Cat Hobbs
IN delivering a Sustainable Transport System, Geoff Hoon suggests we should tackle climate change by "preserving freedom of choice, facing people with the true carbon cost of those choices... helping people reduce their need to travel or switch to lower-carbon modes".
Unfortunately, the reality doesn't match up to the rhetoric. Government pricing policy (or the lack of it) is pricing people off low-carbon public transport and pricing them into high-carbon cars and planes. Since 1997, rail fares have risen in real terms by seven per cent and bus and coach fares have risen by 17 per cent. The cost of motoring has fallen by 13 per cent and the price of one-way flights from UK airports has, on average, halved.
These trends are making it harder for people to cut their carbon footprint. Going from London to Edinburgh for example, the plane can often be cheaper than the train, even though its climate change impact is eight times worse. Taking the family in the car can often be cheaper than taking the bus, even though buses produce as little as one-third the carbon.
Making it harder for individuals to choose public transport makes it harder for Government to achieve its carbon reduction targets. We've published research by Steer Davies Gleave that modelled the impacts of a package of pricing measures, involving cutting bus and rail fares and increasing motoring and aviation taxation.
This package could increase public transport use and reduce the car's modal share of travel from 87 per cent to around 78 per cent by 2025.
Taxing aviation fuel would make rail more competitive. Overall, carbon emissions from transport could be reduced by 16 million tonnes a year by 2025, a reduction of 13 per cent compared to the levels implied by Government traffic forecasts.
The research argues that the Government must look at pricing policy in the round. And we argue that it must take action, urgently. We believe cutting train fares and taxing the fuel used on domestic flights would be a very good place to start, for two reasons. Firstly, rail fares are too high, and they are stopping people from taking the train. Passenger Focus has recently shown that our rail fares are the highest in Europe.
Steer Davies Gleave's research proved that the UK's high train fares have priced people off our railways. If public transport fares had been reduced by 20 per cent (to around the European average) in 2000, bus and rail travel combined might now be 120 billion passenger-km, an increase of 10 billion or around nine per cent. Reducing rail fares today by 20 per cent could increase rail travel by 17 per cent by 2015.
Secondly, cutting train fares and taxing the fuel used on domestic flights would be relatively easy, both practically and politically. (Whereas cutting bus fares is more complicated, and dramatic increases in motoring fuel tax can be unpopular.) The Department for Transport regulates train fares directly and so it has a clear policy lever that it can use.
Unfortunately, at the moment, it is using that policy lever very unwisely. Although many train passengers don't realise it, the Government is directly responsible for the fact that regulated and unregulated fares are rising above inflation every year.
The Government hopes that people will blame the train companies and fail to notice that it is trying to cut its own contribution towards the railways by £1.5 billion. Its plan in the 2007 Rail White Paper was to make passengers pay 75 per cent of the costs of running the railway by 2014 - even with the recession, it's still trying to get passengers to pay more.
When we tell decision makers that this policy is unacceptable, they start talking about the benefits of cheap advance fares. This is a red herring. People shouldn't have to plan their train journeys months in advance to get an affordable ticket. People value the flexibility and convenience of being able to hop into their car and go. If rail is going to compete with this, then it needs to be possible to turn up at a station and go, without being penalised for not booking ahead. The Government also points out that rail fares may fall next January because they are tied to general prices, which are falling. But this will not be a real cut, and other fares are still being increased.
The Government has choices. Domestic aviation pays no fuel tax. By ending this exemption, there would be more than enough funds for train fare reductions.
Taxing fuel on domestic flights at the same rate as motoring fuel tax would raise nearly £500 million a year - enough to bring commuter fares in line with the European average, according to the Government.
Serious modal shift to public transport is possible and would cut carbon emissions, congestion and traffic levels. The evidence is that pricing changes could help us achieve that modal shift. Pricing is not the only thing needed, but it's a key part of the picture. The Government doesn't seem willing to recognise this fact, but it can't bury its head in the sand forever. Rail passengers are angry that they're being hit with high fares when they choose a green mode of transport, when they should be rewarded instead.