What does the future hold for urban public transport? Visions of a Jetsons-esque Orbit City with soaring hover cars and convenient, congestion free skies have been optimistically pencilled in for decades. Yet what about the more imminent years ahead?
A recent report from the Smith Institute forecast a bleak outlook for city based public transport over the next five years. A series of debates and polls undertaken by the think tank concluded that metropolitan transport was going to worsen by 2019, as rapid urbanisation, demographic and social change met sweeping austerity.
Outside of London, central subsidies for urban transport are thought to have fallen by a quarter in real terms since 2010.
Uncertainty around funding and management, the report warns, has meant transport delivery beyond the capital is ‘too often suboptimal’.
However projects such as High Speed 2 (HS2) prove multi-billion pound sums are being spent on transport infrastructure. What the Smith Institute fears though is that smaller urban schemes are too often taking a back seat to such large-scale equivalents. Metropolitan rail and bus services undoubtedly have a crucial role in the success of headline grabbing national projects. If a local network is not in place to serve HS2 stations, then the benefits of cross regional services most likely will fail to be fully exploited.
Yet the Smith Institute suggests uncertainty surrounding government commitments to the high-speed route – with the Bill set to go through parliament beyond the 2015 General Election – has made it more difficult for urban transport planners to develop necessary local schemes.
Fundamentally important to this argument remains whether the link between economic growth and transport has ever been convincingly made.
In recent weeks, the Passenger Transport Executive Group (pteg) has claimed buses remain ‘key’ to the delivery of 46 policy goals across 12 Whitehall departments. Yet despite these benefits, funding for bus networks outside of London will next year be £500m less than if 2010/11 levels had been raised in line with inflation and the costs of concessionary reimbursement.
Where does the answer to this problem lie? As the Smith Institute puts it, realising high quality urban transport ‘can only happen’ during this time of austerity with more effective governance structures. Yet a lack of local powers is holding councils back.
The ability of Transport for London to regulate bus services and raise additional funds for reinvestment has helped boost the quality of mobility in the capital.
Think tank Centre for Cities has consistently pushed ministers to grant metropolitan areas similar powers and political parties are beginning to pledge their commitment to decentralisation.
However MPs on the transport select committee this summer (Surveyor July) went so far as to label the Government’s transport devolution policies ‘untested’ and demanded an end to the ‘under-funding’ of projects outside of London.
Pteg director Jonathan Bray says regions that have already benefited from greater powers have shown how public transport can be improved.
‘When you devolve responsibilities for local transport you get better outcomes on the ground, as we’ve seen in terms of the higher investment in transport in Scotland since transport was devolved there; as we’ve seen in London since the creation of the mayoralty; and as you can see in microcosm on Merseyrail Electrics - which was devolved to the PTE and since then has gone from being near the bottom of the table’s performance in terms of satisfaction to nearer the top,’ he says.
Mr Bray adds however that the ‘very steep downward trajectory’ in revenue funding is causing concern.
‘The three main risks from that are: the affect on bus services, which rely on revenue subsidy; the affect on rail services: they have infrastructure investment but will we have the new trains to run on them; and thirdly local government’s capacity and capability to plan transport and build infrastructure.’
To ensure a rosy future for the country’s city dwellers, urban public transport must now be given the backing it deserves from both central and local government.
