Rail Industry Focus

Green or growth – can we have both?

Can the introduction of new transport infrastructure be achieved in a sustainable way? Or is there a trade-off between ‘green’ and ‘growth’? Kate Ashley reports from the Labour conference fringe.

Sustainable transport is a key priority for the rail industry, and a significant justification for investment: but achieving this requires serious effort and funding.

One priority for the future is integrating different transport modes, which was discussed at a fringe event at the Labour conference attended by RTM.

The event, hosted by Dods Sustainable Transport Dialogue, was chaired by Cllr Peter Box, who is leader of Wakefield Council and chair of the LGA Economy and Transport Board.

Discussion focused on how public transport must be supported to replace shorter car journeys, and how intelligent pricing, access and integration with other forms of transport were essential to encouraging this modal shift.

The panel concluded that the two factors were intrinsically intertwined, and that future progress of sustainable transport must embrace both, as Claire Haigh, chief executive of Greener Journeys, said: “You cannot have one without the other, green and growth.”

Incentives

In the debate that followed the speakers’ presentations, some questions from the floor touched on setting the right pricing structure to incentivise the use of public transport, the need for cross-modal ticketing and whether HS2 is the best way forward.

On the issue of pricing, Labour’s Dr Alan Whitehead MP considered how the move towards passengers paying for the majority of rail costs through fares affected the country’s competitiveness.

He said: “We have to compete with other countries where transport is simply much cheaper. It’s about the way in which systems are set up and the same with the ticketing.”

“It is difficult,” he admitted and suggested that “instead of trying to lay large bits of new concrete around the country, it would be quite good if we joined up the public transport that we have got; this has got to be a priority.”

A Stop HS2 campaigner pointed out that the most sustainable form of transport was no transport at all – and suggested that broadband improvements could connect people in a more eco-friendly way than big transport projects such as HS2.

The panel accepted her point about the need to reduce transport across the board, but insisted that the implementation of HS2 could free up capacity, which if used to transfer freight from road to rail, would have a significant effect on carbon emissions.

Short distance trips, big efficiencies

Sandeep Shingadia, sustainability and programmes manager at Centro, discussed the benefits of multi-operated ticketing, and highlighted that this was available in the West Midlands across buses, metro and rail. The biggest opportunity for the evolution of this was in smartphone technology, he said.

He reiterated a point posed by other members of the panel, that short-distance trips, such as the school run, presented the easiest way for sustainable transport to be implemented and generate huge savings.

“This is where sustainable transport works,” he said, “get people out of their cars for short distance trips – you can start to get big efficiencies on the network, goods and people can move around much more easier, creating benefits for us all.”

Haigh added that policy decisions on sustainable transport go far beyond that discipline, stating: “It’s actually education, local government, employment, training, it goes way beyond transport. It needs to go across all areas.”

Joint working

Criticising the Coalition, Dr Whitehead said that “most of the ability for local authorities to work together has been taken apart”, leaving a sub-optimal planning system.

He said: “The outcome of that is that even with funding, the ability to actually introduce the sorts of schemes we’re talking about is seriously curtailed,” adding that councils must work together to facilitate sustainable transport projects through wider regional planning.

“We absolutely need infrastructure that supports low carbon journeys in the future,” he concluded.

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(Image © Paul Heartfield)