Cost of living crisis – what will the impact be?
Is the cost of living the new Covid in terms of the impact it’s going to have on patronage and travel trends? If it’s too early to say yet what the medium and long term implications of Covid will be, then that’s certainly true of rising energy prices and all the other inflationary pressures. But […]
An unhappy new year for public transport
It’s been a shaky start to the new year for public transport and it could get a lot rougher yet. Let me count the ways… The ‘work from home where you can’ advice has hit public transport’s core commuting market hard. Meanwhile the pre-Christmas binge on shopping and socialising which kept public transport patronage afloat […]
Funding and a finely balanced future
Now that the dust has settled from Comprehensive Spending Review, it’s becoming easier to see through the smoke and mirrors and work out what actually happened. The question people often ask is ‘is it new money?’. And ‘is it more money?’. All depends on what you are comparing it with. Which previous year’s actual spend […]
Party conferences and crunch point
It felt like the fallow Covid period has reinvigorated party conferences as institutions that before felt like they were in a slow decline. But as the equivalent of Glastonbury for the party faithful they were far busier and buzzier than I was expecting. The Conservative party conference was a sign of how far the Government […]
Fighting smart to get passengers back on public transport
In some ways, getting the funding to keep public transport going during the pandemic was the easy bit. During the pandemic it was important for Government to keep the public transport show on the road (and the companies that provide it) to prevent a wider sense of societal and economic breakdown. As a result, the […]
Budget 2021: Five key takeaways for urban transport
1. The one year 2020 Spending Review, and the multi-year 2021 Spending Review, are more significant for urban transport than the Budget was likely to be – and indeed, proved to be. Also, between now and the 2021 Spending Review, we will have the bus strategy, and, if the road map to COVID-19 recovery works […]
Why we need a new deal on urban transport – both during the pandemic and beyond
The roadmap of the release from COVID-19 restrictions was as cautious as was predicted for the early stages but perhaps more ambitious than was expected on the end game – with June 21st potentially seeing the end of all restrictions on journey purpose and on social distancing. It’s good to now have the playbook for […]
The world turned upside down?
A progressive way to turn the world upside down would be to do as the Welsh Government has done with the M4 road scheme in South Wales – and look at how the money could be better spent on giving the sub-region a public transport network second to none There’s a risk that the short […]
Spending Review 2020 – the fine print on urban transport
The headlines… The focus remains on capital investment Overall (non-COVID19) spending projections for the next five years are below the Chancellor’s pre-pandemic plans Non-COVID spending is well below pre-austerity levels for not protected Departments including transport and local government Things will probably get worse for non-protected departments (including Transport and MHCLG) Here’s some Resolution Foundation […]
Are we moving to nano management?
In the summer there were high hopes that COVID-19 would be a short war in which the worst would soon be over and victory was in sight. Having won the war, we could then go onto win the peace by making some of the wartime measures (like a big shift to cycling) part of the […]