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Howard Reed: North needs fair share to win world - class transport
OUR research into how the transport network in England's northern regions might be improved to better support economic development in the North, identifies two key issues. How do we run public transport in Yorkshire's major cities? And does Yorkshire and the Humber gets its fair share of transport funding from central government?
There are fundamental flaws in the way transport networks in Yorkshire and the Humber – and other English government regions outside London – are run. Too many different organisations share responsibility for making decisions on areas like road planning, traffic management, bus regulation, fares policy and so on.
Additionally, the Passenger Transport Executives (PTEs) which run the public transport network in the old metropolitan counties of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire have only limited powers over buses and rail routes and a lack of funding options to secure additional investment.
Each PTE is overseen by a Passenger Transport Authority (PTA) made up of councillors from the local authorities within the PTE, but the quality of oversight tends to be poor because the limited powers of PTEs means there is little incentive to do a thorough job.
The Government has responded to these problems with its Local Transport Bill, currently making its way through Parliament. Overall, many of the measures proposed in the Bill are very welcome.
In particular, the expanded powers for PTEs and PTAs
should allow urban areas in South and West Yorkshire to integrate public transport, highway and traffic powers much more effectively.
Furthermore, each metropolitan county will be allowed to change its arrangements to suit local circumstances – so that South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire might end up with very different transport governance systems, according to what suits the local area.
There are also improvements to the way local bus services are managed. Currently, PTEs cannot exert any real influence over bus timetables, routes or fares without applying to the Department for Transport for a Quality Contract, which requires proof that this is the "only practicable way" to achieve decent bus services – virtually impossible in reality.
This will be replaced with a requirement to prove the Quality Contract is in the "public interest", which is much easier to do.
The Bill will also make the introduction of urban road user charging easier. The requirement for a public inquiry before charging is introduced is to be dropped, and new arrangements put in place so that revenue from charging can be invested in local transport. As a national road pricing scheme still seems to be a remote prospect, anything that can be done to make urban road user charging easier to introduce, to reduce congestion and boost investment in local transport infrastructure, should be welcomed.
But while our overall assessment of the Bill is positive, it still falls short in some areas. First, it is still unclear how city-regions will finance all of the new investment in transport schemes. Current funding options are limited, even taking into account new initiatives such as the Transport Innovation Fund (TIF). The option to levy a Business Rate Supplement, as discussed by the Government last year, is one possible solution.
Second, reform needs to be faster. The process of actually implementing changes will be slow, as each city's arrangements will require further legislation. Likewise, agreeing Quality Contracts, and improved services, is likely to be a long process even after this Bill is passed.
Finally, the Government needs to make sure that areas of England outside PTAs – smaller towns and cities, and rural areas – aren't left with dysfunctional transport arrangements.
For example, it would be useful to extend the new road user charging powers to smaller cities and towns like York and Harrogate. For rural areas, smartcard systems better linking up public transport to nearby towns and cities (as proposed recently by the Northern Way for the three Northern English regions) would help to integrate rural areas into urban public transport networks.
We should also ask whether Yorkshire and the Humber get its fair share of transport funding from the Government compared with other regions of the UK. Figures for 2006-07 show that Yorkshire and the Humber receives only 78 per cent of the UK average transport spending per head (excluding London) – the lowest of any UK region. This is not conclusive proof that Yorkshire and the Humber is missing out on transport funding in the long run as investment can vary from year
to year, and will increase once full-scale widening of the M1 and M62 begins.
However, it is unclear whether annual fluctuation is enough to explain the gap between Yorkshire's spending per head and the English average. We recommend that the Department for Transport review its future funding allocations to make sure that Yorkshire and the Humber is getting its fair share of funding.
The Government needs to justify discrepancies in funding between different regions better than it does at the moment. And while the Local Transport Bill takes a vital first step towards a world-class transport system for Yorkshire and other English regions, there is still a long way to travel before we arrive at that long-sought-after destination.
Howard Reed is the chief economist for the IPPR thinktank. Its report, Moving On: A Progressive Transport Policy for the North of England, is published today.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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