UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1066-i

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

SOUTH WEST REGIONAL COMMITTEE

 

TRANSPORT IN THE SOUTH WEST

MONDAY 26 OCTOBER 2009

(BRISTOL)

MIKE BIRKIN, SIMON FACE, CHRIS IRWIN and JIM RUSSELL

BARBARA DAVIES, CLIVE PERKIN, JENNY RAGGETT, ADRIAN ROPER, DR. GABRIEL SCALLY and NICK VANE

 

Evidence heard in Public

Questions 1 - 40

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2.	Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
3.	Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the South West Regional Committee

on Monday 26 October 2009

Members present:

Mr. David Drew (in the Chair)

Kerry McCarthy

Dr. Doug Naysmith

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mike Birkin, Friends of the Earth, Simon Face, Institute of Directors, Chris Irwin, SW Stakeholders and Travel Watch Southwest, and Jim Russell, Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, gave evidence.

 

Q1 Chairman: Good morning everyone and welcome to our session of the South West Regional Select Committee in Bristol. We are looking at sustainable transport, and, given that our Chairman isn't here, we will obviously start with some of the repercussions of when things go wrong in our system.

It would be very helpful if you gave the details of who you are representing, and at the risk of anyone not knowing who we are, I'm David Drew, MP for Stroud, this is Doug Naysmith, MP for Bristol, North-West, and we are very fortunate to have Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol, East. That makes our quorum. Our Chairman is in transit at the moment, and we hope she gets here very quickly. Jim, could you just introduce yourself and say which organisation you are from, for the benefit of the public and the press?

Jim Russell: I'm Jim Russell, from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and I'm here because I seem to have spent 40 years trying to make transport work.

Simon Face: I'm Simon Face, regional director for the Institute of Directors in the South West, representing 3,200 business owners in the region.

Chris Irwin: I'm Christopher Irwin. I'm the chair of Travel Watch South West, which is a social enterprise concerned with public transport in the South West region. I am also the chair at the moment of South West Stakeholders, which is the body that brings together social, economic and environmental partners-the LSPs and the SEPs-throughout the South West region. You have a paper in the pack from South West Stakeholders, but it is probably more convenient for today that you treat me as being Travel Watch South West.

Mike Birkin: I'm Mike Birkin and I am South West campaigner for Friends of the Earth. In the evidence that we put to the Committee, we drew on a piece of work done by the South West sustainable transport round table, which is an umbrella organisation for a number of organisations concerned with sustainability and transport.

 

Q2 Chairman: Can everyone hear in the audience? No? We are going to have to shout, I'm afraid. It is a beautiful room and you get a view-we love looking at all of you, but you get the cathedral, which is much better. Say if you can't hear. You're going to have to gesticulate at the back if you can't hear, but we will make it as loud as possible. Is the system OK? We have to make one or two adjustments. You can hear us anyway.

Let me start. Clearly, today is a typical day in the South West; I could not even get here by train if I wanted to because my line is shut because of the Sapperton tunnel, and we have lost our Chairman, who is stuck somewhere on a train, hopefully coming from Reading, because of the problems that there were.

I will start with Jim. We are looking for snappy questions and snappy answers, and it is my job to keep us to that. I am going to go quickly along the panel and ask, how can we make transport in the South West more sustainable?

Jim Russell: Invest more in our road links, and by doing that avoid the waste that occurs when cars queue. We need not do it by building roads. Things such as variable speed limits are an extremely effective way of cutting down the carbon emissions of traffic. We avoid the problems of Victorian engineering and public transport, which, contrary to its reputation, is actually emitting more carbon than the road alternative.

Simon Face: We need to carry on getting everyone together from all the different points of view to try to find ways to reduce the need to travel, to better understand why people need to travel and then to provide the best solutions, whether that is road, rail, bus or whatever, to make the appropriate movements in future.

Chris Irwin: I need hardly tell you this: the starting point is to ensure that diversionary capacity is there, particularly in sustainable transport modes. So, for example, when the line between Swindon and Gloucester is closed, you do not find that there is only one route that way. Thinking more widely in terms of the network and the line to South Wales through the Severn tunnel, so there is another way round there when the Severn tunnel is closed for maintenance. Diversionary capacity is not only important now, it is going to get more important in the future. The great news about electrification is even greater if there is proper diversionary capacity when the mainline is closed for maintenance and so on. The move towards a 24/7 railway-a railway that is open seven days a week for 24 hours a day-is also going to require adequate diversionary capacity.

In terms of sustainable transport share there is another thing. DaSTS-delivering a sustainable transport strategy-lays it out as a framework from the Department for Transport. I think that there are two things that we overlook at our peril: one is the obligation to find ways of reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and the other is-and I think that this is the real challenge that we have to face in the region with an ageing population-delivering better health, security and safety and, in delivering better health, doing things to combat increasing illnesses. Within that there are challenges about the sedentary lifestyles produced by private transport that we need to address. It is a double-edged thing: it is, first, having adequate diversionary capacity for what we have now, and, secondly, it is looking down the road to see what we are going to need in 20 or 30 years' time to provide a truly sustainable system.

Mike Birkin: The first key to a sustainable transport system is to address who's travelling and why; to ensure that unnecessary journeys are not being made and that we're not reducing the effectiveness of transport infrastructure that is designed primarily for long-distance movements through people making short journeys and so on. We need to look at the length of journeys people are making in terms of substituting more sustainable for less sustainable modes. For instance, a large proportion of car journeys are made for distances of under five miles. Does it make sense to invest in expensive infrastructure to try to accommodate those journeys or shift them on to public transport, when actually they would be suitable for substitution by walking and cycling for a lot of people?

On resilience, we need to look more broadly than the transport networks themselves. This is already a problem because of the age of the infrastructure of our public transport networks in the region, but will become more of a problem with the increasing severity of the impact of climate change. So instances of short bursts of very intense rainfall will become more frequent in future-I think that that's reasonably well accepted by the climate scientific community. We've got to think about what we can do to manage not only our transport networks, but all the land-the hinterland around the South West-to ensure that rain doesn't just rush down the nearest drain or get into the sea at the same time. How we manage our uplands and our farm land has an impact on how resilient our transport systems are.

Finally, you asked about sustainability. It's important that we don't just equate sustainability with carbon-hugely important though carbon undoubtedly is, sustainability also embraces social and economic aspects and we need to think about the needs of people in the South West who depend on other transport modes. Don't assume that everybody in the South West is going to have their transport needs met by better quality road infrastructure. We just looked at the Abbeyfields ward in Bath, where we were surprised to find that 45% of households-not people, but households-don't have a car. So there are still areas of the region where there is large dependency on modes of transport other than the car, and we should not forget that.

 

Q3 Chairman: Can I move on to a second question? I'll start with Simon and get the panel to give their views. It's about the regional funding allocation. Simon, in your evidence, you pointed out some issues to do with what you saw as a danger in reducing capital spending. What is your appraisal of the RFA? How would you change it so that it was, if you like, better fit for purpose for transport in this area?

Simon Face: First of all, I've just explained that I'm not a transport specialist so I don't have huge in-depth knowledge on this. Our transport policy adviser is based up in London and couldn't be here today, so I may need to submit some supplementary data.

 

Q4 Chairman: That's fine, but you made a strong play for maintaining that in the current recession, it was inappropriate for Government to look to make savings in this area of capital spend. Is that a fair appraisal of your approach?

Simon Face: That's right. The demand for travel, while slightly down during a recession, will ultimately continue to grow, albeit hopefully within sustainable limits and at reduced rates, if we can manage the transport systems and reduce the need to travel appropriately, as we've mentioned elsewhere and others have already discussed.

On specific schemes, the problem seems to be that by trying to define them as national, regional or local, they have arbitrary labels attached to them. When it comes to funding, schemes can often slip between those arbitrary labels and therefore a whole scheme can be postponed, delayed or whatever. If you are asking me to pick particular schemes which we feel ought to go ahead, it is a rather difficult question. Until we know what we are trying to achieve, and whether it is about moving people or goods more effectively, or whether we are trying to achieve a better environmental or carbon balance in the long term, it is difficult to say, "This scheme is better than that scheme, and therefore it should be funded whereas other schemes should not." We need to start from a completely different standpoint, and reassess what the purpose of the schemes is.

Q5 Chairman: I think that's a very good starting point. Clearly, as we go through the evidence, we want to tease out what the mechanism for doing that is. Chris, can I ask you the same question, perhaps with a focus on whether the RFA pays sufficient attention to environmental considerations, given that it is about money and how the money is used?

Chris Irwin: I think that we need to acknowledge from the start that the RFA2 process was about achieving political consensus between the players in that process. That was, in a sense, the dominating piece of methodology in the whole thing. It was based not so much on an objective appraisal system, as on the need to accommodate the different interests reflected among the decision makers. I think that it had got a lot further along the road than the original RFA1 process, which you may recall. There was a Department for Transport consultant study, which I mentioned in the evidence. It talked about a united challenge and the emerging methodology being mounted by the county's environment directors in an attempt to preserve their programme of schemes. That has always been a problem. The schemes have come from the environment directors and the local authorities, and reflect their priorities, rather than those set out in national policies, such as DaSTs or whatever.

My answer falls into four parts. The first part is the failure in the past to properly accommodate national priorities. The second part is the absence of an adequate, objective, transparent methodology for putting things into the scheme. Too often, it was about which regional environment director had the biggest clout with his colleagues, and which one had the scheme in his bottom drawer that was dusted off and ready to go, rather than about what the region, and the country, needed out of the South West transport network.

The third factor, which may have somewhat reinforced the influence of certain environment directors, was the shortage of competence throughout the region generally in transport planning. I have two examples in mind. One is the RDA, which has been severely weakened by successive cuts. I think I am right in saying that it now has only two transport officers, or officers with competence in transport. Given the sums of money involved, and its key role there, that is very unfortunate.

Likewise, the Government Office is now whittled down to just four people in the transport field, who not only have the job of representing the region's views to London and taking London's views back to us, but also of monitoring and mentoring local authorities. Frankly, that is not sufficient, and it shows. When we look at the schemes that are supposed to be being delivered, we realise that the absence of capacity and competence is a severe break. If you look at some of the public transport schemes, and the delays and political mess that they get in to, you can trace that back to the absence of skill sets.

What does one do about it? I think we took a lesson in this from the development of the regional rail priorities list, and if Alison Seabeck had been here, I would have said, "That's made a real difference." There is now a clear consensus around five regional rail priorities. For once, the regions got a narrative together that is understandable not just in the region, but more widely. We need to do that right across the piece for transport, as transport covers all the modes. It is not mode specific.

I think it is really important to ensure that the wider community is engaged in this process, so that the people who Mike Birkin represents don't come in as an afterthought and screw the schemes, but have been there right at the beginning, and so that different considerations have been taken account of in the first place. It is a real problem, but there is a way through. However, it will take resources, building on competence, engagement and the development of a single narrative that the whole region can get round.

Mike Birkin: I support pretty much everything that Chris said. The problems that he identified-the lack of an objective analysis of what the schemes were and what they were supposed to achieve-was what we took as our starting point when we worked with our colleagues to do the analysis that I referred to, the South West TAR analysis. So we took a list-in the end, it was about 60-of different policy objectives that we drew from the national DFT guidance, the regional transport strategy and the regional sustainable development framework. We appraised as best we could each of the schemes that came forward for consideration in the RFA against that list of 60 objectives. It was quite a detailed piece of work, but I would not claim that it was the be all and end all of that kind of analysis by any means. However, the fact was that we were probably the only people trying to do it in those terms.

The first thing that we found is that you have to be very careful in analysing what a scheme is. Local authorities are now becoming quite adept at using the terminology and being able to describe schemes as sustainable transport packages, but you need to get behind the description and see what the detail is; and we often find that there is an emphasis on relieving a particular piece of road bottleneck. Much the greater share of the transport expenditure is going to a bit of carriageway widening or junction improvement. If you then add a bit of red paint and make a bus lane along part of that improvement, you are entitled to describe it as an integrated transport package, even though most of the funding is going to improve journeys for car users.

We did the analysis, as best we could. I shall just show the summary chart-

Chairman: For those who are visually challenged, like myself, I can see that that is colourful.

Mike Birkin: I am sorry. I am red-green colour blind myself, so it does not stand out brilliantly for me.

For those who can see, it shows how much more of the chart comes out red.

Chairman: Have you sent us a copy of the chart?

Mike Birkin: We have indeed. It shows how much more of the chart comes out as red, indicating a failure to meet objectives, compared with the rather small amount of it that comes out green, where there is an unequivocal success in meeting those objectives. For instance, the desire to shift transport mode to encourage people to use modes other than the private car, is acknowledged as being an important objective in the regional transport strategy as well as in the national strategy, but we found that only about four of the schemes submitted to the RFA would unequivocally have that outcome. With the great majority, it was much more difficult to determine whether they would have that outcome; and several of them would unequivocally go the other way.

Jim Russell: The Department for Transport clearly expressed its discontent with RFA2. It said that it was not carbon led and that it was important that it should be, in a covering letter.

The question of competence is the key one. My institute is very much into training. It consulted our members in the various areas currently trying to wrestle with these things, and I have also consulted the Department for Transport. It is quite clear that there is no competence at any level for assessing the carbon impact of schemes, and one needs to be developed. Specifically, the Department for Transport has repeatedly misrepresented traction energy metrics-this is the document it usually quotes to compare modes-because it did not understand the limitation put on it that electrification is not good if it causes you to have more coal-fired power stations.

We have a fundamental difficulty, which I think everybody has identified. We need more confidence, not so much in the sense of bodies on the ground but in terms of techniques to give us satisfactory answers.

 

Q6 Dr. Naysmith: That provides a good point for me to jump in with a question about electrification. Lord Adonis recently spoke about electrifying the line to Bristol and eventually on to Swansea. It is estimated that it would cost more than £1 billion. Is that just a waste of money that could be spent on something else?

Jim Russell: It is an issue of time. If it is done to the time scale, the Department for Transport and the Department of Energy and Climate Change tell me that they will not have decarbonised electricity to run it. If you rework the calculation of the claimed benefit-cost ratio, it goes down from 2.2 to 0.88 if decarbonisation is delayed 20 years. It is not quite as bad if it is delayed only 15 years. Having talked to the Department, I think 20 years is a reasonable date. If it is delayed only 15 years, it goes down from 2.2 to 1.76. This is important because of the money going, which would be available to take some of the other forms of decarbonisation, but it's even more important because of the timing of electric traction for road vehicles. We've got to get the timing right.

 

Q7 Dr. Naysmith: What would happen if, instead of decarbonised coal, we had nuclear power? Would things happen sooner?

Jim Russell: Nuclear power would produce a situation where the carbon intensity of travel by rail is just a little more than the carbon intensity of travel by electric car. The difficulty is that all these evaluations look at fuel; they don't look at the other things. They don't look at the up-front investment in facilities. Unfortunately, because we have a Victorian railway without bypasses and things of that sort, quite a lot of up-front investment in facilities, and therefore up-front carbon, is required. Even more importantly, these evaluations do not look at the differences between the rolling costs of maintaining railways and roads. Roads-those that are contestable by rail-are very intensively used and they are very cheap in carbon to keep going. I must say that all this was a great surprise to the institute when it started to examine the issue carefully. I really ought to be quite humble about that. Until three years ago, we had no idea that the received wisdom was so at odds with reality. We now have a fairly strong idea, which is part of the reason why I am here. I hope that that answers the question.

Dr. Naysmith: Jim, I noticed one or two heads shaking. Chris, do you want to come in?

Chris Irwin: I read Jim's paper with great interest, but I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry for him, because, on the very same day-17 July-that he issued his paper, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport nationally issued a paper dealing with Network Rail's electrification strategy, in which it said very clearly, "The Institute welcomes this excellent study and strongly supports its conclusions." That is a very clear statement, and one has to have very big question marks about Jim's rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the evidence. I have also read the Roger Kemp on traction energy metrics and all that stuff, and I am very clear in my mind from reading that work, which Jim is aware of, that there are conclusive benefits of electrification.

But on top of that, there are other factors. First, there is the issue of more reliable services. We have talked about the problems this morning, and electrification generally provides more reliable services. It is much cheaper-25 to 30 per cent. cheaper-to operate. There's reduced wear on the infrastructure. Generally-this is not a bad consideration-it is a lot better for passengers. To my mind, this is a no-brainer, and Lord Adonis has done more for the region with his decision about Great Western main line electrification than any other Transport Minister has for 50 years. We really ought not to let that go unnoticed.

Can I just comment briefly on one other aspect of the electrification scheme, which is important? As Network Rail's studies show, the case for the electrification of the Great Western main line is that it is self-funding. It would be wasting public money not to go ahead with electrification-it would actually cost you, me and all of us more not to do it than to do it. That seems to be not a bad reason to do it if you get all those benefits along the way.

The final thing to say is that £1 billion is an obscene amount to be paying for this. My estimate, from looking at continental practice, is that it should cost between £350 million and £500 million. The difference, of course, comes from the slightly odd way we organise our rail network, paying the operators compensation for the inconvenience of not being able to operate their trains when essential work is being done. That is probably a major factor in the costs. I know that David has stronger views on this than most people, so I have just pushed that back to him.

Chairman: I know. I have an Adjournment debate about that tomorrow. Can we move on to-

Jim Russell: Can I just come back on this business-

Dr. Naysmith: I think we are going to have to be a little snappy. Can you make it very quick, Jim?

Jim Russell: I don't know why somebody at CILT took it on themselves to issue that completely uncritical statement at a time when CILT had a major study on the issue. I also think there is a misunderstanding of precisely what Professor Kemp said. The easiest way to deal with that is perhaps for me to let you have a little supplementary evidence-it'll be very short-and no doubt Chris can look at it and decide whether he accepts it.

Chairman: You want to hear from Simon next.

 

Q8 Dr. Naysmith: Not on this. I want to move on to a different question with Simon. In the evidence that the IOD put in, you talked about the fact that the strategic national corridor would stop at Exeter and won't continue into Devon and Cornwall. Why should the Department for Transport extend it into Devon and Cornwall? We have already touched on that a little bit in your previous answer, but how about this business of stopping at Exeter in particular?

Simon Face: Again, most people would agree with the Eddington report 2006 and the point that transport communications are linked to economic development. It is interesting if you look around the South-West region at places such as Plymouth, Cornwall, Forest of Dean, south Bristol and Torbay-these are the areas and wards with some of the highest unemployment and lowest GDP. Funnily enough, what do they all seem to have in common is a lack of access, effectively, to the good national links that we have by road and rail around most of the rest of the South-West, so from those sorts of examples, we can see for ourselves in the region how important it is to have a quality network, even locally, which allows people to travel to do business, to send goods and move around the country in that way.

 

Q9 Dr. Naysmith: Mike, do you want to comment on either of those two questions-electrification or strategic national corridors?

Mike Birkin: Yes, I think it's important if we are trying to achieve a sustainable transport system to bear two things in mind. One is the importance of tackling the shorter local journeys-don't imagine that we are going to resolve problems of congestion and difficulty of access by investing solely in those long-distance corridors when the problem-for instance in the motorway network around Bristol-is that we have a strategic network that, a lot of the time, is filled up with people making local journeys. Don't just assume that it is the long-distance investment that makes the big difference. In terms of whether you invest in a very modernising public transport piece of infrastructure to make it more fit for the 21st century, you need to think not only about the cost-benefits in terms of carbon and revenue generated and so on, but also about the messages that it is sending to the wider political and public arena about what it is we actually think is important to invest in for the future.

The benefits of rail electrification or just of general improvements in rail are much more than are just those that are captured in a conventional economic cost-benefit analysis-the improvement in people's lives through the removal of traffic in towns, for instance. That is just one thing that isn't captured in the conventional cost-benefit analysis at all well and we really need to take that into account when we are considering what transport investments we make in the future.

Chairman: I want to home in on this issue that a number of you identified-the process by which we decide on our policies. I am going to ask Kerry to lead off on this, but I want to say something about urban, suburban and rural at the end, so let us start with Kerry about what the priorities are.

Kerry McCarthy: I should perhaps make it clear that although I was a member of the Committee when it was first set up, and I am still technically a member of the Committee because they haven't quite got around to replacing me, I am a Government Whip, so I won't be playing a part in the Committee's deliberations. I am here because I was just about to get the train to London when I got a phone call from the Chair saying that she could not get here from London. We decided that, transport logistics being what they are and seeing that my home is only 10 minutes away, I would whiz down here.

Chairman: We are very grateful, Kerry.

 

Q10Kerry McCarthy: What I wanted to ask was about how the regional funding advice process actually works and whether it works on a regional basis. The South-West does not have as distinct a regional identity as some other regions and is a much bigger geographical space. Some of the submissions we've had suggested that all we've ended up with is a list of pet projects from the local authorities with the loudest voices, or the ones that have lobbied the hardest. Do you agree?

Mike Birkin: Yes, I do think that that has been a flaw with the process as it has been carried out in practice in both rounds of the RFA in the South-West. I don't think that that is an inherent problem in the concept of the RFA in the first place. There are a lot of transport issues that need to be addressed in the region that are larger than an individual local authority can do on its own, so the concept of taking it to a higher level and examining the schemes across the region makes good sense to us. Because you would start with a defined pot of money, give or take, it ought to be a very powerful reality check for the region's transport planners to be able to sift and prioritise their schemes, knowing that resource is limited and roughly how large it is.

There is also an issue about the capacity of local authorities to pursue schemes, particularly when it comes to the complexities of integrated schemes and public transport schemes. That capacity simply does not exist in a lot of the smaller local authorities and yet you need to have it. We are now in a situation where large urban developments-urban extensions-are being proposed around Bristol and, without muddying the waters by commenting on the merits or otherwise of those, it is clear that if they are going to work, transport planners in some smaller local authorities around the west of England need to have a lot of help to put together the kind of public transport packages that we need, and they need to have the clout to be able to negotiate with the providers and the operators of transport systems to get the networks that work best for people. That is why we are enthusiastic supporters of the concept of an integrated transport authority for Bristol.

 

Q11 Kerry McCarthy: Is that you putting your cards on the table about ITAs? Yes, I agree.

Chris Irwin: I very much endorse what Mike says. You may know that I spent seven years of my life running Guinness world records and therefore I have an eye for superlatives. It seems to me the South-West has superlatives that we can unite around doing something about. In Bristol, we have the slowest moving urban traffic anywhere in the country.

 

Q12 Kerry McCarthy: Does that count as a superlative?

Chris Irwin: Yes, it is the most. Between Swindon and London we have the highest rail fares, not just in this country for any comparable service but, I think, throughout Europe, at 44p per kilometre, which is crazy. We have the oldest rail fleet of anywhere in the country. We have the worst access to buses anywhere in the country. We have the greatest car use of anywhere in the country. We have the greatest disparities between sub-regions anywhere in the country and we have the oldest population of anywhere in the country. Given that, that is a narrative we should be building around to transform and meet in our planning. The problem as I see it is the question of competence and the focal point of local authorities. The way that regional planning has begun to move, with a reassertion of LGA-type powers over the planning process, has unfortunately begun to unpick the progress we are making towards thinking about things on a regional strategic level. There is the Strategic Leaders Board: it may work; it is too early at this stage to form a judgment on whether it works. Anyone who is familiar with that organisation will be aware that there is an enormous deficit of skilled technical support to support it. Therefore one looks for something at regional level, from Government Office, from the RDA, to bring in that expertise to do something about it.

One problem we get in the region, though, is the disparity of focus between the so-called peripheral areas and the M4 corridor core. There is an assumption that the prosperous north-west is prosperous throughout but, again, one just has to look at the north of the region to see the appalling rural deprivation that exists when you look at the IMD charts and so on. Until we address these things in a coherent, analytic way, we are not going to get what we need. This goes back to the failure of the RFA 2 process. It was too much based on a political bargain-the ability to do deals between powerful barons-and insufficiently based on an appraisal methodology around a narrative on which the region was agreed. That is the essential shortcoming of what we have today.

 

Q13 Dr. Naysmith: Shouldn't the RDA be doing more in this area?

Chris Irwin: I personally believe the RDA should be the principal driver in that area, but working very closely with the Government Office, because unless you can properly tie central Government into that process-I am not talking about the silos of central Government but about central Government in its totality, so it's the Department of Health working with the Department for Transport, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and so on-perhaps you can get somewhere intelligible. At the moment, I think we're falling down on all fronts. As you know, I spend a lot of my time doing European transport work. The real contrast between what we have here and what you've got in Germany, France, the Netherlands or even Belgium at the moment is this lack of capacity that we suffer from.

Chairman: Simon, Jim, do you want to comment?

Simon Face: I agree with the sense of what's just been said, but I'm pleased that there is some evidence and more local agreement coming through. The west of England partnership seems to be getting consensus between some of the local authorities, which perhaps a few years ago wouldn't have been the case. Again, I think if the funding were to be cut at this point, it would be a double shame from that point of view.

Also, there seems to be another funding problem with the current system, in the sense that if local authorities are having to drive through transport schemes, they're often having to fund all the development work and the planning of that scheme and, to a certain extent, part-fund the scheme up front before they get the money back from central Government. Again, it all seems to be part of this whole problem where things seem to just fall between stools, whether it's a national scheme, a regional scheme or a local scheme, and so on. So, yes, something needs to be changed, certainly.

Jim Russell: I suffer from a slight disadvantage here: I've actually run something like a well funded regional transport organisation and pushed through a major regional development which required adjustment from the local authorities. As a matter of tone, I very much regret the tendency to suggest that the local authorities have somehow sabotaged the region. What we lack is a common pool of expertise shared by everybody-a piece of diagnosis I believe is absolutely correct-and we lack coherent guidance from Government. We have policy objectives which have been evidence-free and have conflicted with each other and with the advice the Government have paid for from people like Eddington, Stern and, indeed, Professor King, who was paid by the Treasury to look at cars.

I don't believe we know the right answer. I've emphasised the lack of knowledge about the car versus other transport, I suppose because it's easy to demonstrate and it's true. It does not mean, however, that the right answer is to concentrate on the car, except perhaps in the very short term.

 

Q14 Dr. Naysmith: I just want to make a quick point. It's obvious from the number of people in the audience that transport excites people who are not part of pressure groups, or who may be part of pressure groups that are not represented here today. How do we get ordinary people involved in the planning process and decision making here-Chris?

Chris Irwin: I think one of the first things is transparency of process. One of the things I really regret about the present situation is that, while respecting a lot of colleagues in local authorities working on transport schemes, there is an extraordinary degree of opacity to what is going on. Try and find out what is going on in the regional environment directives group, and you just can't. No papers are published-

 

Q15 Dr. Naysmith: How can we open this up?

Chris Irwin: The way you open that up is to put it in the public domain. That then naturally engages people. It is actually much more likely to engage people. If the papers for that group appear on the website, the people sitting behind me are more likely to be able to take an informed view on what is going on. You get three benefits. You get buy-in from people. You get identification of problems earlier rather than later, so you don't get the obscenity of millions of pounds being wasted on something like the Westbury A350 scheme before it's suddenly realised that perhaps the lobbyists were right, which I think was an obscenity. On top of that you get a degree of democratic accountability in a participative sense that is actually missing from our regional structures at the moment.

Mike Birkin: Yes, and I think there's a lack of honesty on the part of central Government as to how much influence the region really does have. As stakeholders we spent a lot of time arriving at some consensus on a lot of things that went into the draft of the regional spatial strategy, only to find that central Government actually weren't very interested in them and saw the regional spatial strategy-I would perceive-primarily as a means for driving through the achievement of the housing numbers. So the things that the stakeholders were united around in the region, about the standards of the new development in the region, in terms of bringing forward low-carbon development much quicker, were sidelined; and the perception has been left, I think, all around the region, that RSS is simply a tool used by central Government to impose their will on the local authorities.

 

Q16 Chairman: Obviously, we have to conclude now, but as the lead-in to the next part of the sitting, where I'm going to start by talking about this breakdown between urban, suburban and rural funding streams-literally this is for a 30-second answer-I would presume you would argue it's not right in the South-West: but, in 30 seconds, how could we get that breakdown in funding for future transport schemes better? I'll go to you in reverse order: Jim?

Jim Russell: I think it comes to exactly the same thing as we've been talking about all the way through: public information, even quite detailed-the local railway company won't tell you how much the fuel costs on the community rail schemes and that's ridiculous. Also, adequate training and, moreover, common training of all the personnel involved. If I were an environmental director, and, as I said, I've had this kind of job, I would not want my minutes put, because I'd be honestly trying to do the best job I could, but would not be dealing with people with whom I had any common body of knowledge. If we don't get that right, we'll not get anywhere on anything.

Simon Face: Again, a clear understanding of what we're trying to achieve as a region, as a whole, and, I think, to build on the sort of agreement that there is already within the region, and to continue to invest for the future of the region.

Chris Irwin: I very much agree with what's been said by both the previous speakers. It seems to me that the starting point, though, is very important. It's having a consensus around a regional strategy. I personally believe that chapter 5 of the draft regional spatial strategy is an excellent piece of work and provides the basis for a decent transport strategy. It needs updating already, because it doesn't really take on board DaSTs, and so on, but I think at that starting point, combined with transparency of process and an informed public, you can actually go a very long way, which we're missing out on at the moment.

Mike Birkin: I think the intended emphasis we've had in regional planning of putting a lot of investment in the larger urban areas does make sense in environmental terms. It's really important to get these areas-the larger urban areas-to work, but you have to have a different approach that takes account of the different kinds of settlement we have. So in the urban areas, it's taking advantage of the large flows, the large concentrations, to generate income from things like congestion charging and workplace charging to put the really good quality public transport in place and reduce traffic in towns. In the suburban areas, it's important that we don't just have more sprawl and settlements that aren't accessible by any means other than by car. For the rural areas we have to accept that there is, for the foreseeable future, a large degree of dependence on private cars. There's nothing we can do to change that so we have to look at smart ways to make it possible for people to do the journeys that they need to do and get the access that they need without always having recourse to the car, accepting that that will be a major part of the rural transport scene for the foreseeable future.

Chairman: Gentlemen, I thank you for the evidence you've given. We've got your written evidence as well. Jim certainly said he wants to submit some further written evidence. I apologise; it's been a bit of a disrupted sitting, but there may be additional points that you want to pick up. I know there may be things that we will want to write to you about because of other questions we didn't ask; I thank you for your evidence. As always, what is on the record stays on the record, but you may want to add things and we are more than happy to receive them. If you could exit stage left, we will bring in the next panel, which seems to be very large.

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Barbara Davies, West of England Partnership, Clive Perkin, Plymouth City Council, Jenny Raggett, Campaign for Better Transport Bristol & Bath Travel to Work Area, Adrian Roper, Sustrans, Dr. Gabriel Scally, Regional Director for Public Health, and Nick Vane, Development Director UK Bus First, gave evidence.

 

Q17 Chairman: Thank you for waiting for us. We older men have a slight problem when we drink tea and water. Let me put on the record that our Chair has got to Reading, but not beyond it, so you are stuck with the three of us. One of us at least-me-has to get a train at 12.41 pm, so we will finish at twenty past on the dot. I apologise that things are being slightly curtailed, but that is where we are.

It would be very helpful if you could just say who you are to begin the session. Then, I think the best way is for us to pitch questions in and take responses from whom it is appropriate. Let us start with Adrian.

Adrian Roper: Excuse my voice, it is rather poor today. I am Adrian Roper. I am the South West regional director for Sustrans. We are a sustainable transport charity and very much focus on walking and cycling.

Dr. Scally: I am Gabriel Scally. I am regional director of public health for the south-west, so I work for both the Department of Health-for the DOH team for the south-west-and for the strategic health authority.

Jenny Raggett: I am Jenny Raggett from Campaign for Better Transport, the Bristol and Bath travel to work area.

Nick Vane: I am Nick Vane, development director for UK Bus, FirstGroup.

Clive Perkin: I am Clive Perkin, assistant director for development at Plymouth City Council. I am in charge of transport and highways.

Barbara Davies: I am Barbara Davies from West of England Partnership, covering the four councils of Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

 

Q18 Chairman: You heard my concluding question to the previous panel. It would be quite useful to hear your views on the relationship between urban, suburban and rural priorities in the area and, in a very short period of time, on how we can get this better.

Adrian Roper: I think that Mike mentioned before that certainly in the urban context there is an incredibly high number of very short journeys that are taken by car. I think that 7% of journeys by car in urban centres are less than a mile, and a quarter of car journeys are less than 2 miles, so there is evidently an opportunity there for people to start travelling in different ways. With an improved public transport system and an improved walking and cycling system people do not need to use their cars. Also, with a focus on behavioural and motivational change, and information programmes and so on there is a real opportunity to change the culture of how we travel within our urban areas. Evidently there is a big difference between that and the rural problem that we have in the South West. As Mike said, in the short term at least there is going to be a requirement for very many people to rely on the car, but there also needs to be a demand-responsive public transport system in some form to address those rural needs.

 

Q19 Chairman: Gabriel, can you just focus on how you, as a health expert, would want us to change our current transport modes?

Dr. Scally: I come from a background of public health, as you know, and my major concerns are the 16% of Year 6 children in the South West who are obese, and a toll of death from inactive lifestyles in the South West running at probably about 9,000 a year. So what I want to see is an active and substantial modal shift in transport. I want to see people much more active.

Adrian has already talked about the high proportion of short journeys that are carried out by car, and we need to change that. To give you an example, 51% of the journeys of children to St. George primary school, which is only a couple of hundred metres from here, are by car, and the corresponding figure for Hotwells primary school, which is about a mile up the road and where my kids went, is 35%. In Bristol, 22% of primary school children who live within 800 metres of their school travel by car, and in Plymouth the figure is 16%. There is an enormous number of car journeys that could be easily substituted by walking and cycling, provided parents and children felt comfortable and able to do so. In order to make that happen, I think we need major transformatory schemes, which will require a level of funding equivalent to that of some of the major road schemes that we now see in the regional funding allocation. I shall very briefly say one thing. The schemes that get into the major pots are required to be over £5 million and the thesis is that you need £5 million plus to dual the something or other, or bypass somewhere or other. What we need are major transformatory schemes that are way above that level and get really substantial major funding in place.

Chairman: Jenny, you might want to localise it a bit, but it would be a good exemplar to look at.

Jenny Raggett: There's a general point that I'd like to make and that is that if you consider Europe or even other parts of the UK, the one thing that distinguishes urban and suburban areas from those in the South West is that they have proper rapid transit systems and proper suburban rail networks. What we believe is that you cannot get away from the unfortunate fact that if you don't invest in rapid transit networks, not just buses running on concrete, which I think has been put forward as one possibility, but bona fide rapid transit networks of the sort that you do get in European cities or other cities in this country, you cannot get the kind of modal shift that we need in order to then make it more pleasant to walk and cycle.

Just as an example, I have looked on the web. In France, 18 different rapid transit systems are developing at the moment or have been built. Even in the States, nearly every city of any sizeable population is moving towards light rail and rapid transit. There is a feeling in the South West that places such as Exeter, Swindon, Plymouth, Gloucester and Cheltenham will be able to expand with limited investment in the kind of suburban rail or bona fide, good-quality, high-ridership rapid transit that we really need. That's where we're coming from really.

Nick Vane:  I'd agree there are certainly differences between rural and urban areas, but it shouldn't be forgotten that many journeys that start in rural areas often end in urban areas, and the percentage of journey time in an urban area can be quite substantial. Congestion is a key issue in many of our cities in the South West.

 

Q20 Chairman: You are a provider who is obviously trying to bridge the gap between urban, suburban and rural. What is the answer for the bus network?

Nick Vane: The answer for the bus network is to look at how we can make a priority of improving journey times and make sustainable choices a positive choice so that people choose to walk, cycle or take public transport because there are advantages to them in doing so.

Clive Perkin: You can look at this on a number of fronts. From Plymouth's perspective, which I will, of course, put forward today, there is an issue with our peripherality in terms of the region as a whole. There has been some debate today and in some of the papers about where our RFA is going-about whether it is too orientated towards county-type schemes. We have a bit of a dilemma in terms of our connectivity with the national network, and we would obviously like to push the issue forward. It is important that Plymouth is connected to the rest of the national network to ensure that we have access to jobs and growth like other parts of the UK.

As a city, we obviously cover urban, suburban and rural, and from the perspective of what we have in the major scheme bids in the RFA, it is important that we actually cover that. At the moment, we are going through a major expansion of the eastern part of the city, and our major scheme bid is for a high-quality public transport connectivity system to be put in place. That not only picks up the massive growth agenda that we have for Plymouth, but deals with some of the existing transport issues for existing communities.

In setting the scene in terms of how you differentiate the balance of funding into those different areas, it's got to be about connectivity between different policies and procedures. Particularly, for example, through our local development framework, we have already created a core strategy that sets out linked sustainable communities in the city and to the edges of the city. That has to be the starting point to drive our investment, and it has driven our decisions to focus on the eastern corridor and northern corridor high-quality public transport routes.

Obviously, that then brings in public transport corridors to address not only issues of growth and economic well-being, but social inequalities, which were mentioned by a previous speaker, in some of the most deprived wards of the city, as well as the health agenda, which the gentleman at the far end of the table has also mentioned.

Barbara Davies: We've got a population of a million, and about half a million jobs. Rail use is up, say, 38%. in the last five years. Park and ride is up and cycling levels are up 50%, so I endorse a lot of what other speakers have said. We have tremendous pressure on our existing infrastructure.

One of our objectives is to improve the transport infrastructure. We can improve it throughout the urban areas and then provide linkages from the rural areas to the improved transport infrastructure. Our RFA allocation is primarily about public transport-based schemes providing that important network framework of improved public transport. Then we can provide feeder services from some of the rural areas, perhaps into the improved network.

Rail use has gone up dramatically, so we have two rail schemes in the RFA. That will provide linkages across the sub-region and across Bristol and Bath, thereby providing improved services for people to use. So we've got a network of improved transport infrastructure, and we would hope to link in with the rural areas to provide access to that improved infrastructure-that is our strategy.

Chairman: Okay. Can we stay with that? I'll ask Kerry to look at how we can drill down on some of these infrastructure arguments and also the way in which some specific examples of good practice could be exemplified more across the whole region, because that often does not seem to happen.

 

Q21 Kerry McCarthy: Regarding what you were saying about the infrastructure and projected demand and so on, my feeling is that what is in the pipeline and all the schemes that have been talked about still wouldn't be enough to meet projected growth in demand for rail services in the West of England region. Perhaps even more importantly, it does not take into account the latent demand that would be there if you had, for example, frequent services on the Severn Beach line. It could become a real commuter network and have a clock-face regular service, rather than just having three services every couple of hours or whatever. You've got a huge amount of latent demand there as well. Do you feel the plans are going anywhere near to tapping into that?

Barbara Davies: No. I think as part of our evidence we said that, because of the growth pressures and the growth we are experiencing, although the West of England Partnership obviously secured funding through the RFA2 process, our strategic thinking is very strong. An earlier study-the Greater Bristol strategic transport study-set out that we needed £1.1 billion-worth of investment to tackle issues in our sub-region up to 2031. The RFA is about £450 million, so it is in line with the growth anticipated in the sub-region, notwithstanding the recession.

As I say, I fully support some of the levels we are recording in rail use, where we believe the demand is not taken into account. In relation to some of the initiatives around Cycling City and the increases in cycling we are getting, we feel that the sub-region would argue strongly that it needed more investment to get people on to those modal shifts and achieve some of the demands we need.

One of the issues we are tackling as part of the sub-region relates to the fact we have developed a multi-area agreement with Government. Three aspects are part of that multi-area agreement, one of which is about the rail industry, the emerging RUS and whether the appropriate demands are being taken into account in relation to growth in this area. As a sub-region, we are trying to tackle some of the issues through the multi-area agreement as well.

 

Q22 Kerry McCarthy: Can I just ask Nick something? It is a source of great comfort to politicians in Bristol that no matter how unpopular some of the things we might do are, First Bus always manages to be more unpopular. I notice that in your submission, you state, "Commercial operators such as First provide a level of bus service provision across the region that meets current levels of demand." I would query that. It also states, "This competitive market for customers offers value for money and cost effective delivery of public transport to both the customer and tax payer." To be fair, most people who use First Group bus services in Bristol would challenge some of those assumptions. What do you think can be done?

I have had lots of meetings with First Bus during my four years as an MP, but we haven't cracked it in terms of delivering the type of bus service that we need. I can only speak from Bristol's experience. I am not sure what the experience is in other places where First operates, although certainly when I was on the Local Transport Bill Committee, my colleagues from Sheffield were fairly critical as well. What can we do, and how can we improve things?

Nick Vane: The key thing is to improve the highway network to allow bus journeys to be an attractive alternative to the car, with journey times that are comparable if not better. One of the key problems in Bristol, as many people have said, is the incredibly slow travel speeds. We know that not only from our own records-we obviously know how many hours we operate and how many bus miles we can do-but equally in terms of what was reported by the AA back in 2008. It is a very slow travel speed, which knocks on to our cost base. It becomes much more expensive to operate buses when journey times are significantly longer.

 

Q23 Kerry McCarthy: Wouldn't more people use the buses if they were cheaper and more reliable? It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, isn't it? The traffic speeds would be quicker if there weren't as many cars on the roads and if bus was a viable option.

Nick Vane: Indeed. We believe buses are a viable option, but we need to make it an attractive alternative by encouraging better bus journey speeds. At the moment, journey times in Bristol are very slow on the road network, whether you're a car user or a bus operator.

 

Q24 Kerry McCarthy: Perhaps some of the others will come in on how we can improve buses, but also on the role of things such as park-and-ride schemes. Do we need to look at congestion charging? Should we be looking at people cycling and walking, and giving up on the idea of them making bus journeys? I do not know who wants to start.

Dr. Scally: Could I come in on that? As a cyclist and a Bristol cyclist, I must say the thought of faster buses doesn't fill me with a great deal of joy. I think what we need to do is this. Actually, Chris Irwin said it in your last evidence session. We need to be looking for very good examples, but we need to be looking elsewhere. The South-West is the size of a small European country. We should be thinking that way and we should be seeking inspiration elsewhere.

Over the last two years, I've taken groups of directors of public health from the South-West, along with local authority officials, to Freiburg in Germany and looked at the integrated transport system there. It is absolutely fantastic and they have come back inspired. The examples are legion of how places across Europe have transformed themselves. Rather than seeking to accelerate one particular little bit of our system as it stands at the moment, we should be looking for transformation. You mentioned the subsidies and the cost, which is a very good point. If you look at the graphs of the subsidies for Freiburg's integrated transport system, the subsidies have declined as the users have increased dramatically, but that will happen only with a transformatory process. It will not happen by small interventions in one particular mode.

Jenny Raggett: I would like to agree. If you look at European cities and the way things are done, yes, buses do travel faster, but that's partly because they have the suburban rail and the rapid transit integrated with the buses, so it's not uncommon to get off at a tram stop to find that the same tram stop is the stop on to a bus service that perhaps goes out of town to service a rural hinterland. That integration and understanding of how you might cycle or walk to the station and buy some food on the way-that general lifestyle is what's lacking in certainly the Greater Bristol area, so I agree that we need a transformational change and we can't just tinker around, hoping that by speeding up the buses on one corridor, we'll magic up a total change for the city.

Adrian Roper: Just to follow up on that point, that has been a long-term aspiration and has been achieved in these places. We've somehow viewed ourselves as entirely culturally different from our northern European neighbours, but that's not been the case; they've changed from a very similar situation to the one here. They've consistently gone along with that objective and it's been a very clear objective. We need always to bear it in mind that it is a long-term objective, but it is set and followed throughout that time scale, so it's not something over five years.

 

Q25 Dr. Naysmith: I want to ask Nick a question relating to what Kerry was saying. Specifically on Bristol, you see these big buses trundling around that Gabriel is frightened of being knocked off his bicycle by, but Exeter has an excellent little bus service with much smaller vehicles. Would that not help to alleviate the costs in Bristol and help with the speed of travel?

Nick Vane: We obviously choose the vehicles that we put on individual routes very much to reflect the demand in the area where they're travelling.

 

Q26 Dr. Naysmith: Users of First buses in Bristol know that they're busy between 8 and half-past 9 in the morning and then they trundle around the city almost empty.

Nick Vane: I'd contest the idea that they travel around almost empty, but clearly the biggest demand for services is in the morning peak between 8 and 9 o'clock. It links into the comments that Dr. Scally was making earlier regarding school travel as well. That's the biggest pressure on the road network, but we do choose our vehicles very carefully to meet the level of demand, and we're investing heavily in new vehicles and fleet across many areas in the South-West, including Bristol. I believe we're investing about £20 million in vehicles currently, as part of the work with the Greater Bristol bus network.

Chairman: Clive, do you want to come in on that, and then Barbara?

Clive Perkin: We see no one solution to these issues. One of the issues you've got to look at is reliability and punctuality. In Plymouth, for example, we have a real-time passenger information system which we're developing even further. We're also-

Dr. Naysmith: We have one in Bristol too.

Clive Perkin: Exactly. It's those issues, along with integrated ticketing and off-bus ticketing, which are going to improve punctuality and the movement of those vehicles on the route, as well as, obviously, some measures to improve the actual corridors themselves, which may or may not end up in cars travelling faster, and then looking specifically at the particular routes. We've been very successful with some of the routes in Plymouth, where we've looked at the taxi-bus and smaller, more efficient and effective means of transporting people across the city.

 

Q27 Kerry McCarthy: Do you have park and ride schemes in Plymouth?

Clive Perkin: We have park and ride, yes.

 

Q28 Kerry McCarthy: And they're well used?

Clive Perkin: They're developing. This is what we're trying to develop. Our belief is that you can't look at park and ride in isolation. It's also trying to link it with your existing network and existing users, hence our eastern corridor scheme. It's picking up existing commuters but also working with a new 6,000-house settlement to try and make that more cost-effective and more reliable for all users of the service.

Barbara Davies: The heart of our approach is about it being sustainable. It's about it being achievable and about it being value for money to make some changes. Transformational visions I'm all for, but at the moment we've got a real problem that we've got deal with now. GBBN was part of the answer-no one's ever said that Greater Bristol Busnet was the whole answer, but it was an investment of £43 million from Government. It is across 10 of our key corridors, it is served by 60 of our routes and we are going to have real-time information and ticketing, so it is a step in the right direction of giving people confidence that measures are being taken.

I would say that part of that is working with First. Yes, First have put £20 million in, the local authorities have put some money in and developers have put some money in, but now we need to progress and to say that the local authorities, as part of GBBN, have actually provided bus lanes and real-time information and First have provided vehicles, but we now need to move on to some of the more thorny issues around the reliability and punctuality of those services. That's why, together, as part of the project, we're exploring some form of statutory quality bus partnership to see whether there's a way to say, "We've invested £40 million, First have invested £20 million, and what's the output for the passengers in terms of reliability of services and frequency?"

In relation to the point the gentleman made about the bus services, we make every effort on all our showcases. Cycling facilities are improved dramatically, and some of our showcase bus corridors, like the Gloucester road, have shown dramatic increases in cycling use as well. So whenever we try to put these improvements in, we always look to see how we can improve advanced stop lines and other facilities for cyclists. Indeed, when Bristol and south Gloucestershire were awarded £22 million for Cycling City, we stopped some of the GBBN work and reappraised it in the context of the Cycling City funds to see how those corridors could be made more friendly to cyclists as well.

 

Q29Dr. Naysmith: I wanted to switch to Dr. Scally and ask him a question as a cyclist and a public health expert. People often say that they don't cycle or walk because of fears about road safety. How do you manage to encourage people to do it and discourage these fears?

Dr. Scally: It is a difficult thing to do. We have a misperception of risk in many areas of our civil life, and this is very clearly one of them. There's no doubt about it: being a cyclist varies in terms of safety from place to place, and pleasure from place to place. I cycle in both Taunton and Bristol on a very regular basis. Cycling in Taunton is a pleasure. I can cycle around Taunton largely off-road, without fear of buses or cars or anyone else, and it's a real pleasure. Cycling in Bristol is more like survival cycling.

That's reflected in the age structure of the people who cycle in Bristol. You don't see children regularly cycling in Bristol; you do all the time in Taunton. You don't see older people cycling on bikes and trikes in Bristol; you see them all the time in Taunton. But if you go to the Netherlands or Denmark, you'll see very, very large numbers.

The figures are very clear. A direct answer is that the benefit in terms of life expectancy for someone to take up cycling, for example, is a ratio of 10:1. Yes, there is a risk, but the benefit hugely outweighs it. I think one of the failures in terms of the decision-making process is the inadequacy of the cost-benefit analysis that is undertaken. It doesn't include the health benefits that come from reduced air pollution, the reduced toll of death and injury on the roads and the improvement of issues such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and our biggest-growing problem-literally-obesity.

 

Q30 Dr. Naysmith: Can I ask Adrian to tell us about his Travel Smart scheme that encourages people to switch from cars to other forms of transport?

Adrian Roper: Absolutely. Travel Smart is an individualised travel marketing programme that we run. Similar schemes are run by other companies as well. The basis for that is that individuals in a neighbourhood will receive information or be asked how they travel, how they would like to travel and where they travel at the moment. Based on that we get individualised information that suits their particular needs. That includes a local travel plan with bus routes, walking routes, cycling routes and so on, and it provides people with information on how they might change their journeys. The consistent results that we get across the country are that in any one neighbourhood there is a 10 to 14% reduction in car journeys in that neighbourhood, so not just in those households but across the whole neighbourhood. It has a huge impact and it is consistent, so it is not just a one-off. We have done 40 or 50 schemes probably across the country. We can see that just by providing information to people you can make a really significant difference.

 

Q31 Dr. Naysmith: Is it expensive to set up?

Adrian Roper: It is hugely cost-effective. To do the whole town of Taunton it cost £500,000 to impact the 10 to 14% reduction. Yet look at somewhere like Weymouth, which is getting a bypass costing £87.4 million. I suspect we might not see a 10 to 14% reduction in car journeys taking place there. I am really keen to push that point. It is evidently about infrastructure but also about information and encouraging behaviour change.

Jenny Raggett: On the subject of cycling and the interface with public transport, which is what is interesting to me, we are due to have 40 large urban extensions built within the RSS period. I have been looking at a couple of these new developments, the ones that have already got or are applying for outline planning permission. What strikes me is that a lot of the time local facilities are not sufficiently local to be able to walk or cycle to. In other words, I think one of the things we could usefully do is to vet each new large urban extension for not reducing the need to travel, which is the PPG 13 theme, but where can you actually walk or cycle to from any given street? If you think of some of the large new developments, especially in Wiltshire-I am a daily cyclist, so I speak from personal experience-you have got to be prepared to cycle a long way to get to the dentist or the health centre, and even the local shops. I think that we should have some kind of guidance or some way of making sure that all large new urban extensions are built in such a way that things are available locally to walk or cycle to.

 

Q32 Chairman: Can I move us on finally to what I think is the crux of the debate-the relationship between central and local government? We'll leave the region in there, shall we? Central, regional and local government, and in particular, what has happened with the RSS and how the RFA is going to be influenced by this. Let us ask a general question to begin with. Are central Government getting it right? Are they getting it right in a time frame that makes sense and, dare I say it, is there enough resource going into this?

Jenny Raggett: First of all, on the question of resource, I think most people would agree that there was not enough resource going into not only the financing of the infrastructure but the delivery, conception and analysis work. We are not going to get the infrastructure that we need to support the immense housing and employment growth proposed for this region.

Barbara Davies: I think we feel strongly that there is a clear need for a steer on transport issues and I think you can talk about the RFA process, but before the current arrangement it was on a first come, first served basis. Somebody came up with an idea with no strategic overview. So in our view we need to preserve the best of the RFA process in working on key strategic issues such as the regional spatial strategy.

 

Q33 Chairman: Clive, do you want give us a Plymouth perspective on how central Government are or are not providing the answers and how you might need to get more traction in that process? Is there a strong role for the RDA? Clearly that has to been seen through the RSS-sorry about the acronyms.

Clive Perkin: That's fine. I am quite new to this as it is only in the past six months that I have come in with fresh eyes to the whole process and attended some of the environment directorate group meetings that were mentioned earlier. Clearly, there is a need to shift significantly in the way we move forward. From Plymouth's perspective, we are working closely with the Homes and Communities Agency and looking at the single conversation and investment plan, and my personal view is that we need to ensure that transport is not an add-on, is a key component of delivery and must be seen as part of the overall agenda. Although it may well be funded separately, it needs to be a whole part of that agenda in terms of a single investment plan that identifies the transport needs of any growth, which obviously within Plymouth is quite significant.

 

Q34 Chairman: Nick, do you want to say how buses are part of the solution and how central Government can help?

Nick Vane: We've worked very closely with many authorities across the South West and continue to do so very positively. Getting involved early to assist with delivering the objectives of the region is a positive way we can contribute. The key thing, moving forward, is to be able to demonstrate delivery quickly, and that also helps engagement with the local community.

 

Q35 Chairman: Can I perhaps be a bit more provocative and ask whether local authorities themselves are part of the problem, as they see transport in their own little capsule? We need at least sub-regional direction, if not regional direction. Adrian, is that something Sustrans sees as an issue?

Adrian Roper: Yes, it does absolutely. I am no central Government policy expert at all, but it seems in terms of the health agenda and the low-carbon agenda that the Government are saying the right things, yet that does not seem to be delivered at a local authority level. The transport issue does get held within a transport department very often and the health and carbon issue are not addressed sufficiently well. We see that across the region, and obviously RFA2 is a very good example of the cross-departmental goals not being achieved. We would like to see that revisited and health assessments and carbon assessments made. I gather that that has happened in the east of England, so it would be great to see that happen in the South West.

There is a real, strong need for local authorities to have that wider perspective, which I do not think we have at the moment. We obviously welcome money from central Government for cycling, but it is shame that at this stage we are having cycling demonstration towns. Cycling, walking and public transport have to be totally integral and central to any transport policy, yet we do not see motoring demonstration towns, which tells us a bit about the culture we are still in.

 

Q36 Chairman: Gabriel, I see that you have more of a sub-regional role. Do you get it right and other aspects of central Government get it wrong, or are you part of the problem and has health not really had a strong transport focus until relatively recently?

Dr. Scally: I think we'd very much like to be part of the solution. I think that the five goals that are set nationally for building a sustainable transport system are absolutely excellent. Getting a better balance on climate change, safety, health and economy is absolutely vital, so I am very happy with the overall strategic goals. I think that RFA2 was a disappointment to me and to the public health community. I and many of the directors of public health took part in the consultations around that and were disappointed with the outcome. We were particularly concerned to see very large amounts of money, particularly in this economic climate, going into major road schemes-I can just imagine what the £100 million going into Kingskerswell would do for transformational stuff in urban communities, and even in rural communities, across the region.

My strategic goal at the moment is to really influence the next round of local transport plans, LTP 3. I wish to see all these issues we have been talking about, such as the movement of people, which are issues for civil society and too important to be left to transport planners only. We need a wider engagement with civil society in deciding what we're going to do on transport in this region.

I am particularly interested, also, in the role of the health sector. It's 10% of GDP and an enormous generator of journeys for staff, patients and so on, but largely silent on these issues. I think we need a much richer approach to the next round of LTP, and I'm quite convinced we can get that.

Jenny Raggett: I support entirely everything that's just been said. One of the things that I would plead for is more straightforward language, in order to involve the general public. If you talk even about modal shift, they're somewhat confused. If you say something like, "We'd like to build an off-road cycleway from A to B," and they recognise the locations, "and it would be a cycleway with special traffic lights so that you could get across roads safely and you would have priority over cars"-which is unlikely, but you get the drift-as soon as you talk down to earth, avoiding all of what I call Department for Transport jargon, suddenly you communicate with ordinary people, so I would call for that.

Equally, I think it's very important with the RFA process that ordinary people feel that they can actually participate. Otherwise there is a resentment, eventually, against regional government. Paradoxically, if you don't involve ordinary people at a regional level-South West Councils, I have to say, doesn't seem to be involving ordinary people and stakeholders in the way that I would have liked to see-you build up a kind of resentment that things are being done and have nothing to do with us. Then, when things are put forward, there's often resistance which would otherwise not be there.

Barbara Davies: In response to some of the concerns that Jenny's raised at a regional level, as a sub-region, when the four authorities came together, we realised that we had to be seen to be transparent in how we progressed these important issues and engaged properly with people. One of the things we've done is to set up a joint transport executive committee, with the four executive members responsible for transport meeting in public. At the meeting in October, interestingly, on the agenda was "How are we going to do the next JLTP with the DaSTs goals? How are we going to engage with all the people that we don't normally engage with? We hear from the usual culprits that come to us, but how do we engage?" That was a report that went to the joint committee on 1 October.

I think what we're trying to say at a sub-regional level is that we recognise, moving into the next JLTP, that we have to improve the way we engage. We have to get people's views, and we're doing that formally, in a way, through a joint transport committee. Every time it meets, it will consider an update. The JLTP is for submission March 2011. We've already started now being open and transparent, to try and get some of these other interest groups on board. So we might not have it right, but we do welcome people being involved.

 

Q37 Dr. Naysmith: Would you not have found it easier to get the involvement if you'd set up a passenger transport authority or executive rather than just a partnership?

Barbara Davies: Set up what-an ITA?

Dr. Naysmith: Yes.

Barbara Davies: I think at the moment, where the authorities are, in the last year we've gone a long way in enhancing our governance from four unitary authorities working together through the partnership informally to a formal joint transport executive committee underwritten by a joint working agreement. I think it's about understanding how far the authorities can tackle some of the big issues, which for us are around the buses. I agree fully with their view that it is too expensive and unreliable.

 

Q38 Dr. Naysmith: That's one of the reasons why these big northern cities and so on usually have what were called passenger transport executives when they were set up, and now ITAs. Why can't we have one in this area?

Barbara Davies: In this area, where we are at the moment with the four authorities is this. We're looking to see how much we can achieve with the enhanced governance, and what can't be achieved and would require the authorities to move to an ITA. So at the moment there's some work going on around that.

 

Q39 Chairman: Can I ask one last question? This is one that hasn't come up yet but is quite interesting. The South-West probably has the largest differential in population between the summer and the winter, because we are one of the country's leading tourist areas, if not its leading tourist area. How can we improve access for tourists who don't want to drive to places in the South-West? Barbara? We'll go the opposite way round. We should like a large, pithy concluding statement.

Barbara Davies: Obviously, tourism is all-year now in many areas, including Bristol and particularly Bath. One of my areas, Bath, has the Bath package, which is being progressed through the DFT processes, including extensions to the park-and-ride serving Bath, a rapid transit service and improvements to the city centre. Some of it may be seasonal, but in some of my urban areas it is all year round. So we see improving the general transport infrastructure as quite key.

Clive Perkin: Similar comments, really. Obviously, we're on a major route through to Cornwall and to our international ports going across to France. So it is about getting those linkages sorted all the way through, with the people coming down from up-country-making sure we have those routes-and having the ability to cope in times of accidents and other severe situations that may block certain routes. I echo the same views. We need to just keep putting the investment in across the board.

 

Q40 Chairman: Nick, do you run any differentiated services in summer and winter?

Nick Vane: We certainly do. There are differences in travel demand over the summer months, particularly in areas like Devon and Cornwall. Echoing some of the earlier comments, working in partnership with providers of tourism activity to develop sustainably is the key. Clearly, there are opportunities there, and there have been good examples of that with the Eden project, for example, which we need to build on and continue with. However, many things that can be done to deal with seasonal congestion benefit the whole region all year round.

Jenny Raggett: I suppose it's worth saying that there have been a couple of good things done in respect of seasonal tourism. I know that the trains to Weymouth are extended in length, and that's been a real success, because they were really congested before extra carriages were added.

In general, on the railways, one would like to see more capacity, because otherwise people will take their cars and when they do that people call for bypasses, road improvements and so on. So the message is, let's do the train-let's do it better-and, when people get to the other end, let's provide them with buses to the places they want to go, and make them frequent and good quality.

Dr. Scally: Certainly, train schedules improve slightly in the summer. I travel by train all the time up and down the region. However, I note that CrossCountry, the major train company that I use, has reduced the number of cycle spaces on its trains from four to three recently. That isn't a great help. Three is a ridiculously small number. We've very few buses that can help people with bicycles, for example. Both these things are easily solvable if you look at what people have done elsewhere. So improving our capacity could be useful.

The other thing that we don't do at all is consider the economic benefits of cycling and walking, and the contribution to tourism and the generation of jobs, both in terms of cycle manufacturer sales, repair and maintenance, etc. I think there is an enormous economic opportunity in the South West, if we can achieve some of the transformational things that we've talked about today.

Adrian Roper: We're not a public organisation ourselves, but in terms of increasing the capacity, I was thinking about Weymouth. Twice I've had to stand up for two hours on the way down there this summer. Also, there should be transformational change, improving the public realm and improving information for people when they get to public transport, so that when they arrive into Temple Meads in Bristol, for example, they're not straight out into a mess of buses and taxis but are able to see that there's public realm out there and that they can choose to walk into town or cycle round. That applies to all the urban areas. Also, things like the public bike-hire scheme that they have here are good. Extending things like that mean that tourists feel they can walk or cycle round, rather than drive around.

Chairman: Can I thank you for the evidence you've given? If there are any other specific points you didn't get the opportunity to put across, we'd be more than happy to receive those in written form. Indeed, there may be questions that we haven't had time to pick up on that we may contact you about. What is on the record, as I said to your predecessors, is on the record and cannot be undone.

Can I thank my two fellow panellists, who came at short notice? I apologise for the Chair of this Committee not being present, but we will tell her that it was in good hands and that we can always cope with any eventuality.