We're on a road to nowhere

The news that there is strong support for rewiring the existing Forth Road Bridge as opposed to simply building another one is surprising but very welcome. The £2.3bn (and the rest) that has been earmarked for the new bridge should be seen as an excellent opportunity to investment a heck of a lot of money elsewhere.

I should say that in the past James has been quick to say that when a rival party does polling they pay their money and they get the answer they were looking for so it would be remiss of me not to suggest that this could very well be the case with this Scottish Green Party, Friends of the Earth and Forthright Alliance co-commissioned poll. Furthermore, for this poll there seems to be a suggestion that the sample population was more or less asked 'Would you rather your Government spent £122m or £2.3bn?' when most individuals perhaps won't fully understand the engineering concepts that underpin the question.

However, James and I do agree 'up to our elbows' on this particular topic so I am happy to believe that the Scottish population are beginning to see through the white elephant that is the additional Forth Road Bridge, even the SNP supporters over 50% of whom prefer repairing rather than replacing. And, despite not being an egnineer myself, I have read a fair bit of the detail of the issue and the question does indeed pretty much boil down to whether we'd rather spend a couple of hundred million or a few billion.

Granted, a few billions gets us two bridges as opposed to one with the hundred million but a very quick value for money calculation clearly shows the single road bridge approach is best.

Taking a wider view, one aspect of transport policy that I have found intriguing is the spending on the rail network vs the spending on motorways.

It is surely generally accepted that the preferred long-term solution for travel across the UK is not more and more cars, it's not cheaper and cheaper flights, it's not bigger and bigger bridges but smoother, greener, affordable rail travel.

However, as far as I am aware, investment in the rail network comes out of the profits of the private companies that run the rail franchises which means, in turn, that users of the railway pay for improvements to the track through ticket prices and fines. We've already seen the first £1,000+ rail fare and the Government has promised high increases in fares when it takes over the East Coast line. Perhaps the increase in fares is inevitable given the mess National Express made of the operation but if the semi-nationalisation of the trains goes down as a missed opportunity then it will be unforgivable at this absolutely crucial juncture in our long-term approach to how we get around.

So far, the news that Glaswegians won't be able to get a direct rail service to London doesn't bode well for the UK Government's strategy. Honestly, how long can those poor people in the West stomach being ripped off by a party they've returned to power decade after decade? I guess we'll find out on Thursday...

In terms of our road network (not to mention seemingly unnecessary £2.3bn bridges), funding comes from our taxes and not just road taxes. So those who don't drive, indeed those who go out of their way to ensure that they follow the long-term public transport solution rather than a short-term quick fix of a shiny new car, are heavily penalised.

Surely it is preferable to have roads improved strictly from road taxes and use the public money that had hitherto been paving the way for new motorways up and down the country to increase the investment in the rail track and reduce train fares? If it means motorways improve at a snail pace then so be it. The area that needs a fast-track solution is rail travel.

For a start, we can do away with the price elasticity system as favoured by Megabus and Easyjet. When one buys a train ticket one shouldn't need a super-duper advanced saver to get a decent deal. We should simply divide the cost of the service by the number of seats on the carriages and make that the price of a ticket, regardless of whether one purchases it 1 year or 1 day before travel. And we should increase the number of carriages to keep the prices as low as possible while we're at it.

If those who were horrified at the decision to scrap GARL truly do believe that the provision of 1-mile of track for 1300 jobs is a worthwhile investment to make at this time then let them reproduce the investment on a UK-wide scale and make the improvements that were sadly lacking over the past few decades. Meanwhile, the boast from the SNP that it is ploughing hundreds of millions into the M74 extension seems rather hollow to me given how wasteful that money sounds. We should not be stretching our purse strings to breaking point to appease frustrated drivers when the overall strategy should be to get them out of their cars.

Turning a 4-lane into a 6-lane (or whatever the project involves) and the induced traffic that will inevitably follow is exacerbating a problem that neither the Scottish nor the UK Government nor even the UK Goverment-in-waiting seem intent on tackling head on. Are the tax receipts from petrol so vital to our public coffers that a sensible environmental policy is simply unaffordable? It seems that is the conclusion that has been drawn by all and sundry.

Let's leave no-frills investment to Michael O'Leary, let's leave vanity projects to Donald Trump, let's leave 8-lane superhighways to the highways and let's get serious about a real, lasting solution to sustainable transport by focussing squarely on affordable rail travel.