HS2

The money comes from the savings they made during austerity, the Tories have form for this, just look at our borrowing last time they were in power in the eighties and how it went down almost overnight, then when they got into trouble and it looked like Blair was going to beat them, they suddenly found money to spend on infrastructure projects.

Same thing could happen this time and if we're not careful Comrade Corbyn might end up spending that pot for them (I am in now way a Tory but given the alternative wants to turn the UK into Cuba II).

Roads are still going to play a massive part in our national infrastructure climate emergency or not.

Rick said:

Roads are still going to play a massive part in our national infrastructure climate emergency or not.

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Sure, but we don't need to keep expanding them! I'd rather that money was spent on public transport, of any form

speedy said:

Sure, but we don't need to keep expanding them! I'd rather that money was spent on public transport, of any form

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I don't disagree but I'm quite a pragmatic man and understand roads are the cheapest way to move people around because of the 'bring your own traction' model.

£100m will get a lot more people a lot further. Literally. It's much better value for money.

It might seem short sighted and perhaps it is (but less so given the impending EV revolution) but it's a response to mass car ownership driven by decades of government policy.

And decades of personal choice!
People have chosen personal transport over public transport for the last century, not something you can easily turn around.

Exactly. I would much rather drive my car from A to B than get a train/bus from A to B which will invetiably take longer and involve some other form of travel from my home to the point of getting said public transport, and getting from where said point of public transport terminates to my actual destination.

Yes, but none of your comments justifies continued spending on expanding road capacity! It's your choice to drive sure, but why should my tax (as a non-driver) subsidise your (polluting, dangerous) method of transport?

Better to improve public transport. Improving capacity of roads will just lead to more people switching to the car, and the traffic will be just as bad.

We already have a UK-wide road network. There are many places not served by the railways at all, and we only have a very small stretch of high speed rail. Possibly once there's a big effort to electrify our railways, reopen some of the routes lost to Beeching and to build a proper high speed network, then we can spend on roads

@speedy It's a very rocky road if you only want to pay tax for things you actually consume. The UK government's subsidy to the rail network is circa £5 billion - that's not insignificant given the % of the population that use the system in any meaningful way.

If I'm working in London or Manchester, I always get the train but if I am going to our smaller sites where I have teams, I always drive - getting the train or bus just isn't an option. It really annoys me that it's presented as a "well you could drive OR you could just take public transport" - but realistically the price will be significantly more, the journey time can be double or sometimes triple and if a good number of people made the shift, the network would crumble and no amount of investment is going to fix all those things.

Our country has geography whereby it makes sense to have a hybrid model of transport. It's not perfect, far from, but to try and get to your public transport utopia just seems unreachable.

Unlike in Germany, the Netherlands and some parts of France, the post-war, and especially post-Thatcher vision of Britain never really prioritised public transport outside of large cities and towns. It would be ludicrous to completely renovate that at this stage, you can't just run a tram up every country road across the nation. Saying that, people should use cars less where they can.

I live in a large city with a great public transport network, can't drive, and am completely buggered when I go rural to stay with my parents (despite the ironic presence of a huge motorway beside their village). Nonetheless, I realise the metrics and priorities are completely different.

speedy said:

Yes, but none of your comments justifies continued spending on expanding road capacity! It's your choice to drive sure, but why should my tax (as a non-driver) subsidise your (polluting, dangerous) method of transport?

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I'm not going to pretend I know exactly how the goverment spends various forms of tax, because I do not. However as a driver I pay vehicle tax which you do not.

Cars are great. Embrace them!

Been said before, but...
Tax air transport to a comparative level to road fuel, spend the proceeds on public transport.
Seems rather sensible to me...and think of all that pollution reduction.

Rob said:

I'm not going to pretend I know exactly how the goverment spends various forms of tax, because I do not. However as a driver I pay vehicle tax which you do not.

Cars are great. Embrace them!

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I can't drive due to my disability. Road improvements come from general taxation and council tax

I am not asking for the abandonment of cars. I just think we shouldn't be building new roads or expanding existing ones. Let's maintain the ones we have to a high standard and focus on public transport

@speedy I'm struggling to understand what that means in real terms. I understand it conceptually, but not how it would work in the real world. Most 'new' roads aren't taking people to new places, they're increasing capacity on existing routes by introducing by-passes etc. They allow the existing infrastructure to cope with existing and future demand. The "ones we have" can't remain the same size as our population continues to increase.

An example from my neck of the woods... £30m spent on a new road to by-pass a village close to the M6, besieged by traffic that would frequently back up onto the M6, creating a dangerous scenario every rush hour. The new road means this no longer happens. If you spent that (relatively) trivial amount of money on public transport, you're not going to be able to solve that problem, nor are you going to encourage all those people affected by that problem to give up their cars and get on the bus.

More than half of that particular road came from central government funding, the rest from the county council.

I think by not driving yourself, irrespective of the reason, you miss the point that @Rob made, as a nation we like cars. Using Alton as an example, it takes me 1h 45m door to door in the car, it would take close to 5 hours on public transport and cost almost £100. I'd rather walk.

If you were able to get the time and price down so they were level with me driving there, I'd still rather drive - for the flexibility it affords me to set off when I want, leave when I want and stop on the way home when required because someone can't hold their bladder.

speedy said:

I can't drive due to my disability. Road improvements come from general taxation and council tax

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My wife can't use public transport due to her disability. The only time I ever use public transport, and that if I was visiting London (without Jess)

I do have a general rule, if I can walk it, I will. If I can't walk it or I'm going to pick up a heavy load, then I will take the car. It takes me about 20 mins to walk from my home to my local town, I will walk it as it takes just as much time to get into the car, drive and then try and park it. When I used to live in Shipdham, my ex used to drive from our house to the post office, you could literally see the post office from our house, it was only a stone throw away. As a result of me walking when I can, I've kept nice and slim, however it's the opposite story for my ex.

RoyJess said:

My wife can't use public transport due to her disability. The only time I ever use public transport, and that if I was visiting London (without Jess)

I do have a general rule, if I can walk it, I will. If I can't walk it or I'm going to pick up a heavy load, then I will take the car. It takes me about 20 mins to walk from my home to my local town, I will walk it as it takes just as much time to get into the car, drive and then try and park it. When I used to live in Shipdham, my ex used to drive from our house to the post office, you could literally see the post office from our house, it was only a stone throw away. As a result of me walking when I can, I've kept nice and slim, however it's the opposite story for my ex.

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I presume Jess doesn't drive though either? If we diverted more money from the roads towards public transport we could improve the accessibility, install more lifts, more toilets in stations etc.

Sorry if I'm coming across as rude here. Traffic queueing onto a motorway is not dangerous if people drive responsibly. £30 million could open two new railway stations.

With the existing road network you can still drive anywhere you want. As already mentioned people who use public transport must take much longer in many cases, or may not be able to complete a journey at all. The money should be spent improving public transport first.

An example is recently £1bn was spent on a bypass for Aberdeen. While it does take traffic out of the city, it makes it more convenient to work in the suburbs, which are also much more difficult to reach by public transport. We only have one railway station in the city centre and one at Dyce. The bypass contributes to urban sprawl, which then makes my life more difficult as more things are located away from the railway.

As I said earlier I'm not suggesting anyone gives up cars, just we should stop spending money on making driving easier.

We live in rural Lincolnshire. My partner would use public transport but there are busses only after 11am and stopping at 3am. There are 2 train services a day at our nearby station. Its impossible to live here without a car

Doublethink said:

We live in rural Lincolnshire. My partner would use public transport but there are busses only after 11am and stopping at 3am. There are 2 train services a day at our nearby station. Its impossible to live here without a car

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That is the thing, unless you are travelling in a city. In rural areas and countryside, you will still need to enlist the services of a taxi to get to your final destination which still involves the use of a car at a higher price, so why bother when you can own your own

RoyJess said:

That is the thing, unless you are travelling in a city. In rural areas and countryside, you will still need to enlist the services of a taxi to get to your final destination which still involves the use of a car at a higher price, so why bother when you can own your own

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Exactly. When talk of pay per mile or 1k a year to park at work comes up for car users that's fine for people who live in London or major cities with inexpensive and great transport links but would destroy rural communities.

@speedy I don't think you're coming across as rude, not at all - but I do think you're oversimplifying how diverting spending from roads would solve or even begin to solve the issues that you have identified (some of which I agree with, some which I don't).

It's hard to tell, but it does feel a little like you're on a crusade with good intentions, but ultimately I don't think what you present is entirely credible or even desirable.

speedy said:

With the existing road network you can still drive anywhere you want. As already mentioned people who use public transport must take much longer in many cases, or may not be able to complete a journey at all. The money should be spent improving public transport first.

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That doesn't mean anything. The cost to provision or 'improve' public transport is expensive and can't be a blanket solution - the geography of the country doesn't allow for that. There has to be pragmatic, targeted spending where public transport is failing or where this a compelling proposition to introduce new. Also, there's a lot of public transport that uses the roads that are being invested in!

speedy said:

An example is recently £1bn was spent on a bypass for Aberdeen. While it does take traffic out of the city, it makes it more convenient to work in the suburbs, which are also much more difficult to reach by public transport. We only have one railway station in the city centre and one at Dyce. The bypass contributes to urban sprawl, which then makes my life more difficult as more things are located away from the railway.

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Sounds like all those things will improve things for 39 million vehicles on the roads in the UK, but it doesn't help you - I get that, but that's not a reason not to do it.

speedy said:

As I said earlier I'm not suggesting anyone gives up cars, just we should stop spending money on making driving easier.

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It's not a case of making it 'easier' - it's about responding to demand.

The trouble with expanding roads is that it doesn't reduce congestion, but instead more traffic just fills the extra headroom!