Letters to Local Transport Today and the New Civil Engineer
(A sample)

5th June 2010Electric car revolution will be another transport disaster LTT

The Radio 4 programme “The Derailing of Transport 2010” (18th Jan) was as shallow as the White Paper it referred to.  The notion was that congestion could be largely eliminated by increasing rail use by 50% and bus use by 10%.  However, the advisors appear not to have noticed that rail accounted for less than 2% of passenger-journeys and 6% of passenger-miles and that bus accounted for only 10% of passenger-miles. Hence the hoped for increases could, at best, have a marginal effect on car use, itself projected to increase by 10%.
In any case it is the car that has enabled the dispersed land and trip making distribution to arise. So, if the car vanished so would the way of life upon which it depends. If it were otherwise that distribution would have arisen in the past.
The cuckoo-twittery of it is rivaled only by the notion that light rail might help despite being at least four times as expensive as the rubber tyred option, and by the waste of £100 billion on national rail which, even in central London, and in the peak hour is, in highway terms, substantially disused.
The latest twittery is the electric car.  The belief, that it will emit 40% less carbon than the conventional vehicles, depends on the Arup/Conex report with the natty title “Investigation into the Scope for the Transport Sector to Switch to Electric Vehicles and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles” dated October 2008.  Unfortunately its conclusions depend on the wild claims of manufacturers, rather than upon sensible tests.  Not surprisingly the gap between those claims and the anecdotal performance of the vehicles is so large as to beggar belief: 

1. An electric car provided to a journalist for tests was alleged to have a 70 mile range.  The journalist decided to be safe and planned a 50 mile trip only to find the specially prepared car failed at 37 miles.
2. A user of a G-Wiz found that the battery expired after 2 years and 3 months instead of after the hoped for 5 years.
3. Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear found that the Tesla ran out of power after 55 miles on his test track rather than after the 220 miles claimed by the manufacturer.
4. An electric Ford Transit-sized van provided to a manufacturer, who wants to remain anonymous, was alleged to have a range of 100 miles.  The manufacturer found that on the level, and with no load, the vehicle managed 60 miles, but that on hills in Wales it managed six (yes six).
5. Adverse weather conditions are said to reduce battery performance by 40% to 50%.

Further, section 6 of the paper “demonstrates” that the cost of running EV will be less than that for an IC powered vehicle. However, the costs assigned to petrol and diesel include tax, so exaggerating the economy of the EV by a factor of at least three. Against that background we regard the paper, a paper upon which national policy hangs, as worthless.

20th June 2009What an almighty mess LTT

5th June 2009TRENDS IN ROAD DEATHS. LTT

Francis King (5th June) is absolutely correct in saying that the fall in deaths per vehicle-km has flattened off since 1950.  That was inevitable. After all, if the earlier reductions had continued we would now have zero (or negative) deaths.  However, the annual fall in the deaths per veh-km is not the sensible metric. Instead it is the percentage reduction, year on year that should be considered as the indicator of progress. That averaged 5.1 percent between 1950 and 2007 (please oh please note the word percent and that the value is applied successively year on year. That is why the curve “flattens off”). 

Contrary to Francis’s assertion, we carried out considerable analysis to determine the break points within the overall trend. To that end we plotted the the 7 year moving average of the deviation from the (1950-2007) best fit trend line.   The analysis identified four distinct phases, namely, 1950 to 1960, 1960 to 1982, 1982 to 1995 and 1995 to 2007, see fig 1.  The annual percentage reductions were 4%, 4.8%, 7.1% and 2.8% respectively.  Those values were obtained using the statistical package within Excel.  All correlations were above 95%.

Against that background we feel robust in our assertion that there was a remarkable collapse in the rate of decline around 1995, down from 7.1% to 2.8%.

We then calculated the extra deaths, defined as the difference between actual deaths and those that would have occurred had the 1982 to 1995 trend continued. Plotting those deaths against speeding fines produced the most remarkable fit that could be imagined (a correlation of 99%).  Of course that fit does not mean that the fines caused the deaths, a ludicrous idea.  However, the fines, all 13 million of them (a) are a proxy for the vigor with which present polices have been pursued (b) correspond to nearly 10,000 extra deaths (c) indicate an obsession with speed and (d) are at the expense of far more important factors.

Francis then makes some (ludicrous) comments about delay.  We pointed out that if present traffic management policies have delayed journeys by an average of two minutes then the annual cost to the nation tops £11 billion.  That is of course only indicative although personal experience suggests that 2 minutes may not be far from the mark.  Furthermore the value overlooks the undoubted frustration that sitting in traffic jams causes, particularly when it is clear that it is the traffic management people who have caused the jam in pursuit of some politically correct agenda or other.
Francis concludes his letter by saying we “suggest” that speeding is a minor cause of accidents. Instead we pointed out that speeding as a percentage of all recorded contributory factors amounts to 5.4% for fatal accidents, 3.2% for accidents where the worst injury was categorised as serious, and 2.4% for all severities.  The source is table 4(b) from the DfT publication “Road Casualties Great Britain 2007”.  However, a word of caution, that tabulation provides the percentage of accidents in which causes arise.  Since there is usually more than one cause per accident some sensible arithmetic is needed to find speeding as a percentage of all recorded contributory factors. 

We conclude by noting that, in contrast to speeding, “speed” must be a contributory cause in 100% of accidents.  After all, there would be no accidents at all if we were all brought to a complete standstill – but then could it be that a complete standstill is the target of those pretending to promote road safety?

24th April 2009What an almighty mess LTT

Published 17th October 2008CUTTING CO2 TO SAVE THE PLANET – IS THIS THE GRANDES DELUSION OF ALL?

Bjorn Lomborg, whilst conceding Global Warming, pointed out in The Times of 30th September that even if all the policies to restrict emissions were implemented world-wide then by 2100 global temperatures may be reduced by only one sixtieth of a degree at the astonishing cost of £5,000 billion. Further the UK’s contribution would be of the order of one three-thousandth of a degree. How stupid can we get?

Paul Withrington (Director)

Published 3rd OctoberFatality reduction claims of speed camera advocates don’t add up

LLT of 19th September (Page 13) reports Dr Mountain’s research as showing the cameras saving 50 lives per year rather than the 100 claimed by the DfT. However, the system-wide the situation appears to be much worse than that. Here are the numbers.

In the decade 1986 to 1996, before any substantial effect from the speed camera and associated polices could take effect, deaths per year fell by 33% or by 4% annually. In comparison, the decline in the decade 1997 to 2007 was only 18% or 2% annually. The implication is that we would have had some 500 fewer deaths in 2007 than actually occurred had nothing been done. That has arisen despite the cameras being supported by tens of thousands of speed humps and endless traffic management schemes busily causing congestion where none need exist.

Strangely the same trend is not mirrored by the reported KSI casualties. There the previous established decline has continued, albeit at a slightly lower rate. That has reduced the ratio of KSI casualties to fatalities by 25%. We ask, how can that possibly happen except by under-reporting serious casualties compared with the past (an option that scarcely exists for fatalities)?

In any event, if present trends continue to 2010 then the Government will crow that its target of reducing KSI casualties by 40% (compared with the average for 1994 to 1998) has been met. However, (a) a 40% reduction also arose during the corresponding periods ending in 1996 and 2000, both of which are prior to the surge in camera installation and speed humps and (b) deaths will have declined by only 22%.

Not only do we appear to have a dreadful outcome in terms of lives saved but it is reasonable to doubt that the reported saving in KSI is real.

That has been at the cost of prosecuting millions of people, most of whom were, by any reasonable measure, driving sensibly. Furthermore, tens of thousands have lost their licenses and many will have lost their jobs (or continued to drive - illegally and uninsured). Not surprisingly, this punitive approach has undermined respect for the police and for the other authorities.

Against that background we plea for an end to this finger wagging in favour of education designed to develop a mature and deferential driving population. After all, give responsibility and people will behave responsibly but treat people like idiots and they will behave like idiots.

Paul Withrington (Director)

A DOUBLE BRAIN HERNIA

Published in Local Transport Today 8TH August 2008 under the heading Public Transport advocates need to get a grip of reality

Reading Francesca Medda’s piece, with the snappy title “NATA should acknowledge that better public Transport improves access for all – unlike roads” (Viewpoint 25th  July)  nearly gave me a brain hernia.  Among other Francesca croons that “Only accessibility through public transport can enable everyone similarly equal access”.  What nonsense.  Has she not realised that, once off the bread line, the whole purpose of earning money is to buy advantage.  That is why the rich have more access to nearly everything than do the poor. The tragedy is that decades of soft-centred, fact free writing such as Francesca’s, has given give our numerically challenged politicians the will to pursue polices that will damage us all – including the poor.  A fine example of a truly daft “idea”, driven in part by “thinking” such as Francesca’s, is the Eco Towns stupidity so brilliantly exposed by Andrew Foster’s dead-pan factual reporting – enough to give any sane person a second brain hernia.

Those who do not have cars often get lifts. The trips served by cars cannot generally be served by bus let alone the train. The poor use trains 5 times less than the rich.  If a poor person wishes to go from London to Glasgow (an example used by Francesca) they will use the express coach – several times less costly than the train. Coaches, strangely, use roads.  Of course public transport has a place –12% of passenger miles go that way.  However, to overlook the other 88% is plainly nonsense.

Paul Withrington

CROSSRAIL’s ABSURD COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

To New Civil Engineer 31ST July 2008 – Not published

“Reductio ad absurdum” is an accepted technique often used to destroy absurd propositions. The cost-benefit analysis for Crossrail provides an illustration.  There (a) incremental fares of £7 bn were set against costs and (b) a tax loss of £1.2 bn was added to the cost.  However, transferring resources from the taxpayer to Government can do nothing to increase the nation’s wealth (quite the reverse – probably the Government would waste the lot).  Similarly, the fares paid will exactly balance the gains to the service provider, yielding zero net benefits.  To labour that point; if the provider were to run the whole economy then fares to Crossrail would be lost to other “services”.  Consequently, incremental takings would be zero.

Hence the inclusion of fares and tax in the economic analysis is indeed absurd. Removing them destroys the case for Crossrail. That case should of course be destroyed, unless we welcome death by taxes.  After all, the £16 billion cost amounts to £640 for every household in the land - none of which will ever be recouped from the fares.

Paul Withrington

Copy to:

Treasury, Rosie Winterton MP, Louise Ellman MP, Theresa Villiers MP, Philip Hollobone MP, Brian Binley MP

RURAL BUSES ARE NO GREEN SOLUTION –

The first paragraph below published in the New Civil Engineer of 31st July 2008

Rosie Winterton’s and the Government’s belief that congestion and emissions may be significantly reduced by encouraging or bullying people out of cars on to buses and trains is misplaced.  After all (a) if the bus and train could serve today’s dispersed land use then that dispersal would have arisen in the past, but it did not (b) buses and trains account for only 12% of passenger-miles. Hence, large percentage increases in their use can affect car use only marginally (c) few vehicles are less environmentally friendly than a subsidised bus trundling around with a couple of passengers aboard.  Even in London, outside the centre 70% of motorised journeys are by car, probably representing 80% of passenger miles.

As for the fuel consumption of rail, Michael Shabpas, letter of 24th is correct in saying that diesel powered trains are more fuel efficient that trucks.  However, express coaches are far more fuel efficient than trains.  Consequently if the national rail function were discharged by express coaches and lorries, using the rights of way enjoyed by the railways, then the fuel consumption would be substantially reduced along with carbon emissions.  In nearly all other vectors the express coach and lorry outperform rail be very wide margins indeed, e.g. by a factor of four with regard to cost.

P F Withrington

REALISM

Published in Local Transport Today 25th July 2008

On 30th May David Smith called upon Ministers to grasp the need to electrify transport.  However, as pointed out by the RSSB in its report on Traction Energy Metrics, July 2007 (and others), any large scale increase in electricity demand will postpone the retirement of coal powered power stations.  For that reason emissions associated with electrification should be those from coal fired generation.  That emits double the carbon of the industry average.  On that basis we found that, if rail were replaced by diesel burning express coaches and lorries, carbon emissions would be reduced by 37%.  We also found that Ryanair would emit substantially less per passenger-km than high speed electric powered trains

On June 13th Peter Miller ruminated under the heading “How could anyone still doubt catastrophic climate change”.  He hangs his belief on all those worthy Government bodies full economists, politicians and bad scientists.  Those of us who are skeptics look at the data.  The overriding five million year long cooling tend; ice two miles thick in Scotland 18,000 years ago - melts by 10,000 years ago with no help from us; the Holocene Optimum when temperatures were 2-3 degrees warmer than now; the medieval warm period followed by the little ice age; the subsequent warming, which started long before any truly massive emissions from mankind; the 20th century when there was warming until 1940, cooling to 1975, warming until the end of the century, and now cooling since 2002, reference Bernard Abrams on 27Th June.  Man made warming? Bah.

As for “getting people out of cars into buses and trains – that is a pipe dream.  After all the car has enabled a dispersed land use that is well neigh impossible to serve by bus let alone the train.  That is why today’s land use did not develop in the past.  Hence, if for catastrophic reasons the car vanished, instead of trips by car transferring to public transport most would either go by bike or disappear.  Life would then return to the ambience of the 1950s and beyond. In any event, with only 12% of passenger-miles by public transport a large percentage increase in usage can only effect car use to a trivial extent.  It should also be noted that there are few less environmentally friendly vehicles than a subsidised bus lumbering around with two or three passengers aboard.

The idea that car users may transfer to the train is even more stupid than that they will transfer to bus.  After all, half of all car journeys are less than 5 miles long and nearly all are to places where trains do not go whereas half of all train journeys are 20 miles long and nearly all are to city centres where cars cannot park.

Oh what fun it must be to be in power developing policy in defiance of the facts.  After all everyone loves massive failures and what better way is there of guaranteeing a gigantic one than that?

Paul Withrington, Director Transport-watch

SPEED CAMERAS 16th April 2008

Not published

The Association of British Drivers is castigated for being hysterical about the speed cameras.  Well, here are the hysterical facts:

Road Research Laboratory Report LR 323 published in 1998, found that “excessive speed” accounted for only 7.3% of the recorded “contributory” factors in road traffic accidents. Table 2 of the DfT’s report on Contributory Factors (referenced to 2005 data) shows that exceeding the speed limit was recorded as a contributory factor in 12% of fatal accidents, 7% of accidents where there was a serious injury and 4% of accident where there was a slight injury.  However, in nearly all accidents there are more than one contributory factor e.g. the speeding driver may also be drunk, or distracted by a car full of children or driving without due care and attention or caught out by an outrageous action of some other road user.  When that is taken into account we find that speeding as a percentage of all contributory factors amounted to 5.7% for fatalities, 3.4% where there was a seriously injured casualty and 2.2% where there was a slightly injured casualty.

Despite the compelling picture that these numbers paint, namely that speeding (defined narrowly as breaking the speed limit) is an entirely trivial cause of road traffic accidents, the authorities are determined that breaking the speed limit, or speed generally, is the villain.

Worse than that the authorities have muddled the data in the public mind by (a) routinely saying that 30% of the accidents are “speed related”, when in a pure (and entirely stupid world) 100% would be the more accurate number and (b) dishonestly (in our view) allowing that percentage to be related to “speeding”.

Allied to that we have LR 421 and 511.  Those reports set out to find a relationship between speed and accidents.  Since reducing speed to zero would also reduce accidents to zero it was scarcely surprising that a relationship was indeed found.  That is often summarised as a 1 mph reduction in speed leading to a 5% reduction in accidents, although the number varies according to road type.  We believe that is a spurious finding that can in no way inform policy.  Instead it is a stick that has been used to beat the motorist and to justify speed limits so low that the law is being brought into contempt.

The speed cameras are supported by ever lower speed limits, tens of thousands of speed humps, and the endless traffic management schemes that now create congestion where none need exist.  Despite all that the long established downward trend in road deaths appears to have been sabotaged - In the decade ending 1996, when there were few special road safety polices, road deaths fell by 32% but in the 10 years to 2006, the rate of decline collapse to a mere 11%.

Probably the reason for that failure falls within the slogan “treat people like idiots and, surprise, surprise, they will behave like idiots”. In any event the motorist is now expected to “drive by numbers” both with regard to speed and to his use of road space, particularly at junctions.  That has eroded driver responsibility and sabotaged the development of mature behaviour. 

Quite apart from the apparent failure of the policy, the cost of this punitive approach, both in terms of the damage to relationships with the police, seen as the enforcing agency, and damaged livelihoods, has been huge, let alone the congestion caused. The alternative that we and the ABD advocate is education, designed to develop a polite and deferential driving population.

Paul F Withrington

BE REALISTIC

To New Civil Engineer 12th July 2008 – not published

Government backed loans and grant to National Rail may reach £100 billion over the 20 years to 2015.  That is equivalent to £200 per year for 20 yrs for every household in the land. It arises when rail accounts for only 6% passenger miles or 2% of journeys and when the richest 20% of households travel 5 times as far per head by rail as do those from the poorest 40%. In contrast the net contribution to the Exchequer from the comparable strategic road network is £13 billion annually.  That is equivalent to a profit of £500 per year from every household in the land. That network is used 2.5 to 3 times as intensively as is the rail network

In the peak hour in central London there are sufficient surface rail passengers to fill one seventy to one fifth of the network’s capacity if it were paved and those passengers all had seats in 50-seat or 75-seat express coaches.  The cost of paving the entire network would be a fraction of the modernisation programme.  Likewise in all other vectors.

Do the facts not speak for themselves or is the Engineering profession too dazed by the heroics of the great days of steam to notice?

Paul F Withrington

OVERRATED RAIL

In the New Civil Engineer – published void of picture and notes 3rd July 2008

Antony Oliver, 26th June, cheers the prospect of 5 new high speed lines and regrets that the Government has “gone lukewarm” on the idea.  Thank goodness it has.  After all the cost would exceed £100 billion, none of which would ever be recovered from the fare box.  That is equivalent to £4,000 in taxes from every household in the land.  The resultant toy would do nothing to reduce road congestion (half of all car journeys are less than 4.3 miles long, 90% are less than 20 miles long).  Furthermore the facility would be used by the rich at least 5 times as much as by the poor, or at least that is the case with normal rail.

Meanwhile Battersea power station awaits an extension of the Northern line so as to unlock the site’s development potential notwithstanding that there is a multi track rail way right past its front door.  What greater illustration do we require that rail is quite incapable of meeting today’s needs?  Even in the peak hour London’s immense rail system is used to no more than one fifth of its capacity if paved and the passengers allocated to seats in express coaches.
Notes

In the peak hour circa 250,000 passengers enter central London by surface rail.  There are 25 pairs of tracks.  Hence the flow per track is 10,000 pax per hour, sufficient to fill 200 50-seat coaches.  The capacity of one lane of a motor road, the same width as required by a train, is 1,000 coaches per hour – five times the 200 needed.

High speed rail will turn out to be less green than air travel but that is another story.

Copy to
Treasury
George Osborne MP
Oliver Letwin MP
Theresa Villier MP
John Redwood MP
Brian Binley MP

Paul Withrington

SPEED CAMERAS

To Local Transport Today 16th April 2008 – not published

The Association of British Drivers is castigated for being hysterical about the speed cameras.  Well, here are the hysterical facts:

Road Research Laboratory Report LR 323 published in 1998, found that “excessive speed” accounted for only 7.3% of the recorded “contributory” factors in road traffic accidents. Table 2 of the DfT’s report on Contributory Factors (referenced to 2005 data) shows that exceeding the speed limit was recorded as a contributory factor in 12% of fatal accidents, 7% of accidents where there was a serious injury and 4% of accident where there was a slight injury.  However, in nearly all accidents there are more than one contributory factor e.g. the speeding driver may also be drunk, or distracted by a car full of children or driving without due care and attention or caught out by an outrageous action of some other road user.  When that is taken into account we find that speeding as a percentage of all contributory factors amounted to 5.7% for fatalities, 3.4% where there was a seriously injured casualty and 2.2% where there was a slightly injured casualty.

Despite the compelling picture that these numbers paint, namely that speeding (defined narrowly as breaking the speed limit) is an entirely trivial cause of road traffic accidents, the authorities are determined that breaking the speed limit, or speed generally, is the villain.

Worse than that the authorities have muddled the data in the public mind by (a) routinely saying that 30% of the accidents are “speed related”, when in a pure (and entirely stupid world) 100% would be the more accurate number and (b) dishonestly (in our view) allowing that percentage to be related to “speeding”.

Allied to that we have LR 421 and 511.  Those reports set out to find a relationship between speed and accidents.  Since reducing speed to zero would also reduce accidents to zero it was scarcely surprising that a relationship was indeed found.  That is often summarised as a 1 mph reduction in speed leading to a 5% reduction in accidents, although the number varies according to road type.  We believe that is a spurious finding that can in no way inform policy.  Instead it is a stick that has been used to beat the motorist and to justify speed limits so low that the law is being brought into contempt.

The speed cameras are supported by ever lower speed limits, tens of thousands of speed humps, and the endless traffic management schemes that now create congestion where none need exist.  Despite all that the long established downward trend in road deaths appears to have been sabotaged - In the decade ending 1996, when there were few special road safety polices, road deaths fell by 32% but in the 10 years to 2006, the rate of decline collapse to a mere 11%.

Probably the reason for that failure falls within the slogan “treat people like idiots and, surprise, surprise, they will behave like idiots”. In any event the motorist is now expected to “drive by numbers” both with regard to speed and to his use of road space, particularly at junctions.  That has eroded driver responsibility and sabotaged the development of mature behaviour. 

Quite apart from the apparent failure of the policy, the cost of this punitive approach, both in terms of the damage to relationships with the police, seen as the enforcing agency, and damaged livelihoods, has been huge, let alone the congestion caused. The alternative that we and the ABD advocate is education, designed to develop a polite and deferential driving population.

Paul F Withrington

RAIL EXPANSION 

Local Transport today April 2008, not published

A rational man can only read accounts of the proposed expansion of the rail network with despair. The plain fact is, rail is beggaring the nation.  Subsidy for the 20 years to 2015 is likely to top £100 billion.  That amounts to £4,000 for every household in the land at a time when half the population uses a train less than once a year.  Furthermore those from households in the top quintile of income travel five times as far by rail as do those from households in either of the bottom two quintiles.  Why on earth should we subsidise rich folk?

Now we have Jim Steer and others canvassing for tens of billions of pounds to be spent on three 200 mph rail links.  Together those may cost a further £(50-100) billion.  Cost benefit analyses for two, said to cost £31 billion, pretend that the proposals would produce £63 billion of benefits.  However that analysis erroneously counts fares as benefits (when they are actually transfer payments) and includes the “regenerative” effect on Northern cities.  The latter may benefit far more if given the cash directly and even more if tax were generally reduced so that the market, instead of schoolboy thinking, may drive the economy. If such proposals are not viable in purely financial terms then they should not be built.  Any other approach will leave the taxpayer paying for fairy gold for ever and ever.

In this context it is salutary to look at the modal split of the longer distance journeys.  National Travel survey data for the years 2004-2006 shows that in the range 250-350 miles 72% of trips are by car, 8% by bus and 14% by rail leaving 5% to air.  For journeys longer than 350 miles 42% or trips were by car and 39% by air, leaving a trivial 10% to the train and 4% to the express coach.  If at immense cost to the taxpayer some of the air travellers transferred to rail the effect on global emissions would be almost impossible to measure.

Bah – go look at the fares.

Paul Withrington

CROSSRAIL and COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Local Transport today published 25th January 2008

With special reference to Crossrail, may I make a plea for an end to cost-benefit analysis as presently applied to public transport projects? Instead decisions should be based on financial analyses.  Alternatively, we plea for a radical change in how cost-benefit analysis is applied.

Cost-benefit was originally developed for the evaluation of road schemes where, because there were no direct payments by the users, the cash value of the time plus accident savings were compared with the costs. When the same process is applied to public transport, benefits are inflated by the “incremental” fares – the additional fares to the operator that the proposal would produce. My view is that that is quite wrong. All such payments are transfers where the loss to the one party (the customer) balances the gain to the other (the operator).

To illustrate: for Crossrail the present value of the fares revenue is some £13bn. That extracts some £7bn from existing rail services leaving incremental fares of circa £6bn. That huge sum was subtracted from the present value costs (£13.7 bn) to provide £7.7bn. Loss of indirect tax at £1.2bn was then added to yield a net cost of £9bn. It is that net cost that has been compared with the user benefits of £16bn.

Now, if by way of illustration, we suppose the railways ran the entire economy then, as well as subtracting the £7 billion (lost to existing rail services), we would have had to subtract the £6 billion lost to the wider economy. That would of course lead to zero “incremental fares”. Likewise, the change in tax take is a transfer payment and should also be ignored.

What has happened is that clever men have been looking at two dimensional pieces of paper forgetting that incremental fares are at the expense of other sectors of the economy. In short they have muddled financial analysis with cost-benefit. That has vastly (and erroneously) increased the benefit to cost ratios of public transport proposals.

Further, the proponents of Crossrail canvass for very large benefits under the headings Agglomeration and Benefits to the Wider Economy.  However, there is a deafening silence as to the damage that would be caused to that wider economy by the huge subsidy required by this project.

Lastly, the evaluation period is 60 years and the discount rate, 3.5%. The effect is that a project may pass the cost-benefit test while not running into “profit” until long after many of us will be dead. Crossrail does not yield the DfT’s medium Benefit to Cost ratio of 1.5 until 40 to 50 years after opening. Without incremental fares it would not breakeven, in cost-benefit terms, until perhaps 55 years had elapsed or perhaps never.

Financial analyses would reject projects where whole life costs are greater than whole life fares plus the associated changes in land values. On that basis Crossrail should not be built unless likely to yield an increase in land values greater than £7.7bn (the gap between net fares and costs). Willingness to pay would be a proxy for that increase.

Any other approach will leave the taxpayer paying for fairy gold for ever and ever.

Paul Withrington

DEDICATED TRAMWAYS ARE SIMPLY A WASTE OF SPACE

Local Transport Today 8th November 2007

Professor Lesley (Letter LTT 25 Oct) says that Tram Power will offer a system as economical as a bus service once certain technical items are established. But why wait? Instead just do it by bus now. Not only may buses offer a similar or greater line haul capacity, given a right of way managed to avoid congestion, but (a) the buses may leave the right of way so as to drop-off and pick-up and (b) other vehicles could use the track, which would otherwise be occupied to only a small fraction of its potential. When the latter is taken into account the unit cost of the bus option must surely undercut that of the rumbling tram by a factor in the range two to ten.

As an example of the trivial use that tram systems make of track, consider the Manchester Metro. It carried 206 million passenger-km in 2005/06. Dividing the passenger-km by the track length (78km) yields a network-wide average flow of some 7,200 passenger per track per day. Dividing by an average load of 20, to convert to equivalent bus flows, yields 360 bus equivalents - a flow so trivial that it would pass unnoticed on a motor road.

In the peak hour and in the centre the passenger flow may be three times the average, here set to one tenth of the daily flow. Hence the morning peak hour inbound passenger arrivals at the centre may number circa 2,100 per track. However, the vehicles would then be full, carrying e.g. 50 passengers each. Hence those passengers would all find seats in 45 50-seat buses or in 30 bigger ones. Outside the peak it's definitely feed the pigeons time. After all, the capacity of one lane of a motor road is at least 1,000 buses per hour. With lay-bys for buses at one to two mile intervals that may be reduced somewhat but even so…

Surely there must be a more entertaining way of wasting a right of way than blocking it with tram lines?

Paul Withrington

PERSONAL ATTACKS ARE A POOR SUBSTITUTER FOR DEBATING THE FACTS

In Local Transport Today 25th June 2007

Mike Crowhurst would have me silenced out of hand, (Letters LTT 26 April) without addressing any of the inconvenient truths to do with the railways that we have researched so carefully. Chris Oldham (Letters 10 May), asks what motivates Transport Watch. He then mounts a personal attack instead of addressing the issues. Richard Evans, 24 May, has joined those who prefer the sport of shooting the messenger to answering the case. Hence it is heartening to find Jim Russell, Derek Reynolds and Paul Biggs supporting sensible debate.

Chris Oldham asks the question, what motivates Transport-Watch? The answer is that we have a passion for the truth. To illustrate, the railway lobby likes to say that every day more people die on the roads than passengers in a year by rail. However, the statement exaggerates in favour of rail by a factor of 18 by ignoring usage and by another similar factor by comparing passengers killed in train accidents with all those, system-wide, including pedestrians, cyclists and bikers, killed on the road network.

In comparison our detailed calculations show that (a) deaths per passenger-km by express coach and bus on non-urban roads and motorways are substantially less than (perhaps half) those suffered by rail passengers within the envelope bounded by the ticket barriers and (b) if ordinary traffic, void of pedestrians, cyclists, and bikers occupied a reserved road system, such as the rail network, then the system-wide deaths per passenger-km would be less than that imposed on the community as a whole by rail.

We find similarly in most other vectors to do with road and rail. Indeed it turns out that the railway myth has no basis. The tragedy is that that myth provides the motivation for the waste of tens if not hundreds of billions of pounds. Hence I quote Stuart Joy. He was chief economist to British Railways in the 1960's. In his book The train that ran away he writes that there were "those who were prepared, cynically, to accept the rewards of high office in the British Transport Commission and the railways in return for the unpalatable task of tricking the Government on a mammoth scale. "Those men", Joy said, "were either fools or knaves". We comment, then as now.

Paul Withrington

LOSING THE WAY ON THE PATH TO A LOW EMSISSION TRANSPORT SYSTEM

In Local Transport Today 24th May 2007

LTT seems to me to have rather lost its way by debating global warming. As other correspondents have suggested, massively reducing the energy intensity of transport will still be necessary even if transport emissions have no impact on warming. It is true but irrelevant to our task that in the past climate has got warmer or colder without any emissions from transport.

It is distasteful that this peripheral debate has led to unprofessional attacks on Mr Withrington, director of pressure group Transport-Watch. With respect to the relative energy intensity of transport modes, the position he takes has real support. In its 18th report the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution concluded that the energy use per capacity-kilometre of the small car was superior to the electric suburban multiple unit and the French high-speed train.

These conclusions were supported by extensive references. Transport-Watch also gives meticulous accounts of how its conclusions are reached and makes rational challenge even easier through the willingness of its director to enter into debate. It is possible to review the work of both the Royal Commission and Transport-Watch and, where appropriate, to reach other conclusions based on better evidence. Unfortunately, some lobbying groups make unsupported assertions that cannot be examined in this way.

For example, Rail Future asserts that rail travel is between two and three times more efficient than going by car but gives no supporting evidence.

Transport is publicly funded so professionals must engage with politics and cannot completely avoid polemic but this does not excuse assertions without evidence or the sort of letters written by Mssrs Crowhurst and Oldham.
Jim Russell  (Past Director General, South Yorkshire PTE)

Give less oxygen to those who don't believe in man-made global warming

LTT 24th May 2007

Like Mike Crowhurst (Letters LTT 26 Apr) I too am tiring of the tedious letters from Paul Withrington, Bernard Abrams and other climate change deniers in these pages. I do, however, understand the need to maintain editorial balance and publish both sides of the argument.

May I suggest an expedient solution: since 99% of the world's scientists agree with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that man-made climate change is happening and is a serious threat to future life on earth, the balance of letters here should reflect that. Just one letter in every hundred on this subject from the likes of Mr Withrington and Mr Abrams should help relieve the tedium.

Richard Evans

Can rail advocates be expected to look at the facts dispassionately?

LTT 24th May 2007

It is unlikely Mike Crowhurst, the chairman of Rail Future (Letters LTT 26 Apr), will be persuaded that rail is inferior to road as is suggested in Mr Withrington's letter (Letters LTT 1 Feb).

Mr Crowhurst is perhaps a little too near the wood to see the trees. I have found personal retorts often emanate from a weak argument and that of Mr Crowhurst and Mr Oldham (Letters LTT10 May), might be based upon information gained from too much government and media presentation, seldom a source of accurate information. The IPCC is an Intergovernmental panel, designed to supply policy advice. It has been found biased, its findings flawed and criticised by scientists working within, let alone without.

The desire for many to return to steel clad streets under a web of wires has as much to do with nostalgia and the physical attraction of modern trams than necessity. Implanting rails in roads creates a straight jacket for public transport. Why is there such an aversion to the rubber tyred, go anywhere vehicle? It requires no expensive overhead wire system to maintain and cause problems for emergency services; no rails to hamper ground works for water and gas etc; offers complete flexibility of dispersal; and better end of life resale value (school/scout buses, preservation groups).

Derek Reynolds

What are the motivations behind Transport-Watch's campaigns?

LTT 10th May

Without any wish to sound rude, it would be interesting to know what motivates the thoughts of Paul Withrington.

As stated in his letter in LTT on 12 April, Mr Withrington is director of Transport-Watch. This appears to be largely a campaign against "cumbersome trains", to turn railways into roads. It uses cherry-picked "facts" to discredit trains and promote roads, which blissfully ignores both the many realities of doing so and the many virtues of trains.

Away from this campaign, he now appears to dispute mankind's contribution to global warming (Letters LTT 12 Apr). In LTT letters on 26 April, Matthew Ledbury very eloquently addressed the questions raised by Mr Withrington but why were they being asked?

Interestingly, both the pro-road/anti-rail and global-warming-denial views are held by Jeremy Clarkson but at least Clarkson does it because he earns a lot of money from being deliberately provocative (so excessively as to sometimes be humorous I have to admit). However, it's not because he thinks carefully and then offers a view backed by sound reasoning.

Are Messrs Withrington and Clarkson regular drinking partners? Having never seen Mr Withrington, one wonders whether they are in fact the same person?

Chris Oldham

Claims that transport policy can help 'save the planet' are absurd

LTT 10th May 2007

Matthew Ledbury appears to suggest that when climate realist viewpoints are "argued out" or "extensively written about" this equals refutation (Letters LTT 24 Apr). Are we reading yet another unscientific proclamation that 'the science is settled'? Climate science is most definitely not settled. Moreover, transport policy should stick to addressing the challenge of moving people and goods while avoiding bogus attempts to 'save the planet' via carbon envy.

When addressing Mr Withrington's points 1-3 and 6 (LTT 12 Apr) regarding previous eras of climate change alongside current emissions of carbon dioxide, Mr Ledbury points out that the difference now is the extent to which human activity (fossil fuel burning) is helping to drive climate change. Apart from shamelessly taking for granted that the unproven human influence is indeed non-zero and significant, one must ask why a period is chosen stretching back only 650,000 years. The reasons for choosing this short pre-industrial timescale out of millions of years are that, firstly, it allows man-made global warmers to say that atmospheric CO2 levels nowadays are high when over the full pre-industrial geological perspective they are low and, secondly, it seems a long time to the general public and therefore impressive when it isn't. Levels of CO2 have been far higher than now, up to 18 times higher, totally naturally.

There is never any mention from the man-made global warming industry of the Beer Lambert Law, which is a law of diminishing climate returns from greenhouse gas concentrations, which tells us that there is nothing worthwhile to be gained from immeasurably small manipulation of emissions at this time. As to the last few decades, the work of Henrik Svensmark et al is re-writing this chapter of climate science and there is no definitive judgement available via exploitation of a microtrend.

Mr Ledbury's claim that the atmosphere has changed "largely as climate models have predicted" requires a redefinition of the word "largely". Consider the model NASA GISS 'A1B'. This has as its most prominent output pronounced tropical tropospheric warming yet this is absent from observations. This is failure, not success. Inadequate, expensive but politically correct computer games are no basis for making international energy and mobility policies. An accurate full climate model operating with appropriate spatial scales and degrees of freedom would require ten to the power 24 times longer than the current age of the Universe to run only a 40-year projection (Dr Willie Soon, Harvard

To take the discussion back to transport, we hear calls - usually directed at cars alone - to make further reductions in CO2 emissions, as if this would be remotely significant. So we see pop stars buying hybrid vehicles, which is good for sales of both hybrids and CDs, and we hear comically pompous adverts regarding tyre pressures and emissions that forget to remind listeners about safety implications. To see how pointless this is, within the new green religion of evil plant food gas, if all UK CO2 emissions were to stop overnight with consequent regression to a localised medieval lifestyle, unacceptable loss of life and economic collapse, China would make up the shortfall in 700 days.

As the previous generation of CND unilateralist bigwigs are currently in Government deciding on a replacement for Trident, it seems remarkable that they would volunteer this nation as the first lemming over the economic cliff in a similarly pointless act of posture politics that simply would not work. The modest extent and rate of climate change that we see remains within the level of natural variation, so the precautionary principle actually dictates that we avoid premature drastic action. There is no basis for engaging in Armageddonist ecohype - unless there is a preconceived agenda requiring it. Attempts by politicians to micromanage a complex planetary climate system using fiscal policy are risible and futile. Focusing this King Canute strategy on transportation takes us from the ridiculous to the utterly preposterous.

Bernard Abrams

Transport should not be exempt from carbon dioxide cuts

LTT 10th May 2997

Could you please help me keep my New Year's resolution by not publishing letters from Paul 'tiresome' Withrington? I had resolved to stop replying to them and managed to resist replying to his rant against George Monbiot (Letters LTT 1 Feb). (Monbiot does occasionally use some ill-advised language to get his point across.) But I am now breaking my resolution with this letter.

I will leave it to those more expert than me to dissect Paul's eight questions in the last issue and just make a simple point. Even if he were right that global warming is wholly or mainly natural in origin, is it really sensible for humanity to add to it by continuing to use and develop technologies that are either certain or highly likely to increase the problem and may risk tipping the planet beyond a point of no return?

Personally I would be much more worried if I thought global warming was largely a natural phenomenon, as that would imply that there was little or nothing we could do about it, whereas if it is substantially man-made then we certainly can do something about it, provided we apply our minds to it and ignore the likes of 'tiresome' Paul!

Turning to the more serious discussion of Government strategy on climate change ('Climate Bill clause averts need for deep cuts to transport CO2 levels' LTT 29 Mar) and Richard Craig's letter (LTT 12 Apr), I must say I find the idea of putting the emphasis on the energy sector rather than transport rather worrying. Of course we can all do our bit with energy saving at home and work but the real levers of change in this sector are in the hands of the power generators and the Government. Changing to 'green' suppliers seems to me (like carbon trading) something of a gesture that achieves little except to raise the profile of climate in the public mind.

We all need heat and power at times but we do not all need to travel as much as we are doing. As individuals we have far more opportunities to make meaningful decisions on our travel choices than on our domestic energy needs. Which is why I am attracted to the idea of personal carbon trading in transport and why it is so depressing that the current Government approach has led to a virtual standstill in both tram/light rail schemes and in electrification of the existing railway network.

Would it not make more sense to have more of our transport infrastructure equipped to take advantage of renewably generated power when it comes on stream, rather than wait until it does and then belatedly start a programme of rail and transport electrification?

Mike Crowhurst  Chairman, Railfuture

Transport should not be exempt from carbon dioxide cuts

LTT 26TH April 2007

Could you please help me keep my New Year's resolution by not publishing letters from Paul 'tiresome' Withrington? I had resolved to stop replying to them and managed to resist replying to his rant against George Monbiot (Letters LTT 1 Feb). (Monbiot does occasionally use some ill-advised language to get his point across.) But I am now breaking my resolution with this letter.

I will leave it to those more expert than me to dissect Paul's eight questions in the last issue and just make a simple point. Even if he were right that global warming is wholly or mainly natural in origin, is it really sensible for humanity to add to it by continuing to use and develop technologies that are either certain or highly likely to increase the problem and may risk tipping the planet beyond a point of no return?

Personally I would be much more worried if I thought global warming was largely a natural phenomenon, as that would imply that there was little or nothing we could do about it, whereas if it is substantially man-made then we certainly can do something about it, provided we apply our minds to it and ignore the likes of 'tiresome' Paul!

Turning to the more serious discussion of Government strategy on climate change ('Climate Bill clause averts need for deep cuts to transport CO2 levels' LTT 29 Mar) and Richard Craig's letter (LTT 12 Apr), I must say I find the idea of putting the emphasis on the energy sector rather than transport rather worrying. Of course we can all do our bit with energy saving at home and work but the real levers of change in this sector are in the hands of the power generators and the Government. Changing to 'green' suppliers seems to me (like carbon trading) something of a gesture that achieves little except to raise the profile of climate in the public mind.

We all need heat and power at times but we do not all need to travel as much as we are doing. As individuals we have far more opportunities to make meaningful decisions on our travel choices than on our domestic energy needs. Which is why I am attracted to the idea of personal carbon trading in transport and why it is so depressing that the current Government approach has led to a virtual standstill in both tram/light rail schemes and in electrification of the existing railway network.

Would it not make more sense to have more of our transport infrastructure equipped to take advantage of renewably generated power when it comes on stream, rather than wait until it does and then belatedly start a programme of rail and transport electrification?

Mike Crowhurst Chairman, Railfuture

Eight questions for man-made global warming advocates to answer

LTT 11TH April 2007

Matthew Ledbury's claim that the Channel 4 climate change programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle, consists of "tired old discredited arguments" would carry more weight if he, or any of the man-made global warming people, could throw any light on or contradict any of the following. If the answer is "no" then we may assume that the claim that the man-made global warming skeptics have been "discredited" is hot air.

1. 18,000 years ago the ice was two miles thick in Scotland. It has melted without any help from us.
2. 6,000-8,000 years ago temperatures were 2.5-3 degrees higher than today. The world did not end then.
3. Neither medieval warming nor the Little Ice Age were due to man's activity.
4. Warming arises in advance of increased carbon dioxide levels - implying that it is the warming that leads to the increase in carbon rather than the carbon causing the warming.
5. Warming/cooling closely match sunspot activity.
6. 96.5% of the carbon cycle is natural - leaving 3.5% to us. Animals and insects farting add far more to the carbon cycle than does mankind.
7. Climate models allocate a maximum temperature rise attributable to carbon dioxide (regardless of its concentration) of 1 Deg C. Most of the rest of the predicted temperature increase is on the basis of warmer climes supposedly leading to more water vapour in the upper troposphere. However, the amount of water vapour there has not changed as predicted and the atmosphere has not warmed as predicted.
8. Water vapour in the atmosphere drives 95% of greenhouse warming, with the rest of it coming from carbon dioxide (3.62%), nitrous oxide (0.95%), methane (0.36%), and miscellaneous gases (0.07%).

Sorry to be so tiresome.

Paul Withrington

Green' transport modes must provide fuel consumption data

LTT 30th November 2006

We congratulate you on your reporting of the climate debate and of the green or otherwise credentials of rail ('Climate change chief berates alarmists' and Feature LTT 16 Nov). Within the latter we have Professor Kemp saying "no one has train energy consumption at their finger tips". However, we do have a little.

For example, we had from British Rail in 1990 the electricity and diesel consumption used in traction by the system, divided by sector, along with passenger miles and tonne-miles. Converting the electricity to oil equivalents and adding the actual diesel consumed enabled us to calculate the passenger-miles per gallon. That provided 64 for Provincial Services, 83 for Network South East and 111 for Intercity, yielding a system wide average of 88.

It took us 13 years to get an update when, possibly by mistake, an employee of Network Rail provided similar data for 2002/03. It provides 108 for Network South East and 123 for both Regional and Intercity services, yielding a system wide average of 115. That compares with the 200 that might be expected from an express coach with 20 people aboard returning ten miles per gallon on an uncongested motor road (See www.transport-watch.co.uk fact sheet five).

In that context we have interested the Office of Rail Regulation in requiring the rail industry to provide its fuel consumption as part of national statistics. Clearly that should be available along with the same from all those rapid transit systems, which, in the absence of source data, claim green credentials.

Separately from that we have James Skinner wondering why the DfT has shunned light rail in favour of guided bus (Letters LTT 16 Nov). Our view is that, rather than guided bus, they should be settling for roads managed to avoid congestion via electronic charging, as are the Lexus lanes in the USA. Although the widths required may be slightly wider than for guided bus the cost may be less. Further, rights of way reserved for guided bus, or other fixed track, are, in highway terms, scarcely used. In contrast, if managed as motor roads those rights of way would carry countless lorries and other vehicles. That would bring very large environmental benefits to the unsuitable city streets that these vehicles currently clog.

Paul Withrington

Ministers should leave public transport provision to the market

LTT 10th August 2006

So, after describing my letter of 29 June as "balderdash", indicating by way of insult that he has perhaps lost the debate, Mike Crowhurst (Letters LTT 27 July) asks why councils should not control the revenue stream for bus operations when they provide subsidy. That question provides no answers. Instead it is a baseless plea that Government should be encouraged to meddle at taxpayer's expense.

One consequence of meddling is buses trundling around using up diesel at the rate of 5mpg with perhaps two to five passengers aboard. And, as for the railways, they will have cost every household in the land £2,000 over the decade at a time when half of us use the train less than once a year!

What better illustration could there be of why Government should not meddle? Instead the market should be left to decide. If there is a well deserving group of would-be travellers, pay them the money. For the most part, rail subsidy benefits the rich, not the poor.

Paul Withrington