The campaign is asking for a feasibility study to be set up precisely to go into those questions, at a city and regional level. It would be an attractive project for a university depart for a fairly modest fee I suspect, but it would be better if the BCC and T4WM commissioned such a study themselves. Given the dire situation we are in regarding the climate, not to mention the other problems of congestion, delays, accidents and dirty air, why should there be resistance to looking into the one scheme that would act as a major inducement to tempt motorists out of their vehicles?
At a first glance, with £27 billion of national money being earmarked for road building schemes, and over £100 billion for HS2, there does not appear to be a shortage of money for transport investment.
At a local level, there is the £15 billion being set aside for tram investment that has already been mentioned. Putting that on one side for now, once you have removed expenses for ticketing infrastructure and factored in the co-benefits from less congested roads and fewer health problems, the experience of other schemes is that they can start to pay for themselves after a while.
However, even if a substantial permanent subsidy were required, would it not be worth it? Proper public services always need state (national and/or local) funding and a post-Covid new way of doing things needs to start developing its blueprint in the here and now.
As I said, we need to set up feasibility studies to go into the nuts and bolts, the mechanics and the finance of new schemes. We do need hard financial information it is true, but how can a layperson or an unofficial body get access to these figures? When I wrote to T4WM about this issue recently they did not even reply. It does not inspire confidence.
Bob Whitehead
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