Little things can make a big difference
Author: Lena TochtermannDate: 01/05/2010
Publication: Public Servant
Ahead of the Election, all the main Parties have suggested proposals for funds, with their own variations on the detail. In early March Adonis scrapped the Transport Innovation Fund and launched a new Urban Challenge Fund.
The Transport Innovation Fund was too narrowly focused on congestion, which made it politically difficult to progress, particularly following Greater Manchester's decisive ‘no' vote in December 2008. The new Urban Challenge Fund is aimed at improving transport outcomes, without the requirement for congestion charging. It is much broader - spanning economic growth, health and the urban environment.
The Conservatives have plans for a similar Transport Carbon Reduction Fund, where local councils and voluntary groups can apply for funding for green travel initiatives. And the Liberal Democrats talk about a renaissance for rail, with a Rail Expansion Fund of nearly £3billion, where councils and transport authorities bid in for funding improvement and expansion projects, to encourage a switch from road to rail.
It's too soon to know how these fund proposals will work in practice. What we do know is that the size of the fiscal deficit makes for a very tight funding environment for any transport improvements. Capital budgets are always vulnerable in a spending squeeze, and even on current plans, the Treasury expects net capital investment to fall from 3.6 percent of GDP in 2009/10 to 1.3 percent in 2013/14. The next Government, faced with a forecast deficit of £163 billion for 2010/11, will seek to ring fence frontline public services in areas like health, education and policing.
But transport investment remains vitally important, and shouldn't bear the brunt of spending cuts. Businesses agree - the CBI called for the fall in capital investment to be reconsidered, and returned to 2.25 percent of GDP, to safeguard the long-term productive capacity of the economy. In this context, the key question for transport is where to invest the money available, however limited, to get the biggest impact - to improve cities' economies, help people access jobs, and support the UK's fragile recovery.
Our research shows that it is the smaller scale investments that often make the biggest impact. These shouldn't be sidetracked by the continuing political debate about the best route for High Speed Rail, airport expansion and other grand projects. The Eddington Review recommended focusing on pinchpoints and bottlenecks in cities - like reducing congestion on the Oxford Road into Manchester - as cost effective measures which have a much more immediate impact on businesses and on city residents' lives.
The recent Sustainable Travel Towns programme, trialled in Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester, showed how a relatively small investment - on average £10 per person per year can deliver real impacts. Small-scale, practical measures, like promotion of walking and cycling, better travel information, and support for personal, workplace and school travel planning lead to reduced car usage, and more bus trips, cycling and walking with benefits for the economy, for public health, and for the environment.
The Department for Transport estimates that this small programme had a benefit-cost ratio of around 4.5. And, importantly, these projects aren't as difficult to sell to the public as congestion charging.
To maximise the impact of transport investments, they mustn't be seen in isolation from other key policy areas. The proposals for an Urban Challenge Fund stressed the need to integrate planning and transport policy. We've seen the problems that this lack of integration can cause in many cities and city regions in the UK. In Tyne and Wear, many out of town employment centres, like the MetroCentre in Gateshead, and the Doxford and Cobalt Business Parks outside Sunderland and North Tyneside, have hampered the revitalisation of the city centres.
Better integrated transport planning can also support employment. When the Chamber of Commerce in St Helens worked in partnership with the Council and Merseytravel, Arriva agreed to run services to the Haydock Industrial Estate - one of the Borough's largest employers - that matched workers shift patterns, increasing patronage, and helping employers fill labour shortages.
The next Government will need to focus the limited resources available for capital investment on the schemes and do more to integrate transport with other policy areas, particularly with planning and employment, and increasingly with efforts to create ‘greener' cities.
The future for urban transport investment is currently unclear. While the major parties are committed to continuing to improve transport networks, they also agree that government spending will be reduced.
Whatever the detail of the fund the next Government creates for transport, efforts to rein in public spending mustn't prevent targeted and effective small-scale investments. These will be essential to strengthen the economy in the recovery.
A version of this article first appeared in Public Servant.
