Why does the Government seem so disinterested in improving public transport?
The UK Government, and UK governments consistently throughout the twentieth century, have failed to invest in capital projects generally. A major reason is that the payback period is greater than the five years interval between elections. For instance, in 1921 the North Eastern Railway proposed to electrify the railway between York and Newcastle. They got as far as building a prototype express electirc locomotvie (Number 13, they had a sense of humour). The Government finally got round to investing in electrification of this line for 1990! The result is not only that there is a failure to invest in public transport generally, but that such investment as is made is distorted towards types of transport, such as cars and buses as opposed to trains and aeroplanes as opposed to high speed rail links, that require comparatively low initial investment as opposed to running costs. Unfortunately, high running costs usually imply high environmental costs too, particularly in realtion to global w
Well, the last Tory government (you may be too young to remember) thought they’d leave the difficult business of public transport to the private sector, the private sector duly enjoyed and regularly enjoy large profits, . . . oh sorry, you were asking about the government’s disinterest – nothing to do with them mate . . . thanks to the last Tory government (you may be too…..
Oh this is a continuing problem that i don’t see improving in the forseeable future. We all know trains are sooo expensive (it cost me over £100 to go from Norfolk to York and back again), and busses are the most unreliable form of transport ever conceived… (I have stood at a bus stop for over 2 hours waiting for a bus that never arrived…). Also, there’s still nothing to compare with the convienence of just leaving your house, getting into your car and driving anywhere you want. Thats the freedom you don’t get if you have to rely on busses. On a final note, increasing car taxes or making us pay-per-mile isn’t going to stop people driving… they’ll just use the back roads, or travel at off-peak times, causing even more chaos (imagine the traffic on the M25 all going round the back roads to avoid paying the higher prices for the better roads!).
