How to increase car ownership

Hatred of cars is often based on the idea that they create inequality. But this viewpoint is marked by a high degree of hypocrisy. The main reason low-income households struggle to afford a vehicle is precisely because anti-car policymakers have imposed huge additional costs on car ownership.

This is particularly reprehensible because increasing the population’s mobility would bring enormous economic benefits. Increased car ownership would improve access to job and business opportunities, enabling workers to find employment that better matches their skills and talents.

Leisure and housing options would be expanded by easy access to an increased number of locations. A greater choice of retail outlets would be available, enabling more households to exploit the economics of scale associated with large shops and bulk buying.

There would be social benefits too. For example, making it easier to visit and help out elderly and disabled family members.

Currently approximately 78% of households in England have access to a car or van, with 33% of households having access to two or more. The figures are broadly similar in other parts of the UK. But growth in car ownership levels has stagnated since the early 2000s, following rapid growth in previous decades.

Moreover, car ownership is much lower than average among households in the bottom two income deciles. Although there are several factors involved, this suggests the high cost of motoring is likely to play an important role.

The list below provides various policies that could be implemented to increase these figures and improve mobility. Many of these ideas are highly contentious and are included here in order to stimulate debate. A full discussion of each proposal is beyond the scope of this post. Their pros and cons will be analysed in more detail in a series of future articles.

• Scrap fuel duty and road tax (VED).
• Abolish compulsory vehicle insurance.
• Remove trade barriers that deter the importation of low-cost cars from countries such as India and China. This should include non-tariff regulatory barriers.
• Simplify the driving test and lower the cost of passing.
• Withdraw “low-emission zones”, “congestion charges” and other local levies.
• Discontinue the annual MOT test.
• Abandon the forced shift to electric vehicles.
• Deregulate taxis and other car-based businesses.

The main objections to higher car ownership are that it would worsen congestion, pollution and road safety.

It’s important to understand that an increase in ownership among lower-income groups wouldn’t lead to a proportionate increase in usage. The new motorists would tend to face greater financial constraints than the average driver. For purposes of illustration, an increase in ownership from say 78% of households to 88% might only increase traffic levels by say 5%.

However, many of the measures to remove barriers to car ownership among the poor would also benefit existing motorists, an effect which is likely to have a bigger impact.

Congestion could be mitigated by re-instating roads that have recently been closed as part of various anti-car schemes. Road narrowing measures could also be reversed, particularly at junctions; the number of traffic lights and other controls reduced; and efficient one-way systems restored in town centres.

Bus and cycle lanes are barely used on many routes and could be removed to increase capacity for cars, vans and lorries. In suitable locations, heavily loss-making railways could be taken out, with the paths redeployed as fast, congestion-free toll roads. And, why not rip up red tape and allow the private sector to provide new road capacity? The planning system can also be liberalised to allow low-density developments rather than stacking and packing vast numbers of people into already crowded inner cities.

The pollution problem is a bit of a red herring, as air quality has improved enormously over the last few decades, partly due to de-industrialisation, but also better vehicle technology. Any conceivable increase in car ownership would make little difference to this long-term trend. (And any purported effect on “climate change” would also be trivial).  

Reversing the artificial delays caused by anti-car policies would help mitigate the likely small impact on emissions from higher car ownership, as would the above suggestion of chanelling a high proportion of traffic onto congestion-free former railways and new private roads.

Finally, if the new car owners have shifted from riskier modes such as motorcycles, there could be safety benefits. It’s also possible that voluntary insurance cover would encourage a proportion of the new drivers to behave more responsibly, given the enhanced financial risks of accidents.

In a healthy, growing economy, with improving living standards, it should be natural for the population’s mobility to increase, which in turn delivers productivity improvements and creates further wealth. Yet politicians and officials seem hellbent on undermining the benefits of lower transport costs and improved access, despite their proven role as key drivers of economic progress.

While this article has set out ways of increasing the public’s mobility, in reality the reverse is happening. Punitive new charges are being imposed and costly red tape expanded. Levies such as low-emission zones specifically target poorer motorists.

The political elite must know all this will have a severely negative impact on the victims’ economic opportunities and also inflict wider social damage. Perhaps a failing economy and falling living standards are the true goals of their radical green agenda.

First published on the Transport Watch blog.

Why the war on motorists is wrecking the economy

The government used the pandemic as a pretext to intensify the “war on motorists”, a key element of the elite’s Build Back Better agenda.

Councils were paid to close vast numbers of streets to through traffic, often as part of so-called Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes. Main roads were narrowed and cycle lanes expanded. Punitive new charges were imposed, in particular London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone levy, and there are now plans to roll out similar schemes to other cities.

These draconian measures made little sense in terms of the Covid-19 narrative. If anything, car travel should have been encouraged to reduce the spread of the disease. Instead, these policies almost certainly forced more people to use public transport than otherwise would have been the case – despite the apparent infection risks.

Government mismanagement of the pandemic also had a devastating impact on the economy. A massive state spending binge, combined with central bank money-printing on a huge scale, contributed to a cocktail of soaring inflation, a cost-of-living crisis and ballooning public debt.

The obvious way out of this predicament is to adopt policies that facilitate robust economic growth. This would increase tax revenues without a harmful rise in tax rates, thereby mitigating the government debt issue. It would also tend to increase real wages, addressing the cost-of-living problem.

The key to generating growth is rising productivity. But today many government policies seem to be deliberately designed to reduce productivity and undermine improvements in living standards. The war on motorists is a prime example.

A series of measures seem deliberately designed to increase congestion. These include a big rise in the number of traffic lights; the narrowing of junctions to reduce flows; the reduction of road space to make way for bus and cycle lanes; the widening of pavements; and the closure of through routes.

The resulting traffic jams lead to major productivity losses, with drivers wasting time sitting in their vehicles and burning fuel while stopping and starting repeatedly. While it is hard to put a precise figure on the resulting costs to the economy, estimates for losses from congestion in the UK are as high as £40 billion a year.

But the negative impact of anti-car measures goes far beyond this. Journeys are delayed even when there is no congestion. Motorists are stopped by traffic lights even in the middle of the night when the streets are empty. They have to crawl along at 20mph in boroughs where speed limits have been slashed. They have to take long diversions where through roads have been blocked off in so-called low-traffic neighbourhoods. And they have to drive around finding somewhere convenient to park because the council has restricted the number of spaces.

The impact of all this on productivity is especially obvious in the cases of delivery drivers and tradesmen. A delivery driver can make fewer deliveries in a given amount of time due to the artificial delays and diversions. A plumber or electrician can make fewer repairs due to the additional time required to travel between jobs.

In addition, the productivity of the retail sector is negatively affected. Because it takes longer to travel to a given outlet, shops will tend to be smaller, serving a lower population, thereby reducing economies of scale and efficiency. The delays will have a similar impact on distribution, favouring smaller and less efficient warehouses rather than larger, more efficient ones a greater distance apart.

Employment opportunities are also harmed. If a potential worker is prepared to commute for an hour each way, then the delays will reduce the size of the area in which he or she is prepared to take a job. With fewer options available, workers are less likely to find employment that is a good match for their skills – an outcome that again will tend to reduce productivity.

Similarly, businesses will have a smaller pool of potential workers available. They may struggle to find the right people. An entrepreneur might decide to build a smaller and less-efficient factory because the number of suitable workers within its catchment area is lower than otherwise would be the case. And clusters of expertise, together with associated competition and innovation, will tend to be negatively affected due to the shrinkage of the talent available in any given location.  

The negative effects on labour mobility will of course be multiplied if the war on the motorist leads workers to abandon car ownership entirely. Vast swathes of the country are poorly served by public transport, which typically isn’t viable outside urban areas with a high population density and core routes between cities. Commuting by public transport is often completely impractical in the outer suburbs, yet alone in rural areas.

This article has only scratched the surface in terms of the damage being done. The enormous impact of anti-car policies on ambulances and the other emergency services hasn’t been discussed, for example.

The big question is whether our politicians understand the scale of the harm they’re inflicting.  Perhaps they think the ends of this draconian top-down agenda justify the means.

First published on the Transport Watch blog.

Should HS2 be converted into a road?

Imagine the following nightmare scenario for HS2.

Phase One opens in 2033, around seven years later than originally planned, and tens of billions over budget.

To make matters worse, travel patterns have changed dramatically since High Speed 2 was first conceived. Routine business meetings now take place online, meaning demand for business travel has collapsed.

At the same time, a high proportion of professionals now work from home most of the week. They come into the office only occasionally and often avoid travelling during peak hours. The misery of long-distance rail commuting has largely been consigned to the past – at least for higher income groups.

HS2 still attracts a large number of passengers, though as with HS1, far fewer than forecast when the project was approved. The government has deliberately been slowing down services on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). As predicted, they have rigged the rail market to push more passengers onto the new route.

Competition is still a problem, however. Because few business travellers are using HS2, the vast majority of passengers are day-trippers, tourists, students and so on. They will switch to a slower journey on the WCML, the Chiltern Line, or even the coach if it saves them a few pounds. Inevitably this puts downward pressure on fares.

HS2 therefore faces financial disaster. Its construction was never going to be commercially viable, but it now requires heavy subsidies just to cover its operating costs.

And there are other clouds on the horizon. Driverless cars are finally being rolled out. While their top speed is lower, door-to-door journeys are often quicker than by HS2 – and far more convenient too, particularly for the elderly and those carrying luggage. The demand for rail is being further eroded.

HS2 has therefore become a major headache for ministers. They’ve already wasted tens of billions building the scheme and now it’s going to cost billions more to keep it running. In practice, this will mean cutting services on other parts of the network. After years of economic stagnation, the Treasury can no longer justify vast subsidies for the rail industry.

But there could be a solution.

Converting HS2 into a road has the potential to turn a heavily loss-making white elephant into a profitable business that could cover its operating costs and perhaps help to fill the financial black hole left by the project’s construction.

The government has claimed that up to 18 trains per hour, in each direction, could run along the southern section of HS2. Each train would carry up to 1,100 passengers. This amounts to roughly 20,000 passengers per hour. However, there is widespread scepticism that the planned frequency can be achieved in practice, particularly when many of the services are likely to experience delays on the legacy network before they join the new high-speed line.

Nevertheless, conversion into a road would massively increase potential capacity. Should the market demand it, the route could be managed to eliminate congestion and to maximise passenger numbers. Applying conservative assumptions, 600 coaches an hour, or one every six seconds, could carry 30,000 passengers an hour in each direction with 50 passengers per vehicle. (There are several real-world examples of busways achieving similar results). And obviously there would be relatively simple ways of increasing capacity further, for example by using driverless technology to reduce the gap between vehicles. A two-second gap – frequently observed already on motorways – equates to 1,800 vehicles per hour, or 90,000 passengers – around five times an optimistic figure for HS2.

As for journey times, it’s true that HS2 would reach a far higher top speed than the coaches. However, door-to-door journey times are what counts. The coaches would boast a far higher service frequency. Perhaps one would leave central Birmingham every minute. Better still, they could serve a much wider range of destinations, offering direct services into London and other places on or near the route from a large number of towns, villages and suburbs. Services could use the existing road network before joining and after leaving the former HS2. In this way, a far larger population could benefit directly from the new infrastructure.

Similarly, in London services could go to numerous destinations directly and wouldn’t have to terminate at Euston – perhaps continuing to the West End, City or Victoria Coach Station, for example. This in-built flexibility – which could also open up the route to shorter commuter journeys within the south-east – offers the potential of using the path of HS2 far more intensively than under existing plans.   

The shift in travel patterns detailed above suggests that an ultra-high-capacity route might not be needed. In this case, spare “slots” could be sold to cars and goods vehicles, raising additional revenue and taking pressure off the motorway network. A congestion-free road into central London could prove extremely valuable.

While it has not been possible to cover every aspect of railway conversion in this article (for more details and technical analysis, see the main Transport Watch website), the evidence suggests this option would provide higher capacity at significantly lower cost than HS2 – which would translate into lower fares and eliminate the need for operating subsidies. In addition, there would be major benefits from the greater flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions and new technologies. Finally, there could be significant environmental benefits, with lower top speeds translating into less noise and reduced energy consumption compared with HS2. (Given current policies, it is assumed that the road vehicles using the route would be electric by the mid-2030s).   

Going back to the situation in 2022, the best option remains cancellation of the entire High Speed 2 project. Even though billions have already been spent, the remaining budget would still deliver much higher returns if redeployed elsewhere (see the sunk-cost fallacy). Nevertheless, at some stage over the next few years Phase 1 of HS2 will hit the point of no return – not least due to the political embarrassment from abandoning it as it nears completion.    

When this happens, wouldn’t it make sense for ministers to reconsider the final trajectory of the scheme? Clearly it would be less costly to decide on the road option at a relatively early stage rather than installing a railway, and all its paraphernalia, only to rip it out a few years later.

First published on the Transport Watch blog.