Travel & Transport

The Independent led yesterday with a report on Greenpeace's attempts to prevent BA opening a service from Gatwick to Newquay. Their strap-line in the print version read:

"The battle of Newquay. British Airways faces a showdown with the green lobby over a new daily service from London to Cornwall. The fight may determine whether the booming aviation industry can be brought back to earth."

It is clear where The Independent's sympathies lie. They include an op-ed piece from Emily Armistead of Greenpeace, entitled "Fastest way to damage the earth". Yup, those pesky flights to Newquay will be the ruin of us all.

Just one small problem. Can you see what it is?

Who are these people in Government who simply can not make a decent estimate? It seems every single Government major investment project runs vastly over budget. Where on Earth do they find them - it's not like it's one department or the odd project, but every single department and every single project. If this was the private sector these goons would have been sacked years ago. The latest piece of Government over spend has been revealed by the National Audit Office to be from the Department for Transport's road schemes - 200 of them! You'd have thought after the first 50 or so they might be able to spot a trend and start making better estimates.

Good news from the Energy Saving Trust's website:

"A new carbon reduction method for diesel vehicles is set to be demonstrated on Ford's fleet of vehicles in the near future....To be trialed on Ford's Power Stroke diesel vehicles, the technology is hoped to reduce carbon emissions and increase engine torque."

Fantastic. But...

"Ford is set to unveil its 6.4-litre Power Stroke engine in its new F-Series pickup next year, which is set to be the company's cleanest ever diesel."

6.4 litres!!! If that's their idea of clean, I want to see what a really dirty Ford pickup looks like. Much like their current fleet, I suppose, which tells you how badly run and behind the times they have got.

I've got an idea. If you want to save energy and/or carbon, don't run a truck with a 6.4-litre engine.

I've added a link to the Not Proud of Britain (But Would Like To Be) blog, simply for this comment on the Bloggers4Labour blog. It is one of the most intelligent observations that I have seen on the false economics of the Government's road-pricing scheme. Does the Government really think that people sit in rush-hour traffic for the hell of it, and that all they need is a financial incentive to get them to drop off the kids or go to work at a different time? It's not difficult to spot the flaw in the plan, is it? Headmaster/mistress and boss may have something to say about it. Snafu sums it up superbly in the language of economists. What a pity a blogger has a better grasp of economics than the large number of academic pseudo-economists who have come out in support of road-pricing simply because it looks superficially like a market.

The production of ethanol from corn as a replacement/supplement for petrol is coming under increased attack from environmentalists. This month's Ecologist and today's Independent both led with a destructive assessment of its merits.

I do not claim to know whether ethanol is a good or bad solution to our energy problems. But I do know that George Bush and Tony Blair don't know, and neither do Zac Goldsmith (editor of The Ecologist) and Simon Kelner (editor-in-chief of The Independent). Because they are trying to establish the case by claim, counter-claim and posturing, little light is shed on the issue. And because no mechanism exists that simply values carbon equally from all its sources, we have no way of discovering in a market the reality that is being obfuscated in discussion. As usual, sweeping generalisations ("this technology is good/bad regardless") that ignore changing circumstances are a good sign that people are busy picking losers rather than allowing the most efficient and appropriate solutions for the circumstances to emerge and evolve.

Sometimes the debates seem intended to confuse, not illuminate. Perhaps this is the real objective. For an alternative take on the ethanol debate in America and people's motivations in presenting their arguments, have a look at the What's That Smell? site. The author's hostility to a local development has produced a scathing analysis of the process by which politicians and lobbyists adopt and promote losers for their own interests. Just remember that the other side - opponents of ethanol - have their own agenda too.

Is there anything more insignificant than a local non government department? Of course - it's the nonsense these jobsworths come out with. And the Kent Highway Services are no exception! If you've ever wondered what those black and white stripes that are painted across the road that pedestrians keep walking all over, making cars stop in their tracks are*, just consult the leaflet by Kent Highway Services explaining how light traffic works. It gives the reader knowledge nuggets such as inside information on why the grass is cut by the side of the road. This has costs £15,600 to the taxpayer. Have the Department for Transport and the Highway's Agency really got so much money that it feels that it can waste it on this sort of distribution of pointless information?

Whatever your views on road pricing, most would have to agree that the Government has made a complete mess of trying to get it introduced. It is expected that nearly 2 million people will have signed the e-petition on the No.10 website by the time it close tomorrow and I can not say I’m surprised.

As my earlier post’s wishful thinking suggested, it seems that issues being kicked in to the long grass is going to be a more common theme than anyone could have hoped for. The infamous road pricing scheme looks set to be kicked in to the long grass for now. Not because one and half million people have wasted their time signing an e-petition – a tool used to make it feel like we’re entering in to the democratic process, but is actually a way of shutting us up. No, the latest weapon against introducing road charging is the incompetence of the government itself.

Reports out yesterday suggest that congestion in London is almost as bad as it was when the congestion charge was introduced four years ago. I bet the Mayor can not believe his luck – revenues must be going through the roof and what better excuse for bringing forward the £25 a day Low Emission Zone? That will include 18 percent of all vehicles currently coming in to central London.

The whole extension plan has been a complete shambles from the start. Extending the zone will not reduce congestion, but actually increase it as all the Chelsea and Kensington residents will get a 90% discount to cross in to the current zone. The wider the zone spreads the more pointless is becomes, the higher the congestion gets the more excuse Ken has for whacking up the charge and more money falls in to his coffers. Forget the nonsense about saving the planet, this is about raising money and giving the Mayor more political clout. And it’s working.

The Independent is never shy of calling for more government money to be spent on one thing or another. Now we know why. Apparently taxation is not a drain on the economy, but a means to create wealth.

They report today that the Department for Transport estimate that "road pricing could raise up to £28bn by 2025". Let's not worry about how they can so precisely calculate a figure so far in the future, or whether they took the costs of the scheme into account. It's rubbish, of course, but we'll leave that for another post some other time.

What I am interested in here is what we can learn about the understanding of at least one leading journalist at The Independent about how the economy works. Because, in their box-out "The case for (and against) charging" (the brackets nicely illustrate the "balance" that they bring to this argument), they report that road pricing would "benefit the economy by £28bn".

Silly me. There was I thinking that we need to keep taxes under control because they represent a drag on the productive part of the economy, when all along I should have been pushing for ever-higher taxes, because the government can apparently magically double the value of money in the hands of taxpayers, simply by taking it off them.

Next time you read analysis in The Independent making a moralistic (and usually simplistic) case for more spending on this or that, remember that, in their eyes, they'll not only be improving the lot of those on whom the money is being spent, but expanding the economy as well. Then put the paper down, and buy one written by economic literates.

The environment debate, and I use the word debate in its loosest form, has become rather like the so called “war on terror”. That is to say, you can’t really question the government over with it without being accused of being some sort of self-serving monster that has no interest in the well being of the world and its people. As a result, the government (and opposition parties) are not only trying to out “green” each other, but they are cynically using climate change to impose “big brother” like regulation and also use it as an unquestionable form of taxation or method of raising money for Treasury’s deep, deep pockets.

"Doing nothing is not an option." So says the Government's spokesman, as an explanation for why they will press ahead with road pricing against strong public antipathy.

The culture of doing something because "something must be done" is what this site exists to challenge. Though it is endemic, you rarely hear this approach to government expressed so baldly.

There are arguments for and against road pricing. And there are arguments against those arguments. But "doing nothing is not an option" is no argument either in favour of any particular option, or against people who oppose that option. On that basis, you might as well stick your arm in the fire, because the flame is dieing and "something needs to be done".

The Tories are trying to work out the best way to develop our transport network, including consideration of the installation of a magnetic levitation (MagLev) railway line, or the extension of the Channel Tunnel rail link as a British equivalent of the French TGV high-speed rail link. The businessmen who will fund, develop, and operate any new rail services will doubtless be delighted that the politicians have removed from them the necessity of making a commercial assessment of the best solution. After all, politicians are so much better at this sort of thing.

The government asked the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) to investigate lack of competition for train rolling stock this June. The report, published yesterday (29 Nov) found that the industry is inefficient but a number of the problems arise from government's own policies.

The main problem is that there are only three companies providing rolling stock and the market is very uncompetitive. This has led to higher prices for passangers and lower quality of service. One factor keeping the market as it is, is the DfT policies. Very often the award of a rail franchise is so specific, that the choice of stock is very limited.

The release of the important transport review has been delayed and it is now expected to be published with the pre budget report. The delay has not stopped the chief of the review to move to Australia and take up several high positions, including leading a transport review of the state of Victoria.

The review that examines issues such as north south high-speed rail link, road charging and greater investment, is now led by a group of civil servants. This of course poses the question whether the review will represent independent findings as was its original function.  

Yet another effort by the Government to "go commercial" is failing. £10m was spent on an internet accommodation service which produced just over 400 hotel bookings this summer, reports the Telegraph. What a surprise. When I book a holiday, the first place I think of looking is the website of the national government.

Government should provide for its citizens only those things that they need (not want) and that are not provided by the market. I hadn't noticed a shortage of travel websites, had you?