Transport: Haunted by Sir Humphrey

he ghost of Sir Humphrey is hovering close to John Prescott. The Deputy Prime Minister has been striving to get his integrated transport policy accepted, only to see it sink beneath the brickbats of his critics. One year after the transport policy White Paper, the draft transport Bill has finally been published, only to be damned as the enemy of Middle England's motorists. From Tony Blair, apparently horrified by M4 bus lanes, to John Redwood presenting the Tories' "Fair Deal for the Motorist", Mr Prescott has become the politician who just can't seem to get it right.

He should have watched a 1981 episode of Yes, Minister to find out what he was getting into. It was the first time that an "integrated transport policy" was mooted. Entitled "The Bed of Nails", the episode showed that the policy's main problem is finding a sufficiently gullible minister to front a task with so many risks and so little potential for immediate reward. The whole thing, of course, gets dumped on the hapless Hacker, much to Sir Humphrey's consternation. Thus a buck-passing plot unfolds with Sir Humphrey finally getting the integrated transport policy shelved in a return to the ruling party's core approach to transport that "our policy was not to have a policy".

But this government cannot afford not to have a transport policy. The middle class may consist of motorists who do not want to be punished for having a car or two, but Middle England is also made up of commuters, fed up with delayed trains, broken down buses, M25 gridlock and tropical conditions on jam-packed Tube trains.

Mr Prescott's proposed measures, including the private partnership package to refurbish and modernise the London Underground and the regulatory clout of the Strategic Rail Authority, offer long-term hope, but stand in striking contrast to the grim reality of commuting today which needs a quick fix.

So what is Mr Prescott to do? A successful transport policy needs support across government departments, and the Treasury in particular. Despite criticism, the Deputy PM has levered significant funding concessions from the Treasury, including major support for London Transport and the ground- breaking acceptance that income from the proposed road-user charges and workplace parking levy will be dedicated locally to support transport improvements. This year and next, more government money will be spent on public transport than on roads, with pounds 2,836m spent on public transport in 1999 compared with pounds 2,003m on highways. But by 2001-02, the balance will change, with pounds 2,565m allocated to roads, compared with pounds 2,454m for public transport.

What those figures signify is that the basis of transport policy has undergone a fundamental change. The traditional demand-led approach was that, as traffic increased, new roads were built, coupled with the trimming of rail and bus services (with exceptions due to "social need"). Only in large cities was this impossible because of the sheer volume of traffic concentrated into a relatively small area. Even so, the general desire has been to provide as much road capacity as possible - witness the intrusive inner-city motorways in Newcastle, Leeds, Glasgow and Birmingham.

But traffic simply expands to overfill the roads provided. The main factor behind traffic growth is not so much that people have shifted from public transport to the car, but that car ownership stimulates a much more travel- intensive lifestyle. The government's National Travel Survey shows this. Over the past 20 years the average number of journeys undertaken has not changed (around 1,000 a year) and neither has the amount of time spent travelling (about 350 hours a year), but the distance travelled has risen by 40 per cent. Our trips are getting longer as, for example, travelling by foot to local shops is replaced by the car trip to out-of-town shopping centres.

The trouble is that, however much we all agree that we cannot continue to increase our use of the car, we still value our cars as an important part of our quality of life. Resolving this paradox is not for the political faint hearts. It lies in taking a counter-intuitive approach.

If building more roads only makes things worse, then the solution lies in removing roadspace from general traffic. Then it needs to be reallocated to buses, bicycles and pedestrians, which will make life better for all. Making public transport move faster is not the only issue, either. Resources need to be found for an upgrade of all forms of public transport, rather than just keeping it ticking over as a social service.

The people who do understand the need for radical strategic transport policies remarkably well are the two mavericks in the race to be London's mayor, Ken Livingstone and Lord Archer. The whole thing makes a mockery of party lines: on one side Archer and Livingstone stand together, eager to grasp the transport nettle, with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Redwood on the other, occupying common ground in wooing the votes of the multiple-car-owning middle classes. John Prescott is somewhere in the middle, trying to pull the Prime Minister and Chancellor over towards Jeffrey and Ken.

In the meantime, the situation fulfils Sir Humphrey's worst fears. There is plenty of short-term pain, little evidence of short-term gain, and any real progress is a couple of elections away. The trouble is that the Treasury has been keen on the short-term pains that raise useful tax revenues from the motorist through fuel tax and vehicle excise duties, and John Prescott has had to fight hard for any of this to be returned to the transport sector. The short-terms gains, such as quickly upgrading bus services with bus lanes, have become bogged down by fears of antagonising the middle- class vote.

How might Sir Humphrey's ghost be exorcised? The process may have already started. Last Thursday I was due at a transport research meeting in one of London Transport's conference rooms at their London headquarters. Our meeting was shifted because of a hurriedly arranged media event involving the LT chairman, John Prescott and the Prime Minister. It was a personal intervention by Tony Blair to display his support of Prescott and the Government's transport policy. It is not Tony Blair's style to involve himself in high-profile support activities unless he really feels it is necessary. Blair, it seems, now realises that the plight of the commuter will itself alienate the middle-class voter and that dithering while traffic jams lengthen is no way to win voters' confidence. Unless stops are pulled out, Labour could enter the next election with no evidence to the voter of improvements either in public or private transport. Transport has become a very vulnerable part of the electorate's experience of New Labour. Before it is too late, transport policy needs commitment and sorting out, and that is why Tony Blair appeared with John Prescott last Thursday.

Sorting out the mess is not just about money but providing carrots, whereas before the tax system has provided only sticks. It appears that No 10 and the Treasury now appreciate that the key is using monies raised from the new road user and workplace parking charges for transport expenditure. It is possible that any future hikes in fuel tax will be counterbalanced by a cut in excise duty, which is also being reformed to reward the users of the least polluting cars.

The political flak over transport policy is certainly not finished. Transport will always be a difficult and contentious portfolio. Only Tony Blair himself can really lay Sir Humphrey's ghost to rest, by recognising and wholeheartedly supporting the actions that are needed.

Stephen Potter is a senior research fellow in transport at the Open University.