And another thing…

A VERY thoughtful and well-argued piece on high-speed rail (HSR) was posted yesterday over at Though Cowards Flinch. It raises a few significant concerns about the potential negative impact of the UK building a high-speed network – an argument that is rarely heard in the current cross-party consensual rush towards HS2, 3 and 4.

I was always careful, as a minister, not to overstate the case for HSR (which sometimes meant I was unfairly depicted as a sceptic); the arguments in its favour were always far more nuanced than is generally acknowledged. The environmental case, for instance, is woefully misunderstood, particularly by the Conservative transport team, who still persist in the damaging fallacy that HSR could be a substitute for extra capacity at Heathrow. In fact, as Rod Eddington’s 2006 report into the future of sustainable transport made clear, the environmental arguments for HSR are not nearly as strong as the economic and, more importantly, capacity arguments.

I support HSR. I believe it will have significant benefits for Britain’s major population centres (but, as Though Cowards Flinch rightly points out, less so for non-major population centres unconnected to the high-speed network). And I think it will happen at some point because, to put it bluntly, we’re fast running out of capacity on our railways and the demand for new lines will soon become irresistable. And if any government is going to build brand new long-distance lines, it makes sense to make them high-speed.

However, the unalloyed “HSR is green” argument looks mightily shaky when you look at the tremendous increases in power consumption needed to push an exisiting high speed train (125 mph) towards continentally-recognised speeds for HS – about 190 mph. Also, the argument that a fully-laden jet airplane on a short haul flight will bestow on each passenger a fairly benign carbon footprint compared with a virtually empty train undertaking the same journey is as true for high-speed as it is for conventional rail.

And those who hope an HSR network will sign the death warrant of the domestic airline industry may be disappointed, though there would certainly be a shift in rail’s favour if the journey time between London and Glasgow is reduced to close to two hours end to end. I see HSR more as a way of offering a valid and comparable choice to passengers who can make up their own minds about how to travel, rather than as a way of deliberately forcing airlines out of business.

Economically, there will be undoubted benefits, but I’m always sceptical about consultants whose predictions about X billions of pounds generated for a particular local economy seem to owe more to the “close your eyes and think of a number” school of economic theory than to hard facts.

But before we get to the point where we can buy our tickets for those new services, there’s a process to get through. Though Cowards Flinch is suspcious about the decision by HS2, the company set up by the Department for Transport to begin planning for HSR, to delay publishing its initial report on the “broad corridors”. My suspicion is that this is less conspiracy than an attempt not to burden communities with planning blight at too early a point in the process.

In the meantime we have various local authorities and MPs campaigning to try to make sure that they benefit directly from the next phase of HSR. I doubt if there is a local authority in the whole of the country who cannot get a firm of consultants to produce a report saying that it would be madness not to include them as a major stop on the new line. I went to a meeting recently where councillors and officials of Sheffield City Council made such a case. Whenever HSR is discussed in the Commons, we have to listen to a succession of MPs making similar cases for their own constituencies.

The thing is, high-speed stops being high-speed when the trains have to stop at every station. Speed is only one part of the equation – fewer stops is another.

But thank goodness that Though Cowards Flinch is one of the few left-wing platforms (heh!) with the courage to point out that high-speed rail on the continent caught on before it did here for reasons far more significant than lack of vision or reluctance to spend; Britain’s georgraphy, our dense yet dispersed population and the existing and historical good links between our main cities all mitigated against HSR until relatively recently.

And just because there’s cross-party support for HSR does not mean that the case against should not be heard, that the parties’ policies on HSR should not be challenged. The final scheme, whenever we see it, will be all the better for it.

YEARS ago I came up with a wheeze. And it was to do with two of my favourite subjects: trains and anti-social behaviour.

Travelling by train is an incredibly safe experience in Britain. Yes, there are occasional violent incidents but these are very rare. What’s more common than actual violence is rowdy and intimidating behaviour, and when you’re stuck in a carriage between stations with a group of loud, sometimes drunk, neds who are swearing, shouting and generally making everyone nervous with their behaviour – well, let’s just say it’s not quite the Orient Express experience.

If you have a mobile phone, you don’t want to use it to call the British Transport Police (BTP) because, as I say, you’re in a relatively small, enclosed space with these people and you don’t want them to turn their attention to you. Wouldn’t it be far better to have a BTP number that you could text surreptitiously, giving a code that would identify which train, and even which carriage, you are aboard? Everyone texts while they’re on a train so the troublemakers wouldn’t know you were alerting the authorities until the arrival of the officers.

Anyway, that was my idea, and when I became the minister responsible for the railways – and, at arm’s length, for the BTP as well – I suggested it might be a useful innovation. But the problem with being a minister is that no-one actually says to your face, “Don’t be ridiculous, minister – what a bloody stupid idea!” No, instead they invariably say “I’ll pass that on and see what can be done, minister.” (The corollary of this is that people always – always – laugh at your jokes. Oh, how I miss it…)

Anyway, into the black hole of ideas it went. I still think it might be a good, and rather inexpensive, way of making people feel a bit more secure aboard trains, especially women, and especially at night. So if it ever does emerge into the daylight as an actual system, just remember where you read it first.

THERE’S been a lot of excitement (and wishful thinking) in some parts of the Scottish media at the prospect that Labour’s attack on the SNP over the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL) might rebound on us.

The source of all this hyperventilating was an entirely unsourced and officially denied report that Glasgow was about to be removed from the East Coast Mainline timetable.

And yesterday The Scotsman reported:

THE head of the government’s newly nationalised rail franchise last night defended controversial plans that could include cutting train services between London and Glasgow.

Come again? “Defended controversial plans”? Surely the reporter meant “fictitous”, not “controversial”? Or, at the very least, “hypothetical”? What lousy journalism.

Let me reiterate: there are no plans to remove Glasgow from the timetable. Ministers will, at some point in the future, be asked to approve the structure of future services for the East Coast Mainline franchise. But that specification hasn’t yet been finalised or submitted to ministers. Consultation on the specification is still happening even as I write.

And why is The Scotsman getting so excited at the words of Elaine Holt? She is a very good train company manager; she did a first class job when she was in charge of the London commuter network, First Capital Connect. But in her role as chief executive of the (temporarily) publicly-owned East Coast, she is not in a position to decide where her trains will stop. Neither does she have any say on whether the next (private) franchise for the East Coast will remove Glasgow or any other station from the timetable.

She was expressing her opinion as an experienced railway manager as to the pros and cons of East Coast services continuing to serve Glasgow, and she’s entitled to her opinion.

But when it comes to structure of future service patterns, it’s ministers who make the decisions, not Elaine Holt or any other manager. And when the Secretary of State makes his decision, I’m sure she will be informed along with everyone else. No doubt The Scotsman won’t give as much coverage to a decision to maintain the Glasgow service as they have given to imaginary plans to remove it.

I REMAIN in a railway industry frame of mind this morning, following the National Rail Awards ceremony last night, and I feel like returning to an old bugbear of mine.

A local Labour Party member recently told me that the government could sort out the “shambles” of our railway industry if only we would renationalise it. It’s a claim I heard frequently from people like Bob Crow of the RMT frequently when I was a minister. It’s become something of a left-wing mantra, and like most mantras, it’s more slogan than reason.

First of all, what “shambles”? Yes, rush hour commuter travel can be extremely uncomfortable in any big city. But there are more trains running today than ever before and the greatest cause of over-crowding is public demand, not shortage of carriages. Having said that, the government is footing the bill for 1400 new carriages between now and 2014 – a massive commitment by the government.

And despite all the jokes about cancellations and late-running trains – a seam of humour that will be with us forever, regardless of the reality – reliability, as measured by the so-called public performance measure, has never been higher, with nine trains out of ten arriving at their destinations on time.

We have one of the newest fleets of trains in western Europe. We’re carrying significantly more freight than we did 12 years ago, and more passengers than at any time since the end of the second world war. Nigel Harris (no relation), managing editor of Rail magazine, who hosted last night’s ceremony, gave guests a startling statistic: that more people use Liverpool Street Station every year than use all five Heathrow Airport terminals combined.

And rail’s safety record has improved consistently since privatisation and is at an all-time high.

Headline fares are an issue, of course, so it’s just as well that 80 per cent of passengers don’t pay them, isn’t it? They buy discounted or regulated tickets instead. Regulated fares themselves – the ones most often used by commuters – are barely more expensive today than they were 12 years ago, after you take inflation into account.

A shambles the railways certainly are not. They’re not perfect, obviously. But there is a public assumption about our railways that simply doesn’t mesh with the reality. The industry has its problems, but renationalisatin is a solution looking for a problem, and it certainly wouldn’t result in any major improvement as far as passengers are concerned.

When I wrote a few days ago that I was opposed to imposing road tax on cyclists and also against the principle that a car driver should always be assumed to be culpable in a road traffic accident involving a cyclist, I was accused of “pandering to the obsessions of all these right wing loonies”, when in fact, I was supporting Labour government policy in both these areas. So I expect that, having reiterated my objections to renationalisation of the railways, I’ll have the usual suspects writing blogposts suggesting I’m a closet Tory. Go ahead. But remember that here, also, I am simply stating a position that is strongly supported by the governement. As well it should be.

One other tiny detail from last night: I’ve often wondered if I would meet any of those who comment regularly on this blog, and not in a “we’ve got the place surrounded, Mr Norfolk – come out with your hands up and let Mr Harris go” sort of way. Well, last night, The Fact Compiler made himself know to me. His is an excellent blog if you’re interested in railway matters, so I was delighted he revealed himself to me. As it were… Oh, just stop it!

JUST back from a top night at the National Rail Awards. Great to see a whole bunch of people from the industry I haven’t seen since… well, for a while.

And the best bit was that Scotland triumphed: Glasgow Central was named as Station of the Year, and First Scotrail won Passenger Operator of the Year – the only time the same operator has won the award two years in a row.

The awards were all the more welcome given the massive blow dealt to the Scottish rail industry by the Scottish Government earlier today, with the cancelation of the Glasgow Airport rail link. Particularly discouraging for me, since this was one of the major capital projects I helped promote when I worked for Strathclyde Passenger Transport Excutive before becoming an MP.

Anyway, well done to Scotrail and to Glasgow Central. Well deserved.

I WAS about to write a post about the inadvisability of the Scottish Government’s proposals to force cyclists to pay road tax. The details are in their consultation document, Cycling Action Plan for Scotland. I was fair waxing lyrical about disincentives to cyclists and how road tax is supposed to help pay for the wear and tear inflicted on the road surface by a vehicle, which is hardly an issue for bikes.

And then, as I was scrolling through the document in question, I came across this:

In most Western European countries, the liability in any collision involving a motor vehicle and a cycle (or a pedestrian) lies with the driver of the vehicle, other than in the case of an adult cyclist who is shown to have been responsible for the accident.  In the UK, this is not the case.  As the majority of cycling accidents involve a motor vehicle, and given the vulnerability of cyclists and pedestrians, the Scottish Government will undertake to explore a “Hierarchy of Care for Road Users”.  This consultation document is asking whether the liability should always lie with the vehicle driver, until proven otherwise.

I vivdly recall the former Reading Labour MP, Jane Griffiths, who at the time was the chair of the All-Party Cycling Group, being interviewed about such a proposal on Radio 4, not long before I entered parliament. She was a staunch advocate of such nonsense and I recall thinking, “I hope the government doesn’t go down this road.”

Well, it didn’t, and while I was the minister with responsibility for cycling, I made damn sure we didn’t, despite lobbying by cycling groups. It’s just such a bonkers idea – that the driver of a car will always be assumed to be liable for an accident.

But maybe I should cross my fingers and hope that the SNP Government are daft enough to implement it here; the electoral consequences for them would be grave indeed. Unfortunately, they will be protected from their own stupidity by the Government, since matters of liability and insurance are reserved, and the SNP only undertake to “write” to the Government if the consultation responses show strong support for the measure. Damn.

The consultation document was drawn to my attention by Two Doctors, who happens to work for the two Green MSPs at Holyrood. He was spot-on in his criticism of the road tax for cyclists idea, which he understandably refers to as a “poll tax on wheels”. But he was strangely silent on the (even) more bonkers suggestion of assumed liability for car drivers.

THIS is another new thing I’m going to try with Audioboo: I was pouring over my diary entries from the past few years and decided readers might have some interest in hearing one or two entries.

I should have posted this one a few days ago, since it’s from 7 September 2006 – the day after I was appointed as a minister by Tony Blair in the wake of the “September attempted coup”.

FOLLOWING Network Rail’s optimistic (though welcome) report into high-speed rail yesterday, I was invited onto Newsnight Scotland to have a chat with Gordon Brewer and me old mucker, Christian Wolmar, about the prospects of Scotland ever getting high-speed services.

I think we will, but not soon, and never in an independent Scotland.

Sorry if that sounds like I’m playing petty politics with it, and that’s really not my intention. But why would an English government pay for the building of an expensive high-speed railway from Manchester northwards to Carlisle? And even as things stand at the moment, and as I mentioned during the interview, Barnett consequentials would give the Scottish government about ten per cent of the costs of the whole line, even though Scotland would have to deliver about a quarter of its actual length.

All interesting stuff, none of which is going to get sorted soon.

I SHARE the view of those who believe that Cabinet Ministers should, on the whole, sit in the Commons, not the Lords

But even the harshest sceptic should admit this morning that Andrew (Lord) Adonis is one of the most effective and imaginative Transport Secretaries we have ever had. His piece in today’s Times makes for encouraging reading for those of us who care about the future of our railways.

WHEN Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said that his party’s policy on airport expansion might be revisited after the general election, my immediate thought was, “Uh-oh, maybe they are serious about government after all.”

But now Theresa Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary has stepped in and slapped down Mr Clifton-Brown and basically told him to stick to international development.

The thing is, the Tories aren’t at all opposed to regional airport expansion, as was made clear last time the Commons debated it; they’re (nominally) opposed to the third runway at Heathrow, much to the bewilderment and frustration of most of the business community. And they’re against it for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment (hence their support for airport expansion elsewhere) and everything to do with trying to win votes in the west of London.

Fair enough, you may say. But it’s hardly the attitude you would expect from a party that wants to be taken seriously as a government-in-waiting.