It is absolutely clear that any country needs to set out a clear long-term strategy if it wants to generate economic growth. A fundamental part of any long-term strategy for growth is infrastructure and, specifically, transport infrastructure.
Transport is the constant in all of our lives. Going to work or college, to the doctors or to the shops, all of our social interactions and human needs rely on our ability to get around. Likewise, businesses rely on transport for their employees and for access to services and markets, the accessibility and connectivity is a fundamental part of the deal for the location of a business. Our transport networks are critical to our experience of life, our ability to move around is fundamental to our existence and, ironically, is utterly taken for granted.
We need a credible long-term vision of what we want Britain’s transport infrastructure not just to be, but what we want it to do and how to do it. I recently wrote about Lord Foster’s proposal for the Thames Hub. A long-term vision is crucial – we need to plan and prepare for the future; but before that we have to ask what the challenges and opportunities are and what we need to do to meet them.
We can say we support high speed rail (and I am certainly a supporter) but we need to explain why we want to use high speed rail to connect our major cities and into the European high speed rail network. High speed rail connects cities, it connects people, it connects markets. It is the transport tier between conventional rail and air providing the efficient, effective solution demonstrated particularly well in our European neighbours.
We also need to tie in our narrative for aviation clearly and explain what our vision is for air travel, airports and their interaction with high speed rail. This is especially significant as this is crucial to national economic competitiveness – businesses and markets thrive on the confidence created by a strong clear long-term vision of aviation policy and the transport infrastructure strategy that maps out aviation and connectivity into airports and cities.
In turn our strategy for local transport networks needs to be built in and feed in to high speed rail and aviation.
High speed rail is indisputably crucial to provide the rail capacity between all major British cities that we need without having to force off local commuter rail services and block the growing demand for rail freight. It is a fatuous argument to say HS2 money should be spent instead on local transport – transport needs a long-term national strategy from which we can then plan the details. The local transport networks and the national infrastructure projects must all be part of our strategic vision of how we invest in transport infrastructure to create maximum benefit for UK plc. Using the either/or argument has got us into the unplanned, short-termist mess that is putting our economic wellbeing in jeopardy due to the negative impact of poor transport on our competitiveness.
High speed rail can also be a tool for utilising the huge amount of spare capacity at all airports outside of the south-east. For example Birmingham Airport could comfortably accommodate twice as many passengers as it currently takes from tomorrow. But there needs to be political encouragement for passengers and airlines to utilise these other airports and a mechanism to achieve it.
A long-term vision for transport infrastructure, and the political commitment and will to deliver, can play a transformational role in planning for and creating change. For example, the whole transport experience should be understood from front door to destination. We should strip out the differentiation of transport modes and look at transport as how to get from A to B in terms of time and cost (the two key pieces of information to plan a journey). Plan and fund transport through the eyes of the individual planning their journey as well as through the international business choosing where to locate its European HQ.
A vision and narrative for high speed rail is also required as a means of supporting cities like Birmingham and Leeds to utilise their competitive advantages in equivalence to other major non-capital European cities like Frankfurt and Lyon. That is where their competition lies in our globalised world and where all our cities outside of London need to be given the support and political commitment in a manner equivalent to the £16bn Crossrail investment in London.
A clearly set out vision for British transport infrastructure and our commitment is needed to make this happen. We will not see significant private sector investment in our cities if there is no long-term political commitment to support their growth by investing in a long-term transport vision with the strategy for getting there and the commitment to do so. While considering that, how about these elements:
– a truly national high speed rail network;
– an aviation strategy that allows for growth through better utilisation of national capacity and has the high speed rail network embedded into it;
– a national freight and logistics strategy that looks to bring more freight onto rail to free up road capacity;
– devolution to cities to allow them to develop truly integrated local transport networks for local needs;
– commitment to light rail (metro/tram) investment to ultimately support cities’ growth prospects;
– framing transport’s critical role in supporting economic growth and its fundamental role in all of our lives.
Finally, consensus is important but our first goal is to do the right thing and get the right outcome. Transport needs more respect than the revolving door at the Department for Transport and the ease at which it slips off the agenda or is used for political ends (which HS2 has suffered). Remember that the next time your train is delayed!
—————————————————————————————
Alex Burrows is head of strategy at Centro (the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority) and member of Sutton Coldfield CLP. He writes here in a personal capacity.
—————————————————————————————
Trackbacks/Pingbacks