Go Your Own Way

Every cloud has a silver lining, even at a time of austerity, and my current area of optimism is road transport. The great thing about transport policy is that low carbon solutions are vastly cheaper than business as usual. In my opinion, too much has been spent on roads in the past few decades, whilst policy has been characterised by a complete lack of strategy or innovation. Although public transport would undoubtedly benefit from investment, I would be more inclined get everyone able onto feet and bikes. The latter is helpfully compatible with massive budget cuts, as well as offering much wider social, health and environmental benefits.

There is a wonderfully ironic paradox at work here. We now have a transport minister who wants to 'end the war on motorists' (which is utterly laughable), but cannot afford to build roads. Cycling infrastructure, meanwhile, costs a fraction of motorway upgrades. Moreover, badly maintained roads encourage motorists (the sane ones, anyway) to slow down and drive more carefully. The cheapest cycling infrastructure of the paint-a-white-line-and-call-it-a-cycle-path variety may be pretty ineffectual, but I'd still greatly prefer it to billions being spent on road widening that creates more traffic, more pollution, and wastes more resources.

I am also very happy about the fact that road-pricing is back on the table suddenly. Those who previously considered it an affront to the freedom and dignity of the motorist have suddenly realised that paying to use a road might be better than not having a road at all. Step forward and take a bow, RAC. Currently the Department for Transport is ruling out charging for existing roads, but given the new world of localism, what's to stop particular cities from implementing their own systems? Road pricing forces drivers to think about how much they use their vehicle, encouraging walking or cycling for short journeys. This in turn gets more vehicles off the roads, further encouraging walking and cycling. A recent survey found that 39% of non-cyclists said they didn't bike because it was too dangerous to cycle on the road.

For those who consider that taxing motorists constitutes unfair persecution, here is a graph of relative transport costs, from the DfT's Transport Trends report:



It is a source of perpetual exasperation to me that so many people are willing to accept road pricing and similar taxes on economic grounds, but not environmental ones. Nonetheless, whatever the purpose of the tax, if it has environmental benefits the justification doesn't matter so much.

I'm hoping that austerity will encourage people to realise that:

- Ownership of a car is not a necessity of life for everyone.
- A parking space is not a fundamental right.
- Free use of a motorway is not a fundamental right either.
- If you live in an urban area, a car can be a costly liability.

I definitely don't think that the government would dare to say any of those things, but as cuts bite they shouldn't need to. In case you have yet to notice, my personal views are resolutely anti-car. Just as former smokers can be the most enthusiastically anti-smoking, I am a recovering car owner.

When I lived in Kent I learned to drive, bought a car, and commuted to work daily on the M20. I absolutely hated this enforced commute and deeply resented the bad location of the office that I worked in. I felt constantly, crushingly guilty that I was wasting petrol, adding to congestion, and not getting any exercise. I found it depressing how aggressive driving in traffic made me, and that I caught myself overtaking and zooming too fast along motorways on the odd weekend when they were unclogged.

Upon moving to Cambridge, I realised how unnecessary a car was in a compact urban area. I had to go out of my way to use the thing in summer, and eventually decided I'd be better off with a bike. Problem was, I'd never cycled before. A wonderful, patient friend taught me, and as soon as I was confident enought to commute by cycling, the car became utterly useless. I got rid of it a year ago and have never regretted it. I've saved serious amounts of money - bikes don't need an MOT, insurance, tax, or petrol. When something goes wrong with my bike that I can't fix myself, a repair costs £20 rather than £200. Cycling has also made me fitter & healthier than I've ever been before. Since getting rid of my car, I feel better in mind, body and soul.

People associate cars with freedom, and in rural areas I can see why. But in urban centres, they offer the very opposite. In a city you are so much freer with a bike, your feet, and the odd bus and train. The anxieties of where to park, what if traffic is bad, what the hell does that guy in the van think he's doing, and so forth are vastly reduced. Average traffic speeds in most city centres mean is cycling quicker, too. I think that driving is a useful skill and one I'm happy to have, but why own a car if you don't need to? If in need of one for a specific trip, there are plenty of options. For work journeys, a pool car. Otherwise, Streetcar, hiring, or putting myself on parental car insurance for a short while.

Despite our unreconstructed Minister for Transport, who has unsurprisingly worked in the oil industry, I think that now is a great time for a change of mindset on roads. Given the department's budget cuts, anything but critical maintenance to motorways will become increasingly irrelevant. At a local level, County and Unitary Councils make the decisions, and their budgets are also being severely compressed. New infrastructure projects aren't affordable, so we must use what assets we have to the best effect, getting revenue out of them where possible. That's what the DfT are saying, but they won't spell out what this actually means. Drivers will pay more of the social costs they impose (pollution, congestion, accidents, etc) through parking charges, road pricing, and congestion charging. Making such projects local to a district or county is sensible, as accountability is then clearer. When revenues from road pricing can be seen to pay for local transport improvements, paying such a levy will seem reasonable.

Given its strong existing cycle culture, Cambridge is ahead of the game. It isn't Copenhagen quite yet, but I think it could get there. Transport is one of the few areas in which austerity measures could genuinely improve quality of life, if people try and think beyond cars. Which, trust me, is definitely possible.