Integrated Transport System

Back in 1997, John Prescott said that 'Britain would have an Integrated Transport System'. Of course, as with much of what Prescott said it was pure hot air. Sadly, nearly 12 years on, we are paying the price of those empty words and lack of action.

The CBI today says that our transport network is 'unreliable, congested and is undermining our competitiveness'. It echoes what most of us in business have felt for some time - the word they have missed off is 'expensive'. Remarkably, they rated train travel as satisfactory in terms of reliability and is considered to be improving. Clearly they have been using very different trains to most commuters.

Trains, Planes & Automobiles

Trains are a running joke in this country. While rolling stock is slowly being updated on the lucrative franchises handed out, the handling of rush hour remains appalling. If you commute into London then you will know what I am talking about. Fast trains at rush hour are the most expensive tickets on the network and you are subjected to densely packed carriages and no seat for the journey, made almost unbearable in Summer due to lack of ventilation. Nowadays, my wife and I will travel by car together as affording two tickets at such excessive cost each day is just ridiculous and with £9 for parking and £8 for congestion charge and around £10 for diesel it makes economic sense.

Of course, the answer that the Mayor and PM will have is to raise the price of the congestion charge or find some other tax to attempt to penalise you into taking the packed trains - or as Ken Livingston was planning, to actually charge a congestion charge for using the trains in rush hour. This stupid and illogical way of trying to manipulate behaviour comes from the long, historic belief of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman lineages that if you tax someone then they won't do it.

The idiot thing is that no one takes a rush hour train or car journey by choice. They do it because that's what business and working demands. Most people in this country have set hours of work and while flexi-hours are a great innovation, over 90% of businesses cannot afford such luxury for its employees simply because their customers demand service within normal business working hours and beyond. In order to be successful in business, you need to be delivering your products and services within working hours. And that means that any more costs heaped onto getting staff to work within those normal hours will just make the business less competitive.

The Burden of Transport

In my business, my biggest expense lines outside of payroll is travel. Taking out accommodation costs which I try to avoid if I can, a quick analysis reveals it is cheaper to use a car for internal travel in the UK than trains with the exception of the Underground in London. A cursory glance will tell you mile for mile it is cheaper to use planes than cars or trains. Yet a bus and a train has to be cheaper than a plane to buy, maintain and run, particularly with all the ancillary costs.

Most people commuting to their office cannot recharge that to their employer and so bear the cost themselves, so the hidden cost of transport in business is huge. This will eventually manifest itself in wages which need to remain competitive yet still provide enough to cover the employees' transport back and fore from work. If you look at the cost of specifically trains and buses over the last 11 years it is easy to see that their cost has risen well out of proportion with wage increases.

It is costing us more to work than ever before thanks to transport costs.

The State of The Union

Britain is not some backward nation on its uppers - well not yet anyway. In that last 11 years, we were told repeatedly that we had a super economy and we were well off as a nation. Of course that has proved to be complete rubbish but it does make you wonder why on earth we have not ploughed enough money into getting our transport system in line with the modern age. Ministers would tell you that it is because of lack of previous investment and it's a case of catch up. Well, that's no excuse to exacerbate the problem on their watch. Now we are talking mega-numbers, not quite in line with bank bail outs, naturally, in order to put it right.

And here is the rub. This has been a Government of missed opportunity which is a phrase I have used before. The real shame is that when a crisis came hundreds of billions of pounds were taken without a cursory thought as to how they would be used or spent by the people they gave it to just as a knee jerk reaction to the failing banking system. Heaven knows, if such money was available then, why were we not spending it on our future like transport infrastructure - and if it could have so easily have been conjured up, why did we not use it before?

Of course, tax is at the heart of the matter and we shall find out in years to come just how much it has cost to save the skins of a few bankers and keep a bunch of bank businesses many of which deserved to fail. What we will count the cost of at the same time is how much new infrastructure, new hospitals, schools and much more we could have spent our hard earned money on while we pay off the 'expense tabs' of the elite bankers, the very same people who now sit like vultures on the PM's shoulders telling him how much money he needs to spend to dig himself out of the mess he got us into.

You can be sure of one thing, not one of them will be telling him to hold back the cash for banks and spend it on transport or any other worthy cause. That does not pay a banker's wages or bonus - and that is the priority of this Government, make no mistake. This period of history will be the single biggest missed opportunity in Britain's economic history - and we will remain uncompetitive for years because of it.