Public Transport in Towns and Cities

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this report and agree with the general premise that public transport plays a vital role in urban environments, enabling people to access education, leisure, family and/or work. It is as important for economic productivity as community dynamism.

The report’s recognition that many British towns outside London have inadequate, unreliable and expensive transport infrastructure is of concern, as was acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. The consequences can be dire when public transport is not adequate to aid essential travel. Sometimes, alternative support is required. For example, there is a story from Blackburn, which was raised by Jake Berry MP in the other place, where parents of 170 SEN pupils have been left in limbo after a specialist subsidised bus service used by Walton-le-Dale High School was axed due to a huge unaffordable hike in prices. The school is out of area but, as Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council does not have suitable school places for the pupils, the children are stranded. Normal public transport is neither suitable nor available, but the council tells them to just get the bus.

One parent of a son with Asperger’s in year 7 told LancsLive that:

“Even my son’s paediatrician said that he would not be safe on public transport”.


Rick Moore, a local politician leading the campaign with the parents, recently organised for them to address the council. Tillie, a year 11 pupil, eloquently explained that the walk to the closest bus stop is on an unlit country lane and that the pavement is only continuous on one side and has a section of footpath so narrow that pedestrians are forced on to the road—so much for safeguarding the young. Sadly, the council remains indifferent. I raise this to indicate the problems when public transport is inadequate and also to note that it is not always a solution to the mobility challenges of living in towns that often have poorly served rural areas close by.

I turn to another issue. One problem constantly raised in the report is the steady stream of often contradictory demands on councils from central government, which confuse transport priorities. If we look at active travel plans—a euphemistic name given to non-car mobility for which local authorities receive substantial funding—these schemes, such as cycling lanes and walkable neighbourhoods, have nothing to do with public transport. Worse, however, is that prioritising them can be a hinderance in terms of allocation of road space, as we have heard, and can often have the unintended consequence of increasing congestion.

As James Freeman from BRT UK told the committee:

“At the moment, to favour the cyclist—because that is where the money and focus are—public buses have found themselves back in the queue, and the bus service becomes unreliable and slow as a result”.


As the report rightly notes, bus services are attractive to users only if they have some priority over the rest of the traffic and are therefore able to compete with undertaking the journey by car. Of course, anyone choosing to travel by car is likely to elicit admonishment, as driving seems to be thoroughly disapproved of in transport policy circles. I found it dispiriting that the report fuels this by positing improving public transport as a way of reducing car use. This is unnecessarily binary, divisive and unhelpful for citizens. The Government’s response to the transport decarbonisation plan states that measures are needed to

“shift to public and active transport”,

and the inquiry reports experts saying that

“a reduction in trips by private car of the order of 30% is needed to help meet net zero targets.”

I am worried that the language in this debate is misleading, even disingenuous. This is posed by the DfT as helping to “improve travel choices”, and local authorities have been given powers to implement measures to “support improved choices”. TfL says that the Government have an important role in making public transport, walking and cycling the mode of choice, but the public are not being given a choice here. Too often, policies seem coercive and anti-choice.

One reason why I am opposed to the report’s recommendation that the Government should set explicit targets for a reduction in car journeys is that it is bad enough as it is. Some local authorities have adopted local targets, at the cost of citizens’ freedom to choose to drive. Indeed, many drivers now feel like they are the villains in an anti-car crusade in urban areas, and often there is little regard for democratic scrutiny. Look at the exorbitant emission zone charges, which are widely unpopular. Noble Lords will have noted the large Together rally in London on Saturday, against ULEZ. Then there are the infernal low-traffic neighbourhoods, where roads are blocked off with no discussion and no mandate. Hackney Council is planning to close 75% of its road space to cars. Bath’s first LTN, in Southlands, has proven highly controversial but the council has just announced 48 more LTNs, and despite lively opposition from Bath’s grass-roots “save our city” campaign there will also be a £10 million emissions zone, dubbed a ring of steel by locals. All over the country, families can no longer drive to their weekly shop, taxi routes are lengthened and more costly for the disabled and the elderly getting to GPs, and care workers and plumbers alike are unable to navigate speedy routes to their next appointment. It is not so much active travel, as anti-travel.

On the committee’s visit to Birmingham, we were told that meeting the region’s 2041 decarbonisation target would require a 35% reduction in car travel over the next 10 years, a 50% reduction in all trips and an 800% increase in wheeling journeys on vehicles such as bikes and scooters; that will be great for the elderly. In that context, there would be a need for a 100% increase in public transport—as though improving public transport is just a means to an anti-car end. Worse, drivers end up getting the blame for problems with public transport. Transport for West Midlands complains that a “preference towards” driving is perhaps

“the ‘biggest barrier to improving public transport’”.

Surveys in the region show why people drive: 87% say that their lifestyle requires that they own a car or a van, and 94% say they enjoy the independence which car ownership gives them. That word, “independence”, is key. What is fascinating is that ever since the anti-car policy wonks grabbed the political steering wheel back in the late 1990s, and despite the exponential growth in the car-reduction industry ever since, the number of cars on the road rose substantially between the 1990s and 2020. As the director of the future cities project says:

“What this predominantly shows … is that personal mobility remains important to the public, despite all the policies that are so hostile to driving”,


and that it is a form of liberation especially espoused by women.

I urge the Minister not to succumb to pressure to make anti-car measures more explicit, but rather to concentrate on the worthy and vigorously pursued goal of improving public transport on its own terms.