Mr Toad votes Conservative

As the Tory Party prepares for its annual conference, the big idea appears to have been leaked a week early.  The Government is to consult on increasing the motorway speed limit to 80mph – Transport Secretary Philip Hammond claims that it will be good for business and will earn redress for the victims of the “war against the motorist”.

At almost every level this is a disastrous piece of policy.  Safety campaigners have already pointed out the potential impact on road casualties (especially on roads that have been engineered to be safe at 70mph); but that’s just the start of it.  The impact on business looks like a red herring – yes, most of our freight travels by road and since we simply don’t have the long trips (over 1000km) at which rail freight becomes viable it will stay that way.  But trucks are limited by EU law to 90kph (56mph) using speed governors so this move will make no difference to them – and the representatives of the haulage industry have long argued that what they need is not faster but reliable journey times.

So any time benefits will accrue to private, not commercial vehicles – and even here it looks as if the arguments just don’t stand up.  The main motorway routes in the UK are seriously congested – all that will happen is that cars will move faster between jams, burning far more carbon in the process.  This measure will do nothing to tackle the underlying congestion problems, and is quite likely – by increasing the volatility of flow on the network and crucially by increasing the number of accidents – to make things worse.  And finally the Government argues that most people are breaking the speed limit anyway – so where is the evidence that lifting the limit will make them stop?

And I’ve blogged before about the “war on the motorist” nonsense – the fact is that over many years the real costs of motoring have fallen and the real costs of public transport have risen.  In the next few years we’ll see swingeing fare increases on the railways so that’s not likely to change.

In other words – as with so many other coalition measures – we’ve left the world of evidence behind in the name of cheap populism.  I’m looking forward to seeing the analysis that underpins this one – I guess it will largely be based on time-savings to all users without considering the offsetting costs.  The creative accountancy that appears to afflict the appraisals for HS2 – another project that values speed for the privileged few more highly than the impact on the many – is likely to be deployed in force here.

Underlying all this is one of the defining themes of this Coalition – the flight from evidence and the conduct of government according to prejudice. As I’ve said before, the Coalition appears to want to do politics rather than government, and in this case is pandering to what is, frankly, adolescent prejudice – there is no more flagrant and depressing example of cognitive bias than the motorist assessing his own driving skills, especially when excusing his desire to go faster and break the law.

A phoney war and a real conflict

Eric Pickles and Philip Hammond have taken great delight in announcing that, since the Coalition came to power, the war on the motorist has ended. It’s a phrase that has adorned a number of policy announcements in recent months – the withdrawal of the M4 bus lane near Heathrow and now withdrawing planning guidance that restricts the number of parking places to be provided at new developments.

If ever there was a piece of tabloid inanity turned into political myth it’s the war on the motorist. The tabloid story is that the motorist has been turned into a cash cow, hard-working families in their people-carriers being fleeced by profligate NuLabour etc etc.

It’s all complete nonsense. As this piece in the Economist makes clear, for the last few years, even allowing for the increase in fuel prices (which is largely driven by speculators playing the oil market) the real cost of motoring has fallen consistently – while the cost of public transport has in real terms risen. This diagram illustrates the changes:

The point is illustrated further by a Parliamentary Answer given by then Transport Minister Sadiq Khanon 5 February 2010 to Norman Baker MP, now the Coalition’s local transport minister:

Norman Baker: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport what estimate he has made of the percentage change in real terms of the cost of travelling by (a) private car, (b) bus, (c) train and (d) domestic aeroplane since (i) 1980 and (ii) 1997. [315796]

Mr. Khan: Between 1980 and 2009 the real cost of motoring, including the purchase of a vehicle, declined by 17 per cent., bus and coach fares increased by 54 per cent. and rail fares increased by 50 per cent. in real terms. These figures are based on the transport components of the Retail Prices Index.

Between 1997 and 2009 the real cost of motoring, including the purchase of a vehicle, declined by 14 per cent., bus and coach fares increased by 24 per cent. and rail fares increased by 13 per cent. in real terms.

The costs of travelling by air are not available from the Retail Prices Index. However, the cost of the average UK one-way air fare, including taxes and charges, covering domestic flights fell by 35 per cent. between 1997 and 2008, the latest date for which figures are available.

It’s clear; the war against motorist is a tabloid fabrication, one that Coalition Ministers are happy to use in order to demonise their predecessors. And this is before taking into account such factors as safety, noise, air pollution, health and community severance.

The privatisation of public space

But this fake war does mask a real and insidious conflict – about public space and what it’s for.

The clue comes in an announcement earlier this year that the Coalition would clamp down on what it regards as unnecessary street signs, bollards and other objects which they claim are destroying the character of English towns. The Government press notice contained a phrase that is an obvious invitation to ridicule: bossy bollards. At one level it’s an absurdity, a silly phrase dreamed up by a spin doctor, an invitation to ridicule.

But, as so often, it’s those little phrases, apparently so meaningless on the surface, that reveal the ideology beneath.

Bollards are about where you can take your car – keeping you out of a pedestrianised street, stopping you from parking on the pavement, or slowing traffic outside a primary school.

In other words, they’re on the boundary between different spaces where different rules apply – the space occupied by the individual, closed off from communal life in his car, behaving according to one set of rules, and the public space of the street where those who do not have vehicles interact, according to another. The bollard is where the individual confronts society, and tells him that his individual space as a driver has a boundary. It constrains his privilege, and arbitrates between different road users, ensuring the more vulnerable are protected.

And that’s the front line of the real conflict – are our urban streets private or public territory? Are they just there for the car, or are they places where the public can come and go freely? What about the third of the population who do not have access to a car? What about the inappropriate use of 4×4 vehicles, whose impact Norman Baker so eloquently described in his days in opposition?

When the coalition talks about ending the war on the motorist, it really means something completely different. It means that cars and their users will continue to enjoy privileged rights on our streets, at the expense of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users. It is part of a dystopian vision in which families are wafted from home to mall to school to work in their closed environments, free to pollute, to speed, to divide communities, with the rest of us left to exercise the freedom to get out of their way.