Christopher Blackstone bemoans the inability of the public sector to develop effective transport systems and he outlines an alternative approach
One of the most influential reports on the future of domestic transport was published by the UK Department of Transport in 1963. This report titled Transport in Towns was produced by a team headed by an engineer Sir Colin Buchanan and, although based on the situation in the UK, was the precursor of pedestrian areas in town centres and widely consulted by planning authorities throughout the world; so popular was it that it was subsequently reprinted as a book – surely a very rare event!
Buchanan subsequently produced a scheme for Bath which was not exactly popular with the locals since a key element was a large road tunnel beneath that ancient city. I was at the time a graduate engineer with the Automation Systems Division of Vickers Engineering and was instructed by the powers above to design an integrated public transport system for Bath, I believe to keep me out of their way!
I produced a system of small individual electric cars powered and controlled on an embedded wire system which could be programmed to many points in the city from intermodal parking areas on the periphery and also picked up from many points similar to taxi ranks in the city centre.
The technology was already available at the time when we were designing Robo-tugs, the forerunners of AGVs, into automated warehousing systems. Furthermore, installation of the wire guidance system would cause minimal disruption in the streets. However, like so much innovation, particularly in the UK, the concept was decades ahead of its time. One side issue of my undertaking this study was to give me my first practical appreciation of the organisation and problems inherent in the public sector.
The key problems with public service organisations that existed 40 years ago remain relevant; namely the productivity, difficult trade union relationships in a government-backed monopoly, and appropriate levels of funding in prioritisation of expenditure from taxation.
There is scarcely a mass transport system in the world that does not require subsidy by the taxpayer, not only to meet a social need to reduce user costs but also to provide services at what are deemed anti-social and off-peak hours. Indeed, in order to encourage the use of trains, buses, or trams in place of cars, increased frequency and convenience of services is vital. There is also a social spin-off here in, for just one example, providing mobility for young people in the evenings outside the cities and so reduce local problems of anti-social behaviour.
Train services in the UK have improved enormously in recent years, but the network is very limited and inflexible; even with advance ticketing it is expensive for family groups. One solution is to create new dedicated bus lanes on motorways and key trunk roads for which different classes of service could be provided, but the ticket costs would not be sustainable if the infrastructure costs were borne by private sector operators. So I suggest that a new form of public/private corporate body is required, but what form should this take?
There seems to be a growing consensus that unbridled capitalism needs more constraints. One of these should be in setting a maximum ratio between the total payments and benefits received within any organisation, whatever the size, whether by salaried or contacted staff. Say this might be 50:1. Members of that corporate body or partnership would be encouraged to buy shares in the entity and any dividends paid on those shares would attract very low or even zero tax as long as the individuals remained with the company. This will encourage the entrepreneur, discouraging greed by directors and supporting the least remunerated. The bosses would have to pay their lowest paid employees more if they wanted an out-of-norm rise in remuneration while the structure encourages reinvestment in the business throughout the staff with the loyalty and dedication that such commitment entails.
I believe that history shows that bad trade union relations are invariably a product of bad management in the past, often decades in the past. The shipbuilding and port industries in the UK are prime examples of this when short term and thoughtless thinking by owners hired skilled and unskilled workers alike on a temporary daily basis when needed. There was no commitment on either side, and this resulted in the breeding of inherent resentment amongst the employees.
The precedents for public/private corporations with shares that are on the open market have unwittingly been set in the recent banking crisis with governments finding themselves shareholders – willingly or otherwise – with marketable equities. Furthermore, a potential policy for co-operative ventures for the provision of public services has just been mooted by the UK Conservative party.
Maybe the time is nigh for some radical thinking in the organisation of public transport with a new corporation that really does combine the ethos and commitment of the private sector, and its’ access to capital, with state shareholding to provide a dividend return to the taxpayer for the proportion of subsidy necessarily provided. There is, of course, the fundamental requirement to provide the enhancement to public transport services before significant restrictions on the use of cars in towns and cities can be implemented, but there is surely no need to delay the establishment of a national transport corporation along the lines I have proposed. All bus, train, tram, underground and river services can be swept up into the new corporation in a phased programme that will reunite the fragmented elements if the railways yet retain the investments for the private sector companies which are already in place. Services may continue to be franchised or contracted within a truly integrated transport body. There is, nevertheless, the crucial issue of increased taxpayer subsidy necessary to fund the enhanced services which will be uneconomical for some time. And there is no money – c’est la vie!
