In September 2012 I was invited to discuss rail policy with the Transport Select Committee. The session can be viewed here (@39 min). Some excerpts from the (uncorrected) transcript are provided below:
Chair: Do you support the Government’s overall strategy in HLOS [the government’s rail plan]? Have they got the right priorities?
Dr Wellings: I would say no. The Government has not dealt with the fundamental problem that the rail industry is hugely distorted by subsidies and other distortions such as the planning system. Basically, the central planners in the DfT are groping about in the dark. They don’t have an idea of genuine levels of demand or genuine prices because we also have price controls. Before embarking on these absolutely huge investments at taxpayers’ expense, they ought to get the fundamentals right and remove these distortions and, in particular, the subsidy regime.
Chair: What would you like to see change?
Dr Wellings: I would like to see the subsidies phased out and a change in the planning laws that force developers into corridors around railway stations, for example. There needs to be a change in the tax regime as well so that there is a level playing field with other transport modes.
Mr Leech: Dr Wellings, you argue that there is no economic case for the improvements because of the cost to the taxpayer. You suggest that taxpayers are already paying about £5 billion a year in subsidy. As far as you are concerned, that is an unacceptable level of subsidy. What would be an acceptable level of subsidy?
Dr Wellings: Zero. I would like to see it phased out over a period of, say, 10 years to zero.
Mr Leech: What impact do you think that would have on fare prices on trains and the number of passengers who could afford to use them?
Dr Wellings: It would vary. I don’t think it would have much impact on, say, the London commuter market, which I think is probably fundamentally economically viable, particularly if we also liberalise the planning system so that rail companies could make money from property development as they do in Japan. At the other extreme, you have railways in places like rural Wales that are very poorly used. I think they should definitely close down. There is no economic case whatsoever to keep them going and there is also no social case.
Mr Leech: On the basis that there is a subsidy taking people out of cars and reducing carbon emissions, in your studies what impact would there be on carbon emissions and on the cost to congestion as far as the economy is concerned? Have you done any of that work?
Dr Wellings: It is a myth about carbon emissions. If you closed the entire rail network down overnight, the impact on carbon emissions would be barely measurable. There are two reasons for that. One is that it is quite a small share of overall transport use. The second reason, of course, is that we are talking about a different market from cars. A high proportion of journeys are into central London, for example. These would probably hypothetically go on to coaches and buses, which are more efficient than trains. It would actually be barely measurable.
There is also the effect of subsidising people to move further and further away from where they work through cheaper train fares. You end up, for example, with long-distance commuters through the season ticket system. Although the rail journey might be relatively efficient from an environmental perspective, in terms of the whole lifestyle they probably emit more than if they lived in inner London or close to work.
Steve Baker: Dr Wellings, in your article for City AM in July you were highly critical of the Government. You said that “cynical political calculation seems to be the driving force of policy”. You talked about the railways as a classic example of a politically distorted market. You have also said, without reading the whole article, that many of the projects are motivated by politics rather than economics. Could you give us some examples of where these things can be seen?
Dr Wellings: Yes. The most telling example from the recent plans was the plan to electrify the branch lines in south Wales. Of course the Welsh railways already have perhaps the highest operating subsidies per passenger mile in the whole network. We already have a false market, a rigged market, and yet we are going to invest good money after bad in this already hugely subsidised market. It seemed that the Government was allocating new schemes across the country to pay off various special interests. Few of them made any economic sense. For example, if you wanted a fast train up to Sheffield, it can already be done by the East Coast Main Line in an hour and three quarters. There just isn’t the demand for that kind of service. The idea to spend this money electrifying the Midland Mainline to make some very tiny time savings didn’t make any business sense to me.
Of course the worst example of all is High Speed 2, which has a very low benefit-cost ratio. We saw road schemes being cancelled in the Comprehensive Spending Review that had a benefit-cost ratio over three times High Speed 2. There is no economic logic at all behind current transport policies.
Chair: We are on rail today, though.
Steve Baker: I would follow it up by asking this question. Isn’t it true that all Government investment decisions, including right across transport, are influenced by politics to some degree?
Dr Wellings: What we have is basically a thinly veiled version of Soviet-style central planning here. It is hugely centralised with the DfT and politicians making the big decisions. This is in a morass of economic distortions from price controls, subsidies and distortionary tax treatments as well. These people just can’t make sensible investment decisions because, first, it is hugely politicised, and, secondly, because we don’t have genuine prices or genuine levels of demand.
Richard Wellings 