Snippets to the Times
The following in reverse date order are a sample of letters sent to The Times by Transport-watch. Most of those were not published.
21st August 2008EUROSTAR PLATFORMS - RAIL RAGE
Nigel Harris (21st Aug), in response to George Franks’ irritation (14th Aug) provides, the reason for the Eurostar platforms at Waterloo remaining out of use, namely the incredible inflexibility of the steel wheel/steel rail combination.
In that context, London’s crushed surface rail commuters may like to know that in the peak hour they are sufficient to occupy only one seventh of the network’s capacity if it were pave and if all those passengers were seated in (75-seat) express coaches. Hence, even in the peak hour that great network is, in highway terms, substantially disused. Outside the peak it is a place of dreams. The roads, meanwhile, are clogged with traffic.
Paul F Withrington (for Transport Watch).
Note for editor.
In the morning peak hour circa 250,000 passengers enter central London by surface rail. There are at least 25 pairs of tracks. Hence the average flow per track is 10,000. The 10,000 could all sit in 133 75-seat coaches leaving over 10% of seats empty. The width required by a train is the same as the width as the motorway lane needed by an express coach. Such a lane has the capacity to carry 1,000 coaches per hour, 7.5 times the average flow of 133 here calculated (Chelsea viaduct carries in excess of 2,000 vehicles per hour)….
At Waterloo there are 4 inbound tracks. There are circa 50,000 inbound passengers in the am peak hour. If all of them were seated in 75-seat coaches 670 would suffice. They would not even fill one of those inbound tracks if the network were paved.
Doubt that and go look at the contra flow bus lane serving the Lincoln Tunnel, New York. It carries 700 45-seat coaches in the peak hour providing over 30,000 seats in one lane 11 feet wide.
To see the waste in London go to http://www.transwatch.co.uk/londons-rail-network.htm
5TH July 2008ROAD CASH STEETS AHEAD OF RAIL
Helen Nugent points out (5th July) that since the year 2002 road expenditure has increased by 60% but that subsidy to rail has increased by only 10%.
Government grant and loans to rail may average £5 billion per year for the 20 years to 2015. That is equivalent an annual taxes of £200 for every household in the land at a time when rail accounts for only 7% of passenger miles and 2% of trips. Indeed rail is used less than once a year by half the population and 5 times as much by the better off as by the poor.
By way of comparison, the motorway and Trunk road network carries 5 times as many passenger miles as does the rail network whilst expenditure amounted to only £3.1 billion in 2006/7 compared with taxes levied of £16 billion.
That data suggests that something very odd has happened in the minds of those who believe rail should have more cash than the roads.
NOTES
The source for the £3.1 billion is table 1.1 of transport Statistics Great Britain.
The total taxes including VAT on cars and all motor services etc is circa £50 billion annually. 32% of vehicles miles are on the motorway and trunk road network. Hence the tax take attributable to that is £16 billion.
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30th June 2008HIGH SPEED RAIL
Railway enthusiasts are cheering at the prospect of 5 new high speed lines and regret that the Treasury is said to be lukewarm on the idea. Thank goodness it is. After all the cost would exceed £100 billion, none of which would ever be recovered from the fare box. That is equivalent to £4,000 in taxes from every household in the land. The resultant toy would do nothing to reduce road congestion (half of all car journeys are less than 4.3 miles long, 90% are less than 20 miles long). Furthermore the facility would be used by the rich at least 5 times as much as by the poor, or at least that is the case with normal rail.
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28th June 2008CHEERS FOR DRIVING DOWN ROAD DEATHS?
Your leader writer on 27th cheered the “driving down” of road deaths. Has he not noticed that since the introduction of the present punitive regime the rate of decline in road deaths has greatly reduced. E.g. Over the 12 year period to 2000 that decline averaged 3.5%. The comparable annual decline to the 9 year period to 2007 is 2.1%.
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29th May 2008ALTERNATIVES FOR A RISE IN FUEL PRICES
In the Times on 17th October 1972, Dan Pettit, when Chairman National Freight corporation wrote, “the way the environmentalists in particular talk about the railways reminds me of the tale about the king’s clothes. It is an exercise in mass self-delusion”. Today the idea that transferring freight to rail can be a solution to fuel price rises (Letters 29th, Milne and Mr Duncan) is equally misplaced.
Firstly only 12% of (road plus rail) freight is by rail. Secondly, we find that if the national rail function were discharged by express coaches and lorries on uncongested rights of way the energy consumption would be reduced by 25% and carbon emissions likewise. Furthermore (a) the prospect improving the fuel consumption of road vehicles is real while for trains it is illusory (b) road vehicles may very well use renewables every bit as effectively as may trains.
Lastly, reference Mr Duncan’s plea for evening passenger services to run alongside freight trains, freight trains honk all night because there is no track capacity during the day, despite the network carrying the equivalent of an entirely trivial 300 buses plus lorries per day per track. Even in Central London and in the peak hour the network is, in highway terms, scarcely used.
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The Government should tackle road congestion
The first paragraph of the following was published in The Times on 11th May 2008.
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The most unnecessary jams are at junctions. At those critical points the dash for road safety has led to channelisation schemes etc. that have greatly reduced capacity. Those “improvements” are supported by endless speed humps and the camera campaign. Despite that, the previous steady decline in road deaths has collapsed. That is because these policies have sabotaged the development of mature driver behaviour – the slogan “Treat people like idiots and they will behave like idiots” springs to mind.
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Simultaneously there was, and is, the daft idea that people could be persuaded out of their cars onto buses and trains. That overlooks the obvious, namely, the car has enabled a dispersed land use that is generally impossible to serve by bus let alone the train.
Even worse, over 20 years we will spend £100 billion of taxpayers’ money on the railways. That system is used by half the population less than once a year and by rich folk rather than the poor. To the astonishment of many, even in central London and in the peak hour, the network is, in highway terms, scarcely used.
The plain fact is that the only way of providing the roads that the nation needs at reasonable cost is to pave this vast Victorian rail system. All London’s crushed surface rail commuters would then have seats in express coaches at one quarter the cost of the train and countless other vehicles would divert from the unsuitable city streets that they now clog.
Unfortunately sentimentality is likely to prevent that. Instead we will have even more jam tomorrow whilst millions of drivers will be prosecuted for exceeding unrealistic speed limits.
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1st May 2008Motoring taxes now need a radical rethink
This letter, published under the above heading, followed a major series of articles in the Times that reported the Government’s intention to tax vehicle according to their size. That policy is under much criticism from all sides. Our letter was the lead on May 1st.
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If the Government is keen to reduce congestion and emissions it should abolish road tax and VAT on motor vehicles and transfer the same to fuel (report April 30th).
That would mimic congestion charging to an extent, encourage the purchase of fuel efficient vehicles and discourage use. In contrast taxing large cars will bear on those who legitimately need a large vehicle. Probably this misguided policy is drive by the politics of envy rather than anything else. (the campaign against “Chelsea Tractors” for instance). In any event the effect on emissions will be microscopic.
Hydrogen and electric powered nonsense
Ben Webster’s article of 16th pretends that hydrogen powered vehicles would be pollution free. Professor Reuben, 23rd, points out that the energy required to manufacture hydrogen exceeds that delivered. What else do we need to hear before consigning hydrogen power to the sillies basket. Well, once the hydrogen is delivered to an internal combustion engine, at best 40% of the energy released will be converted to useful power.
Christine Buckley 23rd reports that there are to be “green” electric powered taxis in London. Do these people not realize that electrical energy can never, or almost never, be pollution free? Indeed an increase in electricity demand may prolong the life of coal fired power stations, whose carbon emissions are double the present average for the UK generating industry – far worse than diesel engines.
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13th April 2008Letters Editor The Times 1 Pennington Street London E98 1TA -
Rail expansion
A rational man can only read Ben Webster’s account of the proposed expansion of the rail network with despair (Times of 11th April). The plain fact is, rail is beggaring the nation. Subsidy for the 20 years to 2015 is likely to top £100 billion. That amounts to £4,000 for every household in the land at a time when half the population uses a train less than once a year. Furthermore those from households in the top quintile of income travel five times as far by rail as do those from households in either of the bottom two quintiles. Why on earth should we subsidise rich folk?
Now we have Jim Steer and others canvassing for tens of billions of pounds to be spent on three 200 mph rail links. Together those may cost a further £(50-100) billion. Cost benefit analyses for two, said to cost £31 billion, pretend that the proposals would produce £63 billion of benefits. However that analysis erroneously counts fares as benefits (when they are actually transfer payments) and includes the “regenerative” effect on Northern cities. The latter may benefit far more if given the cash directly and even more if tax were generally reduced so that the market, instead of schoolboy thinking, may drive the economy. If such proposals are not viable in purely financial terms then they should not be built. Any other approach will leave the taxpayer paying for fairy gold for ever and ever.
In this context it is salutary to look at the modal split of the longer distance journeys. National Travel survey data for the years 2004-2006 shows that in the range 250-350 miles 72% of trips are by car, 8% by bus and 14% by rail leaving 5% to air. For journeys longer than 350 miles 42% or trips were by car and 39% by air, leaving a trivial 10% to the train and 4% to the express coach. If at immense cost to the taxpayer some of the air travellers transferred to rail the effect on global emissions would be almost impossible to measure.
Bah – go look at the fares.
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1st April 2008PARKING
Illegal parking is perhaps the only offence where the perpetrator is not liable. Instead it is the vehicle owner. Surely that is contrary to human rights let alone the ordinary expectation of justice.
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1st April 2008CHANCE OF DYING BY ROAD AND RAIL.
Ben Webster (in the Times) on 26th reported that there is a 1 in 200 chance of being killed in a road crash compared with a 1 in 65,000 chance of being killed by a train. That juxtaposition of numbers is entirely misleading. Firstly, the rail number ignores trespassers, staff, postal workers and people on railway business. When those people are taken into account (suicides excepted) at least 150 people die on the railways annually. With 60 million people that equates to a one in 5,300 chance of being killed on the railways over a 75 year lifetime, 12 times less than the reported number. Secondly, rail carries one seventeenth of the passenger load carried by the roads. Hence, for comparative purposes, the 5,300 should be divided by 17. That yields 313. The corresponding value for road is 250 (not 200).
Indeed, the all-in deaths per passenger-mile by rail (suicides excepted) is 50% above that on the motorway and trunk road system. If pedestrians, cyclists and people on motorbikes are excluded from the latter on the grounds that they are seldom met with on railway alignments, the number widens to a factor of two in favour of road.
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1st April 2008COST OF DELAYS and USAGE
It has recently been reported that delays on the railways cost one billion pounds per year. That amounts to 3.7 pence per passenger mile. In it is said that congestion on the road system costs £(15-20) billion annually. That corresponds to between 3.2 and 4.3 pence per passenger-km.
The rail network is, in highway terms, almost completely empty. Even in central London and in the peak hour there are sufficient passengers to fill only one seventh of the network’s capacity if it were paved and express coaches replaced the trains. How many volumes does that speak of?
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21st Feb 2008NOTHING WRONG WITH TRAMS published
In 1949 the trams were seen as an embarrassment to the capital’s post-war planners. In that year Lord Latham, chairman of the London Transport Executive, delivered a speech outlining the plans for the tramways conversion programme in which he stated “the loss on the trams is about £1,000,000 per year” equivalent to £25 million at today’s prices.
There is of course nothing wrong with a tram apart from the fact that it takes three times as long to stop as a bus, costs four times as much, offers little or no routing flexibility and has a fraction of the capacity (provided the bus enjoys a right of way free of congestion).
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17th Jan 2008HUGE RISE IN CONGESTION
The rise in traffic over the decade no doubt contributes to congestion but often the greater factor is the deliberate reduction in capacity at critical points across the network, namely the road junctions. There fashionable channelisation schemes ensure that the major turning movements are congested leaving empty lanes for the minor ones. Instead of that, lanes should have been added to the approaches to junctions, wherever possible, and the motorist left with the responsibility of making best use of the road space available. If that were implemented now many of the queues would vanish.
Meanwhile the Government had the ludicrous idea that congestion may be solved by increasing bus and train use. With only 6% of passenger miles by train and 10% by bus it is a matter of simple arithmetic that large changes to those percentages could lead to only a trivial change in car use. Furthermore, trains and most buses serve town centres where parking is not available and where congestion makes the use of the car unattractive. Hence, if it is those train and bus journeys that have increased the impact on journeys by car to other places and indeed to town centres will have been close to zero. Instead subsidy may have encouraged people to travel who may otherwise not have done so.
6th Jan 2008LEVEL PLAYING FIELDS
Mr Crick (5th Jan) calls for a level playing field between road and rail. Well, if rail’s annual maintenance cost is divided by the passenger-km or tonne-km or the sum of both the unit costs obtained are more than three times those for maintaining the strategic road network. If the costs of “renewals”, representing capital expenditure for rail, and capital for roads are added the unit costs of rail are some six times those for the strategic road network.
Furthermore, road users as a whole contribute £50 billion annually to the exchequer of which some £9 billion is spent on roads. If the tax take, net of expenditure, is apportioned according to vehicle miles then the Strategic Road network contributes £13 billion annually. Network Rail receives annual subsidy of £5 billion (including loans guaranteed by the Government). In return it carries only 6% of the nation’s passenger-miles and 12% of freight.
Without that subsidy rail would vanish overnight. The 10,000 miles long network would then find a use as a system of reserved motor roads, all London’s surface rail commuters would have seats in express coaches sufficient to occupy only one seventh of the network’s capacity, costs would be cut by a factor of four, fuel consumption and carbon emissions would be reduced, and death rates halved. Many thousands of lorries and other vehicles would divert from the unsuitable city streets and rural roads that they now burden, bringing untold environmental benefits, and endless derelict railway land would at last be developed.
3RD January 2008WHY WE AREN’T FURIOUS ABOUT OUR RAILWAYS
“When trains are still the theme of nursery rhymes and children’s stories, it is small wonder that the railways have a romantic fascination for most adults. Only years of nursery conditioning can explain the calm with which the public has accepted a bill of £3,000 millions (£34 bn at 2007 prices) to subsidise British Rail over the last decade”. So wrote Francis Caincroft when Economics Correspondent to The Guardian in April 1974.
Then as now for at a time when half of us use a train less than once a year, when only 6% of passenger miles go by rail, when half of all rail journeys are less than 20 miles long (90% are less than 80 miles), when even in the peak hour all London’s crushed surface rail commuters would find seats in express coaches occupying only one seventh of the network’s capacity if it were paved, when such a change would reduce fuel consumptions and emissions while halving the annual deaths, all at one quarter the cost of the train, when countless lorries and other vehicles could then divert from the unsuitable city streets and rural roads that they currently burden, when in those circumstances the nation congratulates itself upon committing £5 billion per year every year for 20 years (£100 billion for the 20 years) to this 19th century system - a system that may be brought to a complete standstill by a heap of earth or a child’s prank - then it is clear that the nation has indeed lost its head more or less permanently, at least in this vector.
Instead of directing anger at “the railways” it is those who have advised successive Governments that deserve condemnation for it they who, in the words of Stuart Joy, chief economist to British Railways in the 1960’s, are prepared “cynically to accept the rewards of high office in return for the unpalatable task of Tricking the Government on a mammoth scale. Those men”, Joy wrote, “were either fools or knaves”.
To compound this madness there are calls to “fine Network Rail”, instead of those responsible, so that, no doubt, taxpayers may pay again……….
8th December 2007Speed cameras
I was shocked to find Robin Cummins for the RAC, writing on 7th, that speeding causes three times as many accidents as drink-driving. That appears to bear no relationship to the facts at least as published in the DfT paper Contributory factors to road accidents. There, and in Table 2 speeding, meaning breaking the speed limit, was recorded as a “contributory factor” in 12% of fatal accidents, 7% of serious accidents, 4% of slight accidents and in 5% of all injury accidents. The corresponding numbers for alcohol are 9%, 8%, 5% and 5%.
Both sets of members ignore the fact that in most accidents there is more than one cause. When that is taken into account “speeding” amounts to 6% of contributory factors in fatal accidents, 4% in serious accidents, 2.3% in slight accidents and 2.8% in all injury accidents.
The basis for the often cited but erroneous statistic that speeding causes 30% of accidents is twofold; firstly there is the incorrect addition to “speeding” of a collection of other contributory factors broadly contained by the phrase “going to fast for the conditions” and secondly the failure to appreciate that in most accidents there will be more than one contributory factor. In reality “speeding” as a contributory factor is below the 3% level for all injury accidents or ten times lower than commonly believed.
2nd November 2007RAIL OVERCROWDING
Francis Caincroft, when Economics Correspondent to the Guardian, wrote, on 29th April in 1974, “when trains are still the theme of nursery rhymes and children’s stories, it is small wonder that the railways have a romantic fascination for most adults. Only years of nursery conditioning can explain the calm with which the public has accepted a bill of £3,000 millions (£35bn at June 2007 prices) to subsidise British Rail over the last decade”.
Of course matters are now much improved. After all, since 1995 the tax payer has spent £69 billion, at June 2007 prices on the system and another £30 billion is proposed by 2014, providing a magnificent total of £99 billion. That is equivalent to £4,000 for every household in the land at a time when half of us use a train less than once a year and when those from households in the top quintile of income travel four and a half times as far by rail as do those from either of the bottom two quintiles.
One obvious answer to overcrowding is to balance supply and demand by price.
Meanwhile, London’s crushed rail commuters may like to know that they would all find seats at one quarter the cost in a fleet of 75-seat coaches and that those coaches would occupy one seventh of the capacity available, if the rights of way were paved. Outside the peak the network is a place of dreams – surrounded by city streets clogged with unsuitable traffic. The cost conversion, on a grand scale, is perhaps £15 billion shorn of VAT and optimism bias. |
