Good day my good friend.

I’ve got a confession to make. I ran out of time for this newsletter this week, so this one is going to be shorter than normal. I simply ran out of time and the energy to write something lengthy. Let’s hope the long weekend helps to recharge the batteries.

Speaking of the long weekend, a public service announcement. It is a public holiday in the UK on Monday, so no newsletter on Monday. Normal service will be resumed on Wednesday.

Mobility Camp is back, and the number one transport unconference is heading to York on Friday 20th September. Book your tickets now!  🎫

I have co-authored a book on Mobility-as-a-Service, which is a comprehensive guide on this important new transport service. It is available from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and now Amazon. 📕

😐 Another day, another strategy

Two days ago, a report was published called the Rail and Urban Transport Review. Commissioned by the Labour Party when it was in opposition and headed up by the former CEO of Siemens no less, the assessment is essentially a stock take on how transport investment (doesn’t) work in the UK. Based on a call for evidence, it comes up with a series of recommendations for making things better. Most of which are pretty reasonable. But it is the first one that interests me specifically. Namely:

A Bold Long-term Vision and Ambition for Transport Infrastructure: An ambitious national transport strategy to increase journeys by public transport, walking, and cycling by 2035, and to double the mode share of rail within a decade.

Lots of people have called for similar things over the years – namely a national transport strategy for England, maybe even the UK. The House of Commons Transport Committee has been accepting evidence into Strategic Transport Objectives.

To me, this is all beside the point. A National Transport Strategy is fine as a guiding document for investment, and is probably needed. Strategy is necessary to provide a strategic justification for what you do. But what it runs the risk of doing is being yet another strategy document.

The problem that the UK faces is not just a lack of a strategy, or any kind of long term thinking. It is a lack of doing things which is the challenge, and without doing things your strategy is worthless. And here, our delivery structures in the UK are almost set up to obstruct delivery. Just off the top of my head:

• Road and rail have 5 year spending periods at the national level through the Road Investment Strategy (National Highways) and Railway Control Periods (Network Rail). These are for single organisations controlled by government, no matter how much government tries to convince you that Network Rail and National Highways can do their own thing.
• Active Travel and local transport has to bid for occasional funds, and gets the Integrated Transport Block allocated to it each year, and that is usually confirmed after the financial year starts. The exception is some cities who have to bid for funding that is for 5 years.
• Some areas have Combined Authorities that have powers over transport which are different depending on the deal secured with Central Government. Many based on boundaries that are convenient rather than those that make sense. Just look at the Wikipedia page on Combined Authorities and Combined County Authorities, and at the deals in development to see the insanity of this.
• Where you have County Councils and District Councils, you have a split of powers. The Districts have powers over parking and taxi licencing. The County Councils have everything else.
• London is, well, London.

This not a system set up with any kind of view of long term delivery in mind. Confused responsibilities and a lack of any kind of clarity on funding (even the lack of an investment pipeline on the account of rail) makes it practically impossible for anyone to have any kind of confidence to invest in infrastructure in the UK. Currently, we deliver things DESPITE all of this.

To be fair to the report, it does highlight that issues of governance and delivery need sorting as well as a strategy, with authors (Arup) getting a pitch in on how great their framework is. What I am saying here is that those calling for a national transport strategy without the governance reforms needed to actually deliver are expecting a magic document to solve all of their problems. It won’t.

If the Labour Government wants to get things moving, it needs to do a root and branch reform of transport infrastructure delivery. The report itself suggests some national reforms, including yet another government quango focussed on National Infrastructure. To summarise what I think is needed, it is the following:

• Abolish County and District Councils and replace with County-level Unitary Authorities.
• All of the top 20 urban areas in England by population to be covered by a Combined Authority with the same transport powers as Transport for London. This covers London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Teeside (Middlesborough / Redcar / Stockton), Bristol, Bournemouth and Poole, Stoke-on-Trent, Leicester, the Wirral, Coventry, Nottingham, Bradford, Newcastle, Bolton, Brighton, Plymouth and Hull. In most cases this is changing the powers of the current combined authority, in others its setting up a new one
• All are given a general power to raise revenue in support of delivering transport infrastructure improvements.
• All transport funding is awarded on a 5 year time block

That is just for starters. But without substantial governance reform, any national transport strategy is doomed to fail.

👍 Your feedback is essential

I want to make the newsletter better. To do this, I need your feedback. Just fill in the 3 question survey form by clicking on the below button to provide me with quick feedback, that I can put into action. Thank you so much.