Environment’s traffic forecasts, both for unreliability and, more importantly, for assumptions of immutability. Although to some extent the traffic generation effect of motorways has been recognized, most major road schemes are still presented as necessary because of a major growth in vehicular traffic which would otherwise have to be accommodated on the existing road network. As objectors to London’s motorway box pointed out, however, this is not an inevitable process; ‘if nothing is done to increase the capacity of London’s roads the annual growth in traffic will gradually slow down and may eventually cease . . . this process has already been fully experienced in Central Londoncertainly not for lack of demand but simply for lack of
1977 road capacity, reinforced by parking controls. Central London does not appear to be declining as a result’. The problem is ‘not just a matter of simply attempting to meet the demand for transport whenever and wherever it occurs, but rather of distinguishing between that which should be met and that which should bc restrained’.8 This is where the strategic view is lacking. The forecasting is probably reasonably good, and is certainly the best available, on the basis of the underlying assumptions of continuation of current trends in demand and freedom of choice. However, there is no imagination in composing radical alternatives to the present strategy of following trends, so that society can organize itself in such a way as to control its transport requirement. Only if such choices are presented for consideration can a meaningful transport strategy be arrived at. Above all, what is needed is a clear perception of what transport isfor.
The Need for Transport Since the problem is one of definition of objectives, analysis should start from a basic question: why do we need a transport system at all? From an economic viewpoint, ‘the function of transport is to move people or commodities from where they are to where they would prefer to be or to where their relative value is greater’? Transport hardly ever represents an end in itself: it is the means of overcoming spatial separation. On examination we can identify four main classifications of transport need : (1) Raw materials, semi-manufactures and components to manufacturing/processing industries. (2) Finished goods to consumers. (3) Commuters to offices, factories and other places of employment, and commercial journeys. (4) Leisure travel. The distribution of the raw materials required to maintain today’s standard of living is quite scattered, and mainlv unalterable. Likewise some destinations of recreakional journeys must be taken as fixed-it would not be possible, for example, to move the Lake District to Manchester (although it would be quite feasible, in the long term, to get Mancunians to live in the Lake District, albeit at an environmental cost). The other two principal determinants of demand, however-the locations of homes and of workplaces-are to some extent amenable to limitation or control, and should be considered as variables in any long-term appraisal of transport policy. ‘The pattern of demand for transport is wholly determined by the location of population, employment and other activities throughout the planning is inarea’,6 and because of this transport herently bound up with land use planning, both in terms of the actual volume of demand and in the mode of transport system by which this demand is met. Tlte plant&q context If people live far from their workplaces and families, and consume goods from many different and distant
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Failings sources, then a high degree of mobility will be required and heavy demands made on the transport system. On the other hand, small self-contained communities can get by with little transport provision, as indeed was necessarily the case before technological advance replaced animal power. Since transport produces no inherent benefit the advantages (if any) accruing to the former option must lie with an increased choice of goods giving a higher material standard of living, and a greater freedom in choice of employment or leisure pursuits. The distribution of demand also affects the mode of transport because of the widely differing characteristics of the various possibilities. Cars and light vans are essentially personalized vehicles, occupying (relatively) large amounts of space but catering for individual isolated demand lines. Railways, heavy lorries on motorways (to which they should be confined) and, to a lesser extent, bus services require a dense demand corridor to become viable, but are able to serve densely concentrated urban communities, office centres or factory complexes which act as focal points for trip demands, where more personalized conveyances would cause an unacceptable degree of congestion. The ‘transport problem’ we see around us derives from two opposing and barely-controlled forces in geographical planning today. On one hand, industry is moving towards larger and more specialized units, which inevitably means serving a wider area from each centre, seeking ‘economies of scale’ which rarely take into account the full social costs of the distribution system. This movement is exacerbated by a planning orthodoxy demanding land-use assignments that segregate residential, industrial and recreational areas, so creating peak flows from one to another. At the same time, there is a popular movement back towards a widely scattered population; those who can afford it moving out from the cities to take rural communities, while those who cannot are decanted by slum clearance to new town ‘neighbourhoods’. A clash between these two movements is unavoidable when the scattered populace converge in their cars on a single focus. For ‘although cars are a blessing when in the hands of only a few people, they become an unworkable proposition when multiplied indefinitely in densely built-up cities’.s Where do we go from here? Once this background has been realized, it becomes possible to start compiling meaningful and self-consistent alternative strategies. The central decision is the determination of the degree of centralization we should aim for. On the one hand, we can follow the population drift by dispersing jobs also, to stem the tides of commuters that currently ebb and flow into the main cities and towns. It becomes possible to allow the use of cars and vans unchecked because trip distances are reduced, many of them to walking or cycling distance where the car is voluntarily left behind. ‘Planning permission should be freely given to shops amongst and within houses, and not at all to out-of-town drive-in shopping centres.‘O This is in some ways the ideal aimed at by
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the new towns programme, but the planning taboos requiring a shopping area, an industrial area and so forth have marred the theory, creating peaks in travel demand at a few nodal points. Although it is obviously unpleasant to live under the shadow of a large steel or chemical works, the dispersion of of&es and certain types of industry, particularly in small units, through residential districts would help to balance traf3ic flows on a two-way basis and ease the five o’clock traffic jams as everyone goes home at once. A dispersion of this type does involve some constraints. While many rail services would probably wither and die, and buses would tend to be replaced by dial-a-bus or hire car services, the distribution of goods would have to be reduced to the same scale by severe restrictions on juggernauts, although planning controls limiting distribution to small local depots would probably have the same effect indirectly. Motorway building should be curtailed, and resources transferred to making less spectacular improvements more generally across the road network. The advantages of such a future would be a revival of the neighbourhood concept, with activities concentrated in local communities; less obvious restriction of freedom to travel, by providing facilities close at hand to remove the desire for transport: and improved environmental conditions by the reduction in heavy long-distance traffic. However, the scale of industrial activity would have to be reduced, in order to bring jobs and goods closer to the people, which could cause an increase in costs entailing a reduction in the material standard of living. This need not be an unmitigated disaster, however: ‘Bigger is better is an administrative ideal, not a democratic one’: and large organizations frequently engender a sense of remoteness with consequent loss of job satisfaction. It is plausible that the return of industry to a local scale could revive a pride in craftsmanship that seems lacking on production lines. The alternative scenario is to maintain a centralized economy, so that, for example, London retains the City finance sector, a retailing district, theatreland, and other single-use areas. The problem is then one of redesigning residential communities to allow reasonable service to be maintained by public transport, together with stringent curbs on the use of private vehicles, particularly for commuting. A strong radial bias is presupposed, in order to make best use of existing infrastructure; homes should be clustered near to railway stations and busway access points so that public transport is in easy reach, and goods can be brought in by rail or by restricted-use express way. Open-access urban motorways, a recent favourite solution, would bc catastrophic, certainly near citv centres, because of the destruction involved in building them and the consequences for secondary roads and bus services; the vicious circle of increasing fares and declining passenger usage that we see now is due to a failure to recognize the essential part that public city transport plays in enablin, v a centrally-oriented structure to survive, and to take suffcient measures to protect ir.
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A strong regional motorway system is, however, useful as a distribution artery from centralized production facilities. Industrial plants and distribution depots should be sited near railway sidings and motorway junctions to allow quick and efficient bulk movement of stocks. Thus the advantages of production and transport in large quantities can be realised, in financial terms and in saving of materials and energy. It is possible for most of the population to have access to a wider choice of entertainments etc., than would be available on a local basis. but at a cost in travelling time, and to some extent in convenience in having to use public transport for many journeys. The present system combines the worst of both worlds, with cars crowding one another out of effectiveness in meeting transport demand, but at the same time killing off all other provisions for travel. Unless the strategic decision is taken to head for either a car-based society, with the host of planning changes that will necessarily follow, or the clamping down of private vehicle usage to secure the future of public transport, then strategic planning will continue to be a piecemeal process of taking forecasts of traffic demand by extrapolation and endeavouring to smooth away the worst effects by expedient palliatives.
A Case Study: The Channel
Tunnel
As an example of the confusion which the absence of strategic direction brings to the formulation and appraisal of major transport projects, it would be hard to better the Channel Tunnel. This reappeared under the spotlight of public attention in 1973, in the midst of the sup osed new awareness of strategic planning. A series o 4 surveys and investigations from the Working Group’s report in 19633 through the sixties and early seventies confirmed the technical feasibility of its construction, and the debate, sparked off by GreenlO and Whitell Papers in the spring and autumn of 1973 centred on the transport issue of whether the traffic benefits were worthwhile, and sufficient to offset the probable environmental disruption involved.
The 1973 proposals The evidence of need follows the depressingly familiar pattern of trend assessment: ‘There has been a massive growth of traffic between the U.K. and the Continent in recent years . . . there are no signs of any slow down to grow’-no . . . total traffic is expected to continue doubt following the accompanying vague graph line in the Green Paper. This traffic forecast is immediately taken as inevitable, without consideration of whether or not it is desirable or of any means of stimulating or controlling demand. The mam evidence submitted for consideration is an incomplete cost-benefit study by consultants of just two possible ways of meeting this growth, a tunnel or expanded ferry services. The most conspicuous absence in all the government’s published thoughts is any sign of a normative approach to the question. The construction of a tunnel could be
1977 expected to have significant effects on trade, on business and political contacts internationally, as well as on the holiday trade. In each case the change could be beneficial or detrimental to the U.K., but the only real mention of any of these considerations is an aside that diversion of package tour traffic is not expected to have a significant effect on the case for a Third London Airport at Maplin. The White Paper even proudly announces: ‘There would be no discrimination between road and rail’, without questioning whether such discrimination is desirable or necessary. In fact even this claim is not borne out by the content of the ensuing paragraphs, and it is in this we see the true import of the government’s proposals. As Bromhead points out,12 the tunnel scheme includes a new high-speed rail connection to London, but little other railway development on either side of the Channel to readjust to a major new link in the European rail network. Rail developments seem to be the Cinderella of the scheme, included in the Green Paper almost as an afterthought: ‘The government and the Board of British Rail are considering the rail network for services using the Tunnel . . . Fast and regular services from London would clearly be a prime these would require a new Continental attraction; terminal. It should be easily accessible to potential travellers, with good connections for those continuing their journeys within London, or elsewhere . . . Through rail services would of course be expanded if demand required’. No one seems to know who these ‘potential travellers’ are, where they wish to go or why they are travelling at all, despite all the elaborate modelling of demand. The raii link proposal took a more definite form in the subsequent White Paper, but when a new Government took of&e it was soon dropped, hardly surprisingly, as a prelude to the eventual standstill on the whole project. In contrast, the ferry service is already clearly conceived by the Green Paper, with the terminal locations and layouts already mapped out. ‘A frequent shuttle service of drive on/drive off ferry trains . . . They would carry cars in doubledeck wagons or in singledeckers which could also carry coaches, caravans and similar vehicles . . . Road vehicles would be driven on and off the ferry trains by their own drivers, after passing through customs and immigration within the terminals . . . There would be a frequent and reliable service . . . trains could run at least every 4 minutes at peak periods . . . Studies are being made of the dimensions of road vehicles likely to use the Tunnel. These affect the size of the rolling stock needed to carry them, and hence the size of the tunnel.’ It is evident which the government considers to be the real market for which the tunnel is designed-literally. It is difficult to see how claims to ‘ensure parity of treatment between potential users of through rail services and the road vehicle ferry trains’ can be substantiated if the latter are to be run as frequently as envisaged, so that ‘it is not expected that advance booking would be required’. Provision of facilities for road-on-rail traffic on such a lavish scale can offer no comparison with the meagre allowance remaining for
Failings through train services; no more than four paths in the busiest hours would be available for the latter, suffering peak demand at more-or-less the same times as peak vehicle traffic flows. Small wonder that Bromhead considers the Tunnel ‘a costly sunken car-ferry’. What we have is a classic case of government transport thought, containing elements common to many motorway schemes, development plans and so on : (i) Proposals geared to the unrestrained use of road vehicles, because trend forecasts indicate a growth of car usage and of the movement of goods by road. It is ironic that the Channel Tunnel proposals were published only months before the oil crisis of 1973/1974. (ii) A limited choice of possible developments for consideration, with no really novel proposals. The choice considered by the consultants in the cost-benefit analysis was essentially between water-borne car ferries and rail-borne car ferries. (iii) Analysis concentrated mainly on return on investment. The Channel Tunnel White Paper, at 75 pages a modest document for such a large project, concludes policies and machinery complacently that ‘existing should be capable of controlling any influx of office and manufacturing employment’ to Kent and the SouthEast, and proceeds to ignore the topic in evaluating the Tunnel. (iv) Seemingly no reference at all to European policy, to the political aspects of energy use, or to the possible value of major projects as an instrument of control of transport in quantity or quality in society at large. The Tunnel in a strategic transport plan Now consider how this would change if there was a truly strategic transport policy. It has been argued above that there are two incompatible directions in which development could be planned. If the car and the lorry are to continue in the ascendant, taking over the role of principal transport medium, consistency under a rational planning system dictates a decentralized society, affecting both population and employment distribution, if city life is not to become intolerable. Travel demands, international as well as domestic, will resemble a fine web of many different threads, since it is for this form of trip distribution that personalized transport modes are best suited. In this case, it is nonsensical to concentrate cross-Channel traffic into a single corridor. The logical policy would be to encourage a diversity of ferry routes to the Continent, probably involving more ports than at present handle such traffic, which would provide a far more versatile and flexible service than a fixed link. The only alternative to a Tunnel considered by the government is a concentration of increased traffic onto the short sea route anyway. As the White paper comments, ‘Most of it would pass through South-East Kent. Much could be expected to use routes less suitable than the M20’. But for a diverse traffic flow, using a range of different ferry services, a multiplicity of other routes is surely more smtable than a motorway. Appropriate distributor roads from half-a-dozen or more ports would disperse traffic to a manageable level far more
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rapidly than a motorway, which maintains a concentrated stream until the exit points where congestion builds up as the mass of traffic is slowly absorbed into the old-established road system. With this view of society in the future, the proposal for any form of fixed link is at best an irrelevance, and at worst a threat of congestion worse than any experienced now. However, as the recent Transport Policy Consultation Document prints out, it is probably not feasible for car ownership to exceed 70 per cent of households in the foreseeable future, and it is clear that any future policy relying on private transport will leave substantial sections of the community immobile. More likely, then, is the restriction of car use and organization of development to ensure a continuing market for bulkhaul and mass transit systems. In this case, a fixed link across the Channel appears advantageous, but the government’s ideas on the best use of a tunnel appear irrational. European Administrations, in many cases paying more for their railway concerns than BR receives, are investing in new railway infrastructure, including high speed trains, new track and better terminals. The same treatment in Britain would act as a powerful tool in geographical and social planning; communications links are a strong factor in encouraging and directing development. A Tunnel primarily for long-distance rail traffic, specifically not allowing for 44I-ton lorries on railway wagons, would, besides being cheaper to build and run and obviating the need for vast terminals at the tunnel portals, encourage trunk haulage by rail, more containerization, and the use of through passenger services, for business and leisure travel. The road haulage lobby would no doubt protest that such proposals are ‘uneconomical’. At present, though, heavy lorries operate at an unfair advantage, being free to roam almost the entire road system, in many places causing damage to roads and buildings and a danger to other road users and pedestrians as well as being an environmental nuisance. If they were properly confined to the motorways and high-grade trunk roads designed for them, road haulage would s&r the same transshipment penalties that are held to be such a disthe economic gap. advantage to rail users, closing Similarly the White Paper considers it ‘neither feasible nor desirable to provide a ferry service from further inland’ because of the difficulty of operating the necessarily ‘very large, fast and frequent’ ferry-gauge trains, and because ‘the substantial extra costs under any such system would simply force drivers into using the sea ferry crossings.’ But the promised ‘Motorail services from a variety of centres’, just six on the map, could take over some of the traffic from the shuttle service if improved and extended to cover more destinations, combining the economy of mass transport along a concentrated desire line with the convenience of the private car for local journeys at either end. The fares structure and motoring charges could be manipulated to reflect the real costs imposed by drivers making their own way to the coast-has anyone considered the effect on Channel Tunnel traffic of a toll imposed on the M20?
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For through rail passengers and freight the proposals lack imagination too. Restraint on the use of the car and a reversal of the swing away from public transport would turn the emphasis more strongly onto through rail services. The high-speed rail link is proposed to run only as far as London, to a new station at White City whence connections would be made to other parts of the country. Because Continental rolling stock is higher and wider than that used on BR it cannot run on most lines in Britain so that only limited through services would operate to other centres, while much freight traffic would have to be transhipped to British wagons at Ashford (Kent). Although conversion of the London Midland Region electrified line northwards from London to give adequate clearances for Continental trains would be prohibitively expensive, a cheaper alternative seems to have been ignored- a connection from White City via Acton to the Western Region lines to Bristol and Birmingham. This would require far less work since the old Great Western Railway originally constructed many of its routes to generous dimensions to accommodate larger carriages, before the modem standards were settled. There is also the possibility of a link following the existing Tonbridge-Redhill-Reading line, now lightly used, right through to Reading to give direct access for Continental traffic to the West and the Midlands, avoiding London completely. So far as one can tell, however, none of these options has been seriously considered because of the Government’s preoccupation with the ‘rolling motorway’ plan.
Conclusion If there was an overall transport strategy, it would be clearer what type of demand structure it was required to serve. For problems such as the Channel crossing a selection of alternative schemes, including a wide range
of proposals like the above, could then be drawn up. These could then be evaluated by some form of costbenefit analysis, not in isolation with all else remaining unchanged, but in the context of the strategic pattern mapped out for the relevent time-period. In conjunction with an assessment of the unquantifiable intangible eifects, and the degree to which the plans meet the targets set for the whole transport network, a consistent structure should emerge with transport playing its integral role in the overall planning field. In this way it should be possible to avoid a piecemeal approach of building a stretch of motorway here, a glorified car ferry there, and achieve a realistic judgement of such projects as the Channel Tunnel as part of an overall transport system.
References
(1) D. L. Munby, Transport, Penguin Modern Economics (1968). (2) Transport Policy Consultation Document, HMSO
Parts 1 and 2.
(1976).
(3)
Proposals for a Fixed Channel Link (Cmnd. 2137), (1963).
(4)
C. D. Foster and M. E. Beesley, Estimating the social benefit of constructing an underground railway in London, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 126 (1963).
(5)
See, for example, E. J. Mishan. What is wrong with Roskill? Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 4 (1970).
(6)
J. M. Thomson and working party, on behalf of the London Amenity and Transport Association, Motorways in London, Duckworth (1969).
(7)
R. W. Faulks. Elements of Transpoti, Ian Allen (1965).
(8)
T. Bendixson, Transport: the two cities, in J. Hillman (ed.), Planning for London, Penguin (1971).
(9)
T. Bendixson, instead of Cars. Temple Smith (1974).
(10)
The Channel Tunnel Projecf (Cmnd. 5256),
HMSO
(11)
The Channel Tunnel (Cmnd. 5430). H MS0 (1973).
(12)
P. A. Bromhead, The Effect of the Channel Europe, Long Range Planning, 7 (1974).
HMSO
(1973).
Tunnel
on
in U.K.
Transport
Planning
73
Failings in U.K. Transport Planning
This discussion of British Government policy on transport, highlights the absence of a coherent strategic plan as a guideline for individual decision-making. Without this framework and a recognition of the close connection between transport and land use planning. conventional methods of project appraisal produce an unsatisfactory piecemeal transport system. As an example, the 1973 Channel Tunnel proposals are examined and found inappropriate for either of the main possible directions of progress sketched out.
Transport Planning Now ‘Transport projects involve sinking money in expensive capital investments, which have a long life and wide repercussions.‘l This characteristic of durable infrastructure involving long construction times means that transport planning is almost inevitably of a long term nature, particularly with respect to the appraisal of major projects. Decisions taken now will have an effect lasting for generations, just as the railway network we have today is essentially a legacy of Victorian ‘railway mania’. It is therefore distressing to witness the lack of strategic vision that characterizes the published views of successive governments on transport matters. The last decade has seen an upsurge in nominal strategic planning, with the Transport Act of 1968 designed to ensure co-ordination in planning of public and private sectors, road and rail, and local planning developments requiring local authorities and joint planning teams to produce a succession of Development Plans, Strategic Plans, Structure Plans and so on (many of which were disrupted by the local government re-organization of 1974). Now we have the Transport Policy Consultation Document,2 a not-even-Green Paper giving the government’s thoughts on development of the transport services, which has run into a storm of criticism since its publication last Easter, not least from the Labour Parry itself. The problem with all these documents is that they arc basically derived from what might be termed macro*Since writing this paper at the University of Lancaster, has joined Atkins Planning, Epson, Surrey.
the author
tactical inspiration. This is the line of thought that extrapolates from current palliatives to ever more grandiose schemes to improve travel conditions. Thus if traffic growth in a provincial town justifies the building of a by-pass in the next 5 years, so the projected strangulation of the capital city by motor vehicles is seen as necessitating the construction of a three-ring motorway network by the year 2000. Similarly the expansion of cross-Channel traffic in the sixties is taken to imply that such a high proportion of the population will be holidaying abroad in 20 or 30 years time that the ferries would sink and a fixed link is therefore required. Furthermore, the planning is frequently distorted by the financial interests of the body concerned. Thus the Greater London Development Plan and the Strategic Plan for the South East are diametrically opposed on policy concerning industry and the associated transport demand. The GLC wishes to retain substantial industrial activity within Greater London, largely to maintain its rates base, while the South East Plan sees no justification for this on planning grounds, except for the City and its essential service functions. Project appraisal
When it comes to the assessment of major projects, mostly financed by central government, the concept of return on capital investment has taken a long time to die. The 1963 Channel Tunnel proposals3 introduced discounted cash flow analysis to determine the viability of a fixed link, while in an unofficial paper Foster and Beesley had a tentative stab at cost-benefit analysis in evaluating the returns from building the Victoria Line.4 They concluded that ‘benefits accruing to transport users from investment in improving urban transport are greater than are indicated by purely financial calculations’, but were forced to admit that ‘some categories of benefit and cost are excluded because we could think of no way of valuing them at present’. A major step forward in government attitude was marked by the setting up of the Roskill Commission to consider the Third London Airport, one of the most comprehensive cost-benefit analyses ever: remarkably. even then the findings were rejected on the grounds of an overriding but unquantifiable environmental advantage associated with Mapiin (Foulness).
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In the main, it has proved very difficult to attribute monetary costs to environmental damage, accident rates and other intangibles. Little better are estimates of the value of time-source of much contention in the Third London Airport study.5 Further, the correct approach of including as a cost the opportunity cost of losing alternative uses of the assets tied up has only been applied over a very narrow range of choices. The Roskill Commission was not asked to consider whether a third London airport was a better way of spending money than, say, a Maplin seaport, better schools, improved health facilities or tax cuts. Similarly the cost-benefit comparison of road improvement projects is made within a predetermined overall budget, the size of which is not subject to this kind of analysis. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to take decisions such as that to go ahead with the Fleet Line-which has been described as unjustifiable on conventional cost-benefit grounds-provided they form part of a coherent transport strategy. This, however, seems to be lacking. It is inevitable that some intuitive assessment of major projects will have to supplement cost-benefit analyses and other indicators of performance. As in most long range exercises, there are four stages that should be adopted in this review: (1) Identify objectives and current shortfalls. (2) Identify alternative strategies to meet these deficiencies. (3) Predict the outcome of following these strategies. (4) Compare the predictions with the objectives, modifying strategies as necessary to find that which gives the closest fit. Stage (3) is a mostly technical field, which has been receiving much study in recent years with the development of ever more sophisticated forecasting models for determining demand levels, modal splits, etc. The foundation for most of this work, however, is what has been termed ‘trend planning’; the practice of projecting car ownership and usage figures, population drift etc., over the next 10, 20 or 30 years and using these as indicators of the requirement for transport facilities. This is a practice that has historically proved unreliable, yet underpins most government transport policy, right through to the latest Green Paper. The issue was brought forcibly to public notice recently at the Aire valley motorway enquiry, at which a strong challenge was made to the Department of the Environment’s traffic forecasts, both for unreliability and, more importantly, for assumptions of immutability. Although to some extent the traffic generation effect of motorways has been recognized, most major road schemes are still presented as necessary because of a major growth in vehicular traffic which would otherwise have to be accommodated on the existing road network. As objectors to London’s motorway box pointed out, however, this is not an inevitable process; ‘if nothing is done to increase the capacity of London’s roads the annual growth in traffic will gradually slow down and may eventually cease . . . this process has already been fully experienced in Central Londoncertainly not for lack of demand but simply for lack of
1977 road capacity, reinforced by parking controls. Central London does not appear to be declining as a result’. The problem is ‘not just a matter of simply attempting to meet the demand for transport whenever and wherever it occurs, but rather of distinguishing between that which should be met and that which should bc restrained’.8 This is where the strategic view is lacking. The forecasting is probably reasonably good, and is certainly the best available, on the basis of the underlying assumptions of continuation of current trends in demand and freedom of choice. However, there is no imagination in composing radical alternatives to the present strategy of following trends, so that society can organize itself in such a way as to control its transport requirement. Only if such choices are presented for consideration can a meaningful transport strategy be arrived at. Above all, what is needed is a clear perception of what transport isfor.
The Need for Transport Since the problem is one of definition of objectives, analysis should start from a basic question: why do we need a transport system at all? From an economic viewpoint, ‘the function of transport is to move people or commodities from where they are to where they would prefer to be or to where their relative value is greater’? Transport hardly ever represents an end in itself: it is the means of overcoming spatial separation. On examination we can identify four main classifications of transport need : (1) Raw materials, semi-manufactures and components to manufacturing/processing industries. (2) Finished goods to consumers. (3) Commuters to offices, factories and other places of employment, and commercial journeys. (4) Leisure travel. The distribution of the raw materials required to maintain today’s standard of living is quite scattered, and mainlv unalterable. Likewise some destinations of recreakional journeys must be taken as fixed-it would not be possible, for example, to move the Lake District to Manchester (although it would be quite feasible, in the long term, to get Mancunians to live in the Lake District, albeit at an environmental cost). The other two principal determinants of demand, however-the locations of homes and of workplaces-are to some extent amenable to limitation or control, and should be considered as variables in any long-term appraisal of transport policy. ‘The pattern of demand for transport is wholly determined by the location of population, employment and other activities throughout the planning is inarea’,6 and because of this transport herently bound up with land use planning, both in terms of the actual volume of demand and in the mode of transport system by which this demand is met. Tlte plant&q context If people live far from their workplaces and families, and consume goods from many different and distant
‘
Failings sources, then a high degree of mobility will be required and heavy demands made on the transport system. On the other hand, small self-contained communities can get by with little transport provision, as indeed was necessarily the case before technological advance replaced animal power. Since transport produces no inherent benefit the advantages (if any) accruing to the former option must lie with an increased choice of goods giving a higher material standard of living, and a greater freedom in choice of employment or leisure pursuits. The distribution of demand also affects the mode of transport because of the widely differing characteristics of the various possibilities. Cars and light vans are essentially personalized vehicles, occupying (relatively) large amounts of space but catering for individual isolated demand lines. Railways, heavy lorries on motorways (to which they should be confined) and, to a lesser extent, bus services require a dense demand corridor to become viable, but are able to serve densely concentrated urban communities, office centres or factory complexes which act as focal points for trip demands, where more personalized conveyances would cause an unacceptable degree of congestion. The ‘transport problem’ we see around us derives from two opposing and barely-controlled forces in geographical planning today. On one hand, industry is moving towards larger and more specialized units, which inevitably means serving a wider area from each centre, seeking ‘economies of scale’ which rarely take into account the full social costs of the distribution system. This movement is exacerbated by a planning orthodoxy demanding land-use assignments that segregate residential, industrial and recreational areas, so creating peak flows from one to another. At the same time, there is a popular movement back towards a widely scattered population; those who can afford it moving out from the cities to take rural communities, while those who cannot are decanted by slum clearance to new town ‘neighbourhoods’. A clash between these two movements is unavoidable when the scattered populace converge in their cars on a single focus. For ‘although cars are a blessing when in the hands of only a few people, they become an unworkable proposition when multiplied indefinitely in densely built-up cities’.s Where do we go from here? Once this background has been realized, it becomes possible to start compiling meaningful and self-consistent alternative strategies. The central decision is the determination of the degree of centralization we should aim for. On the one hand, we can follow the population drift by dispersing jobs also, to stem the tides of commuters that currently ebb and flow into the main cities and towns. It becomes possible to allow the use of cars and vans unchecked because trip distances are reduced, many of them to walking or cycling distance where the car is voluntarily left behind. ‘Planning permission should be freely given to shops amongst and within houses, and not at all to out-of-town drive-in shopping centres.‘O This is in some ways the ideal aimed at by
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the new towns programme, but the planning taboos requiring a shopping area, an industrial area and so forth have marred the theory, creating peaks in travel demand at a few nodal points. Although it is obviously unpleasant to live under the shadow of a large steel or chemical works, the dispersion of of&es and certain types of industry, particularly in small units, through residential districts would help to balance traf3ic flows on a two-way basis and ease the five o’clock traffic jams as everyone goes home at once. A dispersion of this type does involve some constraints. While many rail services would probably wither and die, and buses would tend to be replaced by dial-a-bus or hire car services, the distribution of goods would have to be reduced to the same scale by severe restrictions on juggernauts, although planning controls limiting distribution to small local depots would probably have the same effect indirectly. Motorway building should be curtailed, and resources transferred to making less spectacular improvements more generally across the road network. The advantages of such a future would be a revival of the neighbourhood concept, with activities concentrated in local communities; less obvious restriction of freedom to travel, by providing facilities close at hand to remove the desire for transport: and improved environmental conditions by the reduction in heavy long-distance traffic. However, the scale of industrial activity would have to be reduced, in order to bring jobs and goods closer to the people, which could cause an increase in costs entailing a reduction in the material standard of living. This need not be an unmitigated disaster, however: ‘Bigger is better is an administrative ideal, not a democratic one’: and large organizations frequently engender a sense of remoteness with consequent loss of job satisfaction. It is plausible that the return of industry to a local scale could revive a pride in craftsmanship that seems lacking on production lines. The alternative scenario is to maintain a centralized economy, so that, for example, London retains the City finance sector, a retailing district, theatreland, and other single-use areas. The problem is then one of redesigning residential communities to allow reasonable service to be maintained by public transport, together with stringent curbs on the use of private vehicles, particularly for commuting. A strong radial bias is presupposed, in order to make best use of existing infrastructure; homes should be clustered near to railway stations and busway access points so that public transport is in easy reach, and goods can be brought in by rail or by restricted-use express way. Open-access urban motorways, a recent favourite solution, would bc catastrophic, certainly near citv centres, because of the destruction involved in building them and the consequences for secondary roads and bus services; the vicious circle of increasing fares and declining passenger usage that we see now is due to a failure to recognize the essential part that public city transport plays in enablin, v a centrally-oriented structure to survive, and to take suffcient measures to protect ir.
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A strong regional motorway system is, however, useful as a distribution artery from centralized production facilities. Industrial plants and distribution depots should be sited near railway sidings and motorway junctions to allow quick and efficient bulk movement of stocks. Thus the advantages of production and transport in large quantities can be realised, in financial terms and in saving of materials and energy. It is possible for most of the population to have access to a wider choice of entertainments etc., than would be available on a local basis. but at a cost in travelling time, and to some extent in convenience in having to use public transport for many journeys. The present system combines the worst of both worlds, with cars crowding one another out of effectiveness in meeting transport demand, but at the same time killing off all other provisions for travel. Unless the strategic decision is taken to head for either a car-based society, with the host of planning changes that will necessarily follow, or the clamping down of private vehicle usage to secure the future of public transport, then strategic planning will continue to be a piecemeal process of taking forecasts of traffic demand by extrapolation and endeavouring to smooth away the worst effects by expedient palliatives.
A Case Study: The Channel
Tunnel
As an example of the confusion which the absence of strategic direction brings to the formulation and appraisal of major transport projects, it would be hard to better the Channel Tunnel. This reappeared under the spotlight of public attention in 1973, in the midst of the sup osed new awareness of strategic planning. A series o 4 surveys and investigations from the Working Group’s report in 19633 through the sixties and early seventies confirmed the technical feasibility of its construction, and the debate, sparked off by GreenlO and Whitell Papers in the spring and autumn of 1973 centred on the transport issue of whether the traffic benefits were worthwhile, and sufficient to offset the probable environmental disruption involved.
The 1973 proposals The evidence of need follows the depressingly familiar pattern of trend assessment: ‘There has been a massive growth of traffic between the U.K. and the Continent in recent years . . . there are no signs of any slow down to grow’-no . . . total traffic is expected to continue doubt following the accompanying vague graph line in the Green Paper. This traffic forecast is immediately taken as inevitable, without consideration of whether or not it is desirable or of any means of stimulating or controlling demand. The mam evidence submitted for consideration is an incomplete cost-benefit study by consultants of just two possible ways of meeting this growth, a tunnel or expanded ferry services. The most conspicuous absence in all the government’s published thoughts is any sign of a normative approach to the question. The construction of a tunnel could be
1977 expected to have significant effects on trade, on business and political contacts internationally, as well as on the holiday trade. In each case the change could be beneficial or detrimental to the U.K., but the only real mention of any of these considerations is an aside that diversion of package tour traffic is not expected to have a significant effect on the case for a Third London Airport at Maplin. The White Paper even proudly announces: ‘There would be no discrimination between road and rail’, without questioning whether such discrimination is desirable or necessary. In fact even this claim is not borne out by the content of the ensuing paragraphs, and it is in this we see the true import of the government’s proposals. As Bromhead points out,12 the tunnel scheme includes a new high-speed rail connection to London, but little other railway development on either side of the Channel to readjust to a major new link in the European rail network. Rail developments seem to be the Cinderella of the scheme, included in the Green Paper almost as an afterthought: ‘The government and the Board of British Rail are considering the rail network for services using the Tunnel . . . Fast and regular services from London would clearly be a prime these would require a new Continental attraction; terminal. It should be easily accessible to potential travellers, with good connections for those continuing their journeys within London, or elsewhere . . . Through rail services would of course be expanded if demand required’. No one seems to know who these ‘potential travellers’ are, where they wish to go or why they are travelling at all, despite all the elaborate modelling of demand. The raii link proposal took a more definite form in the subsequent White Paper, but when a new Government took of&e it was soon dropped, hardly surprisingly, as a prelude to the eventual standstill on the whole project. In contrast, the ferry service is already clearly conceived by the Green Paper, with the terminal locations and layouts already mapped out. ‘A frequent shuttle service of drive on/drive off ferry trains . . . They would carry cars in doubledeck wagons or in singledeckers which could also carry coaches, caravans and similar vehicles . . . Road vehicles would be driven on and off the ferry trains by their own drivers, after passing through customs and immigration within the terminals . . . There would be a frequent and reliable service . . . trains could run at least every 4 minutes at peak periods . . . Studies are being made of the dimensions of road vehicles likely to use the Tunnel. These affect the size of the rolling stock needed to carry them, and hence the size of the tunnel.’ It is evident which the government considers to be the real market for which the tunnel is designed-literally. It is difficult to see how claims to ‘ensure parity of treatment between potential users of through rail services and the road vehicle ferry trains’ can be substantiated if the latter are to be run as frequently as envisaged, so that ‘it is not expected that advance booking would be required’. Provision of facilities for road-on-rail traffic on such a lavish scale can offer no comparison with the meagre allowance remaining for
Failings through train services; no more than four paths in the busiest hours would be available for the latter, suffering peak demand at more-or-less the same times as peak vehicle traffic flows. Small wonder that Bromhead considers the Tunnel ‘a costly sunken car-ferry’. What we have is a classic case of government transport thought, containing elements common to many motorway schemes, development plans and so on : (i) Proposals geared to the unrestrained use of road vehicles, because trend forecasts indicate a growth of car usage and of the movement of goods by road. It is ironic that the Channel Tunnel proposals were published only months before the oil crisis of 1973/1974. (ii) A limited choice of possible developments for consideration, with no really novel proposals. The choice considered by the consultants in the cost-benefit analysis was essentially between water-borne car ferries and rail-borne car ferries. (iii) Analysis concentrated mainly on return on investment. The Channel Tunnel White Paper, at 75 pages a modest document for such a large project, concludes policies and machinery complacently that ‘existing should be capable of controlling any influx of office and manufacturing employment’ to Kent and the SouthEast, and proceeds to ignore the topic in evaluating the Tunnel. (iv) Seemingly no reference at all to European policy, to the political aspects of energy use, or to the possible value of major projects as an instrument of control of transport in quantity or quality in society at large. The Tunnel in a strategic transport plan Now consider how this would change if there was a truly strategic transport policy. It has been argued above that there are two incompatible directions in which development could be planned. If the car and the lorry are to continue in the ascendant, taking over the role of principal transport medium, consistency under a rational planning system dictates a decentralized society, affecting both population and employment distribution, if city life is not to become intolerable. Travel demands, international as well as domestic, will resemble a fine web of many different threads, since it is for this form of trip distribution that personalized transport modes are best suited. In this case, it is nonsensical to concentrate cross-Channel traffic into a single corridor. The logical policy would be to encourage a diversity of ferry routes to the Continent, probably involving more ports than at present handle such traffic, which would provide a far more versatile and flexible service than a fixed link. The only alternative to a Tunnel considered by the government is a concentration of increased traffic onto the short sea route anyway. As the White paper comments, ‘Most of it would pass through South-East Kent. Much could be expected to use routes less suitable than the M20’. But for a diverse traffic flow, using a range of different ferry services, a multiplicity of other routes is surely more smtable than a motorway. Appropriate distributor roads from half-a-dozen or more ports would disperse traffic to a manageable level far more
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rapidly than a motorway, which maintains a concentrated stream until the exit points where congestion builds up as the mass of traffic is slowly absorbed into the old-established road system. With this view of society in the future, the proposal for any form of fixed link is at best an irrelevance, and at worst a threat of congestion worse than any experienced now. However, as the recent Transport Policy Consultation Document prints out, it is probably not feasible for car ownership to exceed 70 per cent of households in the foreseeable future, and it is clear that any future policy relying on private transport will leave substantial sections of the community immobile. More likely, then, is the restriction of car use and organization of development to ensure a continuing market for bulkhaul and mass transit systems. In this case, a fixed link across the Channel appears advantageous, but the government’s ideas on the best use of a tunnel appear irrational. European Administrations, in many cases paying more for their railway concerns than BR receives, are investing in new railway infrastructure, including high speed trains, new track and better terminals. The same treatment in Britain would act as a powerful tool in geographical and social planning; communications links are a strong factor in encouraging and directing development. A Tunnel primarily for long-distance rail traffic, specifically not allowing for 44I-ton lorries on railway wagons, would, besides being cheaper to build and run and obviating the need for vast terminals at the tunnel portals, encourage trunk haulage by rail, more containerization, and the use of through passenger services, for business and leisure travel. The road haulage lobby would no doubt protest that such proposals are ‘uneconomical’. At present, though, heavy lorries operate at an unfair advantage, being free to roam almost the entire road system, in many places causing damage to roads and buildings and a danger to other road users and pedestrians as well as being an environmental nuisance. If they were properly confined to the motorways and high-grade trunk roads designed for them, road haulage would s&r the same transshipment penalties that are held to be such a disthe economic gap. advantage to rail users, closing Similarly the White Paper considers it ‘neither feasible nor desirable to provide a ferry service from further inland’ because of the difficulty of operating the necessarily ‘very large, fast and frequent’ ferry-gauge trains, and because ‘the substantial extra costs under any such system would simply force drivers into using the sea ferry crossings.’ But the promised ‘Motorail services from a variety of centres’, just six on the map, could take over some of the traffic from the shuttle service if improved and extended to cover more destinations, combining the economy of mass transport along a concentrated desire line with the convenience of the private car for local journeys at either end. The fares structure and motoring charges could be manipulated to reflect the real costs imposed by drivers making their own way to the coast-has anyone considered the effect on Channel Tunnel traffic of a toll imposed on the M20?
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For through rail passengers and freight the proposals lack imagination too. Restraint on the use of the car and a reversal of the swing away from public transport would turn the emphasis more strongly onto through rail services. The high-speed rail link is proposed to run only as far as London, to a new station at White City whence connections would be made to other parts of the country. Because Continental rolling stock is higher and wider than that used on BR it cannot run on most lines in Britain so that only limited through services would operate to other centres, while much freight traffic would have to be transhipped to British wagons at Ashford (Kent). Although conversion of the London Midland Region electrified line northwards from London to give adequate clearances for Continental trains would be prohibitively expensive, a cheaper alternative seems to have been ignored- a connection from White City via Acton to the Western Region lines to Bristol and Birmingham. This would require far less work since the old Great Western Railway originally constructed many of its routes to generous dimensions to accommodate larger carriages, before the modem standards were settled. There is also the possibility of a link following the existing Tonbridge-Redhill-Reading line, now lightly used, right through to Reading to give direct access for Continental traffic to the West and the Midlands, avoiding London completely. So far as one can tell, however, none of these options has been seriously considered because of the Government’s preoccupation with the ‘rolling motorway’ plan.
Conclusion If there was an overall transport strategy, it would be clearer what type of demand structure it was required to serve. For problems such as the Channel crossing a selection of alternative schemes, including a wide range
of proposals like the above, could then be drawn up. These could then be evaluated by some form of costbenefit analysis, not in isolation with all else remaining unchanged, but in the context of the strategic pattern mapped out for the relevent time-period. In conjunction with an assessment of the unquantifiable intangible eifects, and the degree to which the plans meet the targets set for the whole transport network, a consistent structure should emerge with transport playing its integral role in the overall planning field. In this way it should be possible to avoid a piecemeal approach of building a stretch of motorway here, a glorified car ferry there, and achieve a realistic judgement of such projects as the Channel Tunnel as part of an overall transport system.
References
(1) D. L. Munby, Transport, Penguin Modern Economics (1968). (2) Transport Policy Consultation Document, HMSO
Parts 1 and 2.
(1976).
(3)
Proposals for a Fixed Channel Link (Cmnd. 2137), (1963).
(4)
C. D. Foster and M. E. Beesley, Estimating the social benefit of constructing an underground railway in London, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 126 (1963).
(5)
See, for example, E. J. Mishan. What is wrong with Roskill? Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 4 (1970).
(6)
J. M. Thomson and working party, on behalf of the London Amenity and Transport Association, Motorways in London, Duckworth (1969).
(7)
R. W. Faulks. Elements of Transpoti, Ian Allen (1965).
(8)
T. Bendixson, Transport: the two cities, in J. Hillman (ed.), Planning for London, Penguin (1971).
(9)
T. Bendixson, instead of Cars. Temple Smith (1974).
(10)
The Channel Tunnel Projecf (Cmnd. 5256),
HMSO
(11)
The Channel Tunnel (Cmnd. 5430). H MS0 (1973).
(12)
P. A. Bromhead, The Effect of the Channel Europe, Long Range Planning, 7 (1974).
HMSO
(1973).
Tunnel
on