Shedding light, by Nick Comfort

26 Jan 06
Not so long ago, light rail or tram schemes were the favourite solutions to transport problems in English cities. But one by one the planned projects have collapsed and Transport Secretary Alistair Darling is busy killing off any survivors. Nick Comfort analyses what is going wrong

27 January 2006

Not so long ago, light rail or tram schemes were the favourite solutions to transport problems in English cities. But one by one the planned projects have collapsed and Transport Secretary Alistair Darling is busy killing off any survivors. Nick Comfort analyses what is going wrong

Relations between several English cities and the Department for Transport are at an Arctic low because of a spectacular failure of decision-making that each side blames the other for. The recent cancellation of light rail projects for Leeds, Bristol and Portsmouth/ Gosport, and Transport Secretary Alistair Darling's rejection of both a tram route for Liverpool and extensions to Manchester's system, raise the question of whether light rail in England can develop under present conditions.

Cities worldwide are building tram systems at a rate not seen for a century to get drivers out of their cars, speed up commuting, connect new communities and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. France has taken the lead. Cities like Lyon are bringing new routes from conception to service in just four years, in some cases using British-built vehicles. Dublin boasts two state-of-the-art light rail routes, which strangely do not connect. In the US, dozens of new lines have been promoted to counter urban smog and gridlock.

When the Conservatives were in power, they approved light rail projects for London (Docklands and Croydon), Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham. In 1997, the new Labour government promised more. John Prescott's totemic integrated transport white paper, published in 1998, promised 25 new routes within a decade. And initially there was a frenzy of activity: a new system for Nottingham, an extra route in Manchester and the Tyne and Wear Metro extension to Sunderland. In early 2001 the cash was found for lines in Leeds, Bristol and Portsmouth/Gosport. Extensions to the Docklands Light Railway continued, under the aegis (and budget) of the mayor of London. By 2004, major extensions to the Manchester system and a Liverpool line were about to begin: tens of millions of pounds were spent buying property, and trains on a Manchester route due to be converted were about to be halted. In Leeds, the diggers had moved in to shift utilities.

Then Darling slammed on the brakes. First, he told Manchester its 'big bang' expansion had become too expensive; negotiations on cheaper variants continue. The modernisation and expansion of Blackpool's tramway was rejected. Darling told Liverpool – which had a wildly optimistic project timeframe – that its scheme was unaffordable, sending local number crunchers back to the drawing board. The Bristol scheme collapsed after councils fell out over the proposed route.

Then, in November, Darling killed off three schemes in one fell swoop. Leeds, where the 'Supertram' had near-universal support because of severe commuting problems, would have to settle for 'quality buses' instead, because the tram project's whole-life cost had risen by £664m. The Portsmouth project was deemed unaffordable because the 36-year Private Finance Initiative deal's cost had risen from £319m to £674m. Darling then rejected Liverpool's attempt to rework its sums, saying it had failed to deliver a watertight guarantee against cost overruns. Furious Merseyside councils reacted by launching a judicial review, which is being heard on January 30.

Transport professionals could not understand why trams had suddenly fallen from favour after huge sums had been spent refining schemes ministers had already approved. Admittedly the costs had risen, but so had those of road schemes, which remained in favour.

Darling's support for 'quality bus schemes' tied in with plans to convert several disused rail routes to busways, but commentators wondered why the DfT had not undertaken research into why the travelling public prefers trams to accelerated buses. It did occur to them that speeding buses through a few cosmetic highway improvements instead of laying tramlines would save millions of pounds in PFI costs, transferring risk to local authorities and the private sector.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee had already complained that light rail routes were promoted under a system that forced PFI consortiums to factor in every conceivable kind of risk, then condemned the resulting projects for being too expensive. It has criticised promoters for failing to standardise specifications for each system and its rolling stock. It has also noted that the refusal of Labour and Conservative governments to allow local authorities outside London the powers to co-ordinate bus services has further undermined the economics of light rail.

Darling was never a fan of Prescott's 1998 white paper, regarding its rationale as shallow and its targets as unachievable or pointless. While he insists that he is ready to approve light rail schemes if the right ones come along, the general impression is that the DfT is now anti-tram. Documents obtained by the Manchester Evening News under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that some officials wanted to kill off the city's tramway expansion even before its cost became an issue.

Publicly, the DfT wants both light rail and bus use to grow, and has set a target of a 12% increase by 2010. The National Audit Office reported recently that this would be met, in spite of the department's actions rather than because of them, due to an 8.5% year-on-year increase in light rail patronage and the continuing surge in regulated bus use for London. In the deregulated rest of England, the public continue to vote against buses with their feet.

Trams have been written off before, in the 1950s, yet returned to become essential to commuters in Manchester, Nottingham and Croydon. They will never be the answer to every city's problems, but they have a contribution to make. There are still projects in play that could meet Darling's tough criteria: a slimmed down Manchester expansion; the extension of the single Birmingham route from Snow Hill across the city centre and into Wolverhampton; further routes for the successful Nottingham Express Transport system. But the most likely to go ahead are in London (where Mayor Ken Livingstone wants to extend the popular Croydon system and, controversially, build new lines in West London and from north to south), and Edinburgh.

Despite unqualified support from the Scottish Executive, even Edinburgh's £900m-plus three-route scheme looks unlikely to be constructed in full. Last week, with the necessary legislation sailing through Holyrood, the promoters began speculating publicly about sections that might be left out of the original build to keep within budget; even then, a gap of tens of millions of pounds has opened up – just as Darling, one of the local MPs, had warned.

It is easy to see Darling's tough stance on light rail as a reflection of Chancellor Gordon Brown's determination to make capital spending count. It might also echo the historical fact that Labour governments shelve transport capital projects while Tory administrations sanction them: Labour, after all, cancelled the original Channel Tunnel and very nearly killed off the Tyne and Wear Metro when half-built. Another element is local hubris. Merseytravel infuriated Whitehall with the delivery of its first consignment of rails after Darling's initial rejection of its plan.

But the controversy isn't really about the merits of the tram – it stems directly from the elephantine decision-making process. The Channel Tunnel and its rail link, London's third airport, the Sizewell B nuclear power station and a plethora of other major schemes have all been subjected to years of costly delay because of this process.

Each of the light rail schemes recently rejected was not only put through a tortuous PFI process but subjected to every conceivable form of public consultation and referred to one set of consultants after another. And as the schemes became entrammeled, the cities the systems were planned for underwent rapid change. In Sheffield's case, a 21-year delay (against Lyon's four-year development timescale) made the light rail system less viable; in Leeds' case, a commuting boom made Supertram seem all the more necessary by the time Whitehall smothered it.

Back in 1973, as the Sheffield Morning Telegraph's municipal correspondent, I broke the story that consultants were proposing the return of trams to the city that had scrapped them 13 years before. The network proposed became Sheffield Supertram, the first tranches of which eventually opened in 1994 after a lengthy planning process and protracted haggling with the government.

By then, not only had the Morning Telegraph disappeared, but so had many of the communities and workplaces the Supertram was designed to serve. The system struggled to attract passengers, and despite recent growth, the DfT is rumoured to have told the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive that instead of extending it to serve Rotherham and the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, quality buses (you've guessed it) should be considered.

The tragedy of the process that led to Darling's vetoes is the enormous amount of time and money spent on projects now aborted (£40m in Leeds alone). Taxpayers must wonder why so much money was wasted working up something the government said it wanted just four years ago.

Nick Comfort is a former special adviser to the secretary of state for Scotland

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