Thoughts from Lickey End

Lickey End is NOT London...

Government transport policy is all very well, but not everyone enjoys the same public transport infrastructure as our friendly MPs in London. In Lickey End - yes, it is a real place - it is virtually impossible to manage without a car. The local town, Bromsgrove, is about mile and a half away, but there are no buses there. The train station is a mile outside of Bromsgrove, thanks to vested interests in the 19th century, and the destinations that can be reached are limited.

So say I want to go to London without using my car. I have a longish walk into town, another walk or a bus ride to the station, a train journey into Birmingham, and another train journey to London. And then I have to find my destination. You can imagine the time that this takes, the expense and the inconvenience. As an alternative, I can get in my car, go half a mile up the road to the M42, and be in London two hours later.

It's not as if we are out in the sticks. Lickey End is 12 miles from Birmingham, but we may as well be in the middle of the Asian steppes as far as public transport is concerned. Yet each government persists with a one-size-fits-all policy to stop people using cars without first providing a decent alternative. You wonder whether the real motive is to change behaviour or simply to raise revenue by making cars more expensive, yet at the same time more necessary.

What they are doing is not even logical. If they raise the road tax I am likely to use the car more, not less, because I will want to get my money's worth. If they raise fuel duty then fares rise too. At the moment, public transport is almost always more expensive than using my car. A typical short journey is around two pounds, twice the cost of the fuel in my car. A train journey to London costs thirty to ninety pounds, depending on the time of travel.

It particularly irks me that London commuter rail fares are subsidised from general taxation. Why should I pay to reduce a Londoner's travel costs, especially when provision in Lickey End is so inadequate?

Perhaps the policy makers, with their ministerial cars and 57p per mile allowances should try using public transport outside London for a while. Can you imagine John and Pauline Prescott waiting at the bus stop with armfuls of carrier bags after a trip to the supermarket? Or Tony Blair taking two buses to get from his home to his constituency office? Of course not. They would declare themselves to be "a special case".

posted by Neil @ 10:56 AM