As the earth dies screaming, not as the result of an alien robot invasion but because of climate change, I always like to think I do my bit for the environment. We probably have one too many cars, but one is a small car running on unleaded petrol and the other is a hybrid. We’re still destroying the planet but not as much as we would be if we were driving, say, a gas-guzzling two litre diesel vehicle, as we were just a couple of years ago. The government is now being criticised for embarking on “a planned road-building spree” which will probably makes matters even worse and derail net zero targets, but what’s the alternative?
Because of where we live, we have access to a generally efficient and speedy bus service into Bristol. We know how lucky we are because there are numerous other areas across our city where people have access to a piss poor irregular service or no service at all. I will take the bus because it’s cheap (in my case, free) and convenient, but there are numerous parts of the city which are virtually inaccessible or take forever to get to. Then, I have to take the car.
If I’m travelling slightly longer distances, I will drive. It’s quicker and more convenient, not least because when you move around the city the bus services become patchy and non-existent and trains? Just forget it. As with long distances, I’ll drive. Train fares are insanely expensive even after my geriatric discount. I’ll always prefer to let the train take the strain but not if it’s going to push me into debt. So, what to do about it? Well, it’s about choices.
Our public transport systems – I hesitate to call them services because that would suggest they were run on behalf of passengers and not fat cat shareholders – are run for profit. That profit comes from you and me and that is why fares are so expensive. And that’s where economics come in to it. Unless public transport is run as a service and the state picks up the tab by way of vast subsidy, we are stuck with the current model. The way things are that if the taxpayer subsidised trains and buses, particularly the former, you’d have poorer people who can’t afford to use trains subsidising those who can.
You might make a case for road pricing, whereby the motorist pays to use certain roads or gets taxed per mile driven. Good luck with that one. Can you imagine how that would be greeted by the general public, particularly at the height of Rishi Sunak’s cost of living crisis? In Bristol, we have a clean air zone whereby those with older, more polluting cars have to pay a hefty wedge to drive into it. You could try that one, I suppose, and maybe a congestion charge too, but then what? Unless you nationalise the buses and trains it would be lose, lose for everyone.
I know there’s an answer: heavy public expenditure on new mass transit systems all over the land. Yes, but how do we pay for it? Well, Sunak managed to lose some £60 billion of the £400 billion he forked out to get us through Covid and no one seems to care, so let’s borrow the lot. We will probably never be able to pay it all back, but there you go. The government can always print as much money as it likes for its own pet projects so why not print some for us, or we the people, as I would pretentiously refer to us?
And we have to something drastic to Save The Planet to leave a world in a better place for our children and grandchildren. It seems to me that we either allow them to inherit a dying planet or a substantial debt that need never be repaid. By all means pick me up on these suggested levels of public expenditure the next time I am banging on about being frugal with our money, but in terms of public transport difficult questions require difficult answers. Doing nothing means carnage for the human race. I am urging us to spend, spend, spend. No politician would ever say this so it’s probably just as well I never tried to be one.
