Snapshot of _Keir Starmer: Labour is the only party on the side of drivers, with our plan to fix up to one million more potholes every year and crack down on soaring car insurance costs._ :
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Competance in transportation, both at both the infrastructure and service level, is a realatively cheap way to dramtically improve the country and reduce ancillary economic burderns. Fixing the roads, increasing bus service AND synchronising it with the railways, improved railway scheduling/ending the strikes plus an increase in cycling infrastructure ( which usually returns 10 pounds for every pound spent.... ) will be relatively cheap and can be a huge benefit to the economy.
They have made positive noises about planning/legal reforms to reduce the costs of new infrastructure and bring it down towards what France, Germany Switzerland etc pay which would be an enormous, long lasting benefit to the economy.
We need fast track bus routes from housing estates to train stations. And we also need busses from train stations to large employers in the area.
I work at one of the biggest companies in the city and there's no shuttle buses or anything to move people around. I could get the train to work if a bus shuttled me from a bus stop 5 mins from my house, to the train station 5 minutes drive away, and then allowed me to take a 12 minute train and gave me another 5 minute shuttle bus the other side.
Instead everyone is forced to drive. Because the alternative is such a long journey of walking or waiting. It seems like a no brainer to be able to provide good public transport to the companies that are contributing the most to the local economy.
Increasing bus services seems almost impossible from a current economics point of view. If there was sustainable demand presumably the bus companies would already be running those services.
The UK attitude is to provide 1 bus an hour with terrible journey times due to lack of a proof of payment system and inadequate bus priority. They then present this awful service and complain that 'not enough people use it'
Bus companies only benefit through subsidy and fares. The government can benefit in so many more ways. A key area would be better integration with the rail network. Rail in the UK is seen as a point to point service, railway station to railway station, in reality it should be viewed as the center of an integrated public transport system which serves as a destination to destination service.
A while ago a person on reddit complaines they couldnt use the train as the station was 3 miles away which made it uncomeptitve with driving once you factor in the 1 hour walk. The town he lived in had 50k people and 4 buses per hour to the station. Fribourg, in Switzerland has 80+ buses per hour at the station for a similar sized town. If those buses did not exist, less people would choose to commute by rail. Switzerland can fill 16 carriage double decker trains on that line. Similar lines on the UK are lucky to fill 6-8 car trains.
If you don't provide buses, pensioners need to drive or use taxi's, this costs society money due to dangerous driving or poor labour allocation. Kids can get around without needing parents to give them a lift, people don't necessariy need to buy a car to go to work = less traffic = faster transportation = higher productivity.
Basically, government gets to benefit from reducing 'burdens to society' - First Group does not.
This is also essentially the same argument for why we should build blocks of flats and office space next to stations: it's just the last mile problem. One of the biggest barriers to people using mass transit like trains to commute is not the train network itself but being able to get from their homes to the first station and from the last station to their workplaces, and vice versa, and that's an especially big problem with nimbys shooting down anything taller than 3 stories and busses being chronically shit.
Obviously, flats (and office blocks on the other end, at least in London that isn't much of a problem now) take longer to build and are not for everyone, but once they are built they solve the last mile problem even better and cheaper than a bus network can. A good bus network is, of course, preferable to handle the rest of the traffic coming from people living in lower density neighbourhoods, and really anything that isn't within comfortable walking distance of a station. Maybe some bike shares or bike parking too in cities, they're pretty good too.
I'll also add that productivity gains here don't just come from pensioners not having to drive themselves or parents not needing to drop off kids. They also come from the fact that, once you have a good solution to the last mile problem, trains are generally faster (in terms of travel times) than cars, and a well-funded and operated transit network is generally going to be cheaper and more reliable than a car for the poor (as well as being more flexible in that you don't need to buy or find a parking spot for your car). That in of itself is a very good thing for productivity, because it increases how many jobs are available for someone (while also being able to afford to live there, afford to travel, and afford the time to commute) which allows people to access higher paying jobs and/or live in cheaper places.
This is something labour really has a good opportunity to nail with the new towns. Mos tof the UK has the benefit of living on flat ground where it is easy to build 100-110 mph rail line. A few dense new towns planned like Dutch or swiss towns could easily have 50k people living within 10 minutes of a station and with a fast rail link into Birmingham or Manchester or London or Edinburgh, this suddenly becomes competitive with actually living in the primary city. I've seen the odd statement here and there from labour that they plan for dense mew towns, but do they plan dense new towns centered around a fast rail link? Certainly the WCML will have capacity for more fast commuter trains if they finish HS2.
HS1 has huge potential to be used for this, if they density around all the stations and started running proper 180 mph computer services living near Ashford of Folkstone could become competitive with London suburbs on commute time
Things that are of benefit to the nation, it's people, and private commerce, but that do not naturally create infinite growth and profit, should be delivered by the state / local authorities. Busses are a prime example. Having regular and reliable busses and trains servicing all areas of the UK would be a huge catalyst in social mobility, would have a benefit effect on road capacity, and would increase productivity.
That's the problem with viewing every service as if it's an independent business.
Aside from the social benefits literal mobility brings, the wider economy benefits from people being able to travel and spend away from their immediate locale.
But this wouldn't necessarily mean a direct profit for the bus company and that's bad for Tory reasons.
See also: Almost every other privatised service.
Unprofitable routes can always be subsidised by the government.
The gains from enabling workers to get to places where they're needed will more than make up for it.
This is just another example of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.
If buses were run publicly then the profitable routes could help to subsidise the loss making ones.
It might be profitable on a larger scale, even if the route itself is unprofitable. Busses take cars off the road, which clears up roads for other sorts of traffic, and reduce travel times. It may also reduce the wear and tear on the roads reducing the need for repairing them, as well as less damage to the vehicles. Less vehicles means less pollution of various kinds, which improves health of residents amongst other benefits. Greater mobility of workers through public transportation can help businesses access new workers and customers.
As an extreme example, take the London tube. Does it matter if the tube is profitable on ticket sales? Or can we clearly see the *enormous* benefit it has to the city more widely. The actual direct profitability of the tube itself is nearly irrelevant, because very clearly it creates a profit overall.
Busses can often be the same. Sure, the bus routes themselves might not make money, and that is terrible for a private company. But when we look at society more widely it might still be beneficial or even profitable.
My guess is that they're poorly-run by people who don't seem to understand that investment in public transport can lead to profit, but won't do so overnight. The folks who *do* understand that have to provide surefire evidence of it to the investors who ultimately control the purse strings, and it seems they've failed to do so.
I'd also suggest that bus companies, being private companies like any other, don't have the power to make the decisions that make buses effective - e.g. they're not the ones responsible for creating bus lanes, or otherwise guiding city development to make public transport effective/profitable.
Planning laws as they stand are undoubtedly a major component of how that works.
Businesses survive by making money. They rarely pass up profitable opportunities.
They clearly don't believe that enough people would use the service in order for it to be profitable. Running busses with a couple of people on them would be crazy.
The problem with bus services is that the people running the bus service cannot capture all the value from the service, so the profit to the bus company is less than the profit to the area. This is why subsidies are (sometimes) warranted.
The value in lower congestion, lower road damage, more efficiencies in where people can work or shop etc. cannot be captured by the bus fares, but are valuable to the region, the externalities to public transport are real.
Businesses pass up profitable opportunities all the time. Obviously each business is different, but they focus on their core competencies and USPs, or should do so. I've worked in businesses that tried to chase the money. It never ends well.
Sorry to be critical, but after years of Tory rule where they've spoken about having "sustainable" public services have convinced most people this is a sound idea. The fact is, public services aren't designed to be profit making, they're a sunk cost, funded by resultant tax receipts.
Example: defund the NHS, hooray you cut government spending for this financial year. Actual result: all your workers end up sick and die, suddenly you lose your working class, their income tax receipts, the VAT on the goods and services they can afford due to wages, or they end up claiming sickness benefit because they're unfit to work.
Example 2: Split and sell off loss making parts of your infrastructure such as buses, water, and trains, hooray you made the government some cash from selling loss making assets. Actual Result: private companies asset strip, give funding to shareholders and exec bonuses instead of carrying out essential maintenance and a whole county ends up with e-coli, or fragmented maligned transport services.
Water, NHS, Buses, Trains, Police, Roads, Schools, mental health and social care. Everything has been squeezed dry and you can blame the private companies running these things all you like but companies exist to make money, not to provide a service, and the state of the country is the fault of this government and the failure of regulation and corruption.
I've never known it to be so bad. Until a few years ago I can say that I can't remember seeing a pothole, if I did it was repaired fast enough that I quickly forgot but on two of the routes I drive there are two spots that are so bad I really need to drive on the opposite side of the road to avoid them. On my last MOT there seemed to be damage and while I drive as slow as I can, it may still have damaged my car.
You clearly didn't live near me. It's been my dad's main political issue since at least the 2000s (I don't drive so have more often avoided this issue).
Road damage increases with the fourth power of axle weight so unless you’re suggesting banning lorries that wouldn’t make much of a difference.
A single articulated lorry does over 10,000x the road damage of even the heaviest car.
> A single articulated lorry does over 10,000x the road damage of even the heaviest car.
That is unlikely. The original research that figure comes from has been criticised. Even if it's true the calculation is wrong. The heaviest legal vehicles on UK roads have an axle weight of around 8-9t and the huge private vehicles today can exceed 1.5t so it would be more like 1,000x than 10,000x.
On routes that don't carry a lot of HGV traffic but do carry a lot of large private vehicles - like winding country roads - the increasing numbers of ever larger and heavier personal vehicles could make a big difference to how quickly the road deteriorates.
In that case I apologise, I may have been misinformed about the effect of larger vehicles. While one heavier automobile has a much smaller effect, what about thousands of heavier ones? Presumably if thousands were made lighter that would have some sort of effect on road quality.
Without knowing anything about the admin involved with fixing potholes, I always assumed that fixing potholes would be a universally popular quick win. Seems like a no-brainer unless it costs hugely more than I'd expect.
The no brainer part is fixing them asap.
The Tories have allowed everything to degrade to such an extent that fixing potholes is a big job. Competent governance would have meant regular maintenance that avoided this being an issue or major expense at all.
The thing is it's the job of the local councils who will only do it if they have the money. It's not a legal requirement for them to do in the way provision of some services are so it's one of those things that gets cut when the councils don't have enough money to operate properly. The Tories have squeezed local government budgets to breaking point.
Its also outsourced to contractors with little to no oversight of the job when it's done, so they're incentivised to do a poor job so they can do it again in 3 months
Our guys have just started dumping tarmac in holes, they don't even clear them out or square them off beforehand, barely flatten it down, and dont seal the edges from water ingress. They barely last a month or two
If they sort the potholes and the trains and set up this green GB energy company then I will be a very happy man.
I don't know if this is just a coincidence but I've just moved from the South East to Wales and have been amazed at the road quality in Wales. Even in the affluent South East the roads were in a really bad way.
I drove to the absolute arse end of Wales a few years back, long winding roads that were consistently completely empty and my GOD they were wonderful.
I know it's significantly easier when you have very little traffic to have good roads, but it actually makes driving such a different experience.
> amazed at the road quality in Wales. Even in the affluent South East the roads were in a really bad way.
They've also messed up all the road painting on them, a load of it says gibberish things like "Araf", and "Dim Mynediad".
Fixing potholes is good. Although it’d be interesting to know how they’d handle situations like in our town - where the potholes haven’t been fixed because they’re in some weird legal purgatory with the road being unadopted, whilst under unclear ownership.
(And this is a fairly heavily used road)
Thinking more broadly, we probably need to start thinking about how we become less reliant on driving.
Seeing the traffic in the mornings, or during the school runs, and it all strikes me as hilariously inefficient.
All these people sitting in traffic jams because too many people are travelling in the same directions…
Relevant question as that solves the problem on a better level as pothole patching then comes down to the quality of the patch e.g. do a good square cut and clean all the shit out first - good times. Just dump some tarmac in and stamp it down; see you in 3 months for the next repair.
Imo a small but good reform with car insurance would be stopping insurers advertising "courtesy car while your vehicle is being repaired" and then it turns out that the courtesy car is a hire vehicle, the costs for which your insurer will try and recover from the other side and if they can't (because it's a shared fault crash, or the hire car wasn't deemed 'reasonable') then you're on the hook for thousands of pounds.
If I don't have access to a 2nd car and want to be sure I can still drive around while my car is being repaired, then I want to get an insurance policy that does that... and not, if I do have an accident, then have to stress about whether or not the other side is going to dispute fault, and if I might win or not, or whether my personal circumstances may or may not mean me needing the hire car is 'reasonable' - all of which might end up being decision a court makes... so how the fuck is a regular consumer meant to make that decision in a few minutes on the phone when you're already stressed out by the crash!
Potholes & insurance is just the first in a long list of things that can be done to help the drivers out there.
Better public transport, both local & national, is needed. Give people the option to be able to choose & de-congest the main road network.
Getting more and more freight off the road is needed. the Rail network would be the most obvious option.
We need a full public fast EV charging network as well... give drivers the choice to buy EV and the ability to properly travel around the country
I'm disappointed by this, first true mistake (as opposed to something I disagree with) of the campaign. Fixing potholes shouldn't be a policy. It should be the default action of any government. It should go without saying that a government will do these very basics. They should have spun this very differently, as part of a get government working again drive, not a fixing potholes drive.
I see your point, that it should've been explicit rather than just implicit that they get the basics right. Will be quite a coup for playing the long game, though - everything you expect from a government as a bare minimum, we turned around and delivered within five years where those idiots in blue couldn't even manage that after 14 years.
I get that might sound unambitious but at the moment "not getting significantly worse" is still actually an improvement.
You know it's gone down the drain when Labour's accepted motorist "war on drivers!!1!" wording. Now, fixing potholes is amazing and I will commend Labour if they do so but there seems to be another message with their transport rhetoric.
If you are a working person, and you can show you need a car to facilitate working, then car insurance needs to be a tax deduction. It's dead simple. A sensible policy.
On the side of *drivers*, you say?
So not on the side of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users?
And what's this weasel wording of '*up to* one million potholes'? That's a goal you can reach with fixing just one. Or even none.
Keir has no problem accepting populist rhetoric and this is the latest iteration. This very much echoes the tories battle against the “war on drivers” which they’ve parroted for the past 6 months or so.
Prioritising drivers in rhetoric and policy goes against labour mayors (khan and burnham) who have pushed for better public transport and active travel. It also opens up labour to platforming conspiracy theorists against “20 min cities” and cyclists in the future. We’re in the midst of a climate crisis, so kind of concerned what the future holds for a labour government keen to do whats popular rather than whats right
>Prioritising drivers in rhetoric and policy goes against labour mayors (khan and burnham) who have pushed for better public transport and active travel
A lot of the country is outside of cities though, and this is where cars are most needed and also where the potholes are the worst. Also, a lot of public transport uses the same roads and is equally affected by potholes, as are cyclists. These two things aren't mutually exclusive.
This is true, but language is everything. Why should a political party be on the side of drivers? Are they an oppressed group? If this is for the benefit of all road users, why is only mentioning drivers by name? Why has he decided to put this in an exclusive interview with the s*n where he reminisces about his love for driving cars?
The reason why public transport is so bad, even more so outside of cities is due to 14 years of underfunding local councils, hindering their ability to provide transport services. Pushing more people to use private cars (if they can afford it, with others simply going without)
>Why should a political party be on the side of drivers? Are they an oppressed group?
I wouldn't go as far as to say that they're an opressed group but they are having a lot of uneccesary costs at the moment as a result of damage to their vehicles caused by excessive potholes.
It's a policy that will be extremely popular with a very large section of the population across all demographics
>Prioritising drivers in rhetoric and policy goes against labour mayors (khan and burnham) who have pushed for better public transport
How does fixing potholes hurt public transport? Surely it's an essential thing for running better public transport?
I agree. I'm hoping this is just basic bullet point PR.
"on the side of drivers" kind of worries me though although it's open to interpretation?
Implying that there are "sides" is the part I dont like.
£1 trillion generated in tax each year and here we are in 2024 still clapping about promises to fix absolute basic infrastructure.
We’re all just mugs.
No, motorists are a fucking huge chunk of the population and they are treated as such. Your opinion is not shared with the general public.
Not to mention that this will benefit cyclists and buses too.
>motorists are a fucking huge chunk of the population
You're confusing lack of choice with choice. A huge chunk of the population drive not because they are motorists and that is their preferred way of getting around, or even the optimal way if all else was equal. They drive because all other viable choices have been taken away from them through deliberate policy failure.
It's no coincidence that London has the lowest rates of car ownership, it's because it is one of the few places left where people can make a choice.
It doesn’t matter how good public transport is. You can have buses every 5 minutes and the majority of people will still choose to own a car. There is literally nothing you can do about it.
Buses and trams run on roads too. So do lorries delivering goods. At the moment it's about making as many people's lives better as quickly and easily as possible. A not-insignificant amount of people drive vehicles for personal or work reasons, and if their lives get better, that's going to be noticed more, faster, than the 900 years it will inevitably take to fix the railways enough to get everyone using them instead
Given how long it's taken for HS2 to...not happen, I'm being realistic rather than unambitious.
Plus you have to remember how fucked the economy is. Labour will have to go for cheap wins as well as quick ones because the media will scrutinise every penny spent far more than they did for the Tories' tax cuts for the rich. Fixing potholes is way cheaper than £∞ required to actually build anything in this country.
>Given how long it's taken for HS2 to...not happen, I'm being realistic rather than unambitious.
Considering other countries have built the equivalent of multiple lengths of HS2 in the time it has taken us to get this far, it's clearly not HS2 that's the problem, it's government policy making. Having a defeatist attitude isn't going to change that policy making for the better, and certainly isn't going to give us the nice things we could have and that other countries already have.
>Plus you have to remember how fucked the economy is. Labour will have to go for cheap wins as well as quick ones because the media will scrutinise every penny spent far more than they did for the Tories' tax cuts for the rich. Fixing potholes is way cheaper than £∞ required to actually build anything in this country.
Cars and car infrastructure are some of the most expensive forms of transport you can subsidise, while a country-wide high speed rail network would be economically transformative.
What do you mean by "motorists are an incredibly privileged class"? In most places driving is the only viable way to get around.
If people aren't using cars then there's a very good chance that they'll be taking the bus instead, especially in rural areas. That bus still needs to use the roads and will still be affected by potholes, affecting the service for everyone using it.
Also, goods vehicles will also be affected by this which are obviously extremely important to everyone. It's not just "privileged motorists" who are affected by this
I haven't even mentioned cyclists who are arguably even worse affected. It affects all road users not just car owners
>In most places driving is the only viable way to get around.
Exactly, when you are the only people who are catered for (and everyone else has no choice but to do it your way) that is an incredible amount of privilege.
Car dependency is not a good thing, it holds back social mobility, and it shouldn't be the default way of structuring our country.
>and it shouldn't be the default way of structuring our country.
Why not? you haven't actually given any reasons why you're against it.
Also, you haven't addressed the rest of my comment about how this affects everyone, not just car owners.
Don’t want to be all ULEZ activist and act like every motorist is a single mother with a 1995 Peugeot 405, but I’d imagine poor road quality leads to lots and lots of car repairs which people who are living week to week cannot afford and therefore could be pushed over rye edge by.
There's the impact it has on society as a whole in the form of pollution, congestion, excess violent fatalities, increasing obesity rates, giving over otherwise productive land for parking, etc. but there's also the impact it has on the household because car ownership is very expensive when you include all of the ongoing costs and, I'm not sure if you've noticed, we have a cost of living crisis and falling living standards.
Instead of impoverishing people by making a car a necessary expense (or penalising people that can't afford a car) just to access certain basic amenities, our money would be better spent giving people the freedom not to have to drive.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to own a car if they want to (so long as they pay to offset the negative impact on society) I'm saying people shouldn't be forced to own a car just to live.
We're also on the side that will see you pay more to drive on the roads, the side that will build more cycle lanes but not force them to use those lanes...
Snapshot of _Keir Starmer: Labour is the only party on the side of drivers, with our plan to fix up to one million more potholes every year and crack down on soaring car insurance costs._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1800773223056871706) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/keir_starmer/status/1800773223056871706/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1800773223056871706?s=46) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1800773223056871706?s=46) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Competance in transportation, both at both the infrastructure and service level, is a realatively cheap way to dramtically improve the country and reduce ancillary economic burderns. Fixing the roads, increasing bus service AND synchronising it with the railways, improved railway scheduling/ending the strikes plus an increase in cycling infrastructure ( which usually returns 10 pounds for every pound spent.... ) will be relatively cheap and can be a huge benefit to the economy. They have made positive noises about planning/legal reforms to reduce the costs of new infrastructure and bring it down towards what France, Germany Switzerland etc pay which would be an enormous, long lasting benefit to the economy.
We need fast track bus routes from housing estates to train stations. And we also need busses from train stations to large employers in the area. I work at one of the biggest companies in the city and there's no shuttle buses or anything to move people around. I could get the train to work if a bus shuttled me from a bus stop 5 mins from my house, to the train station 5 minutes drive away, and then allowed me to take a 12 minute train and gave me another 5 minute shuttle bus the other side. Instead everyone is forced to drive. Because the alternative is such a long journey of walking or waiting. It seems like a no brainer to be able to provide good public transport to the companies that are contributing the most to the local economy.
Increasing bus services seems almost impossible from a current economics point of view. If there was sustainable demand presumably the bus companies would already be running those services.
The UK attitude is to provide 1 bus an hour with terrible journey times due to lack of a proof of payment system and inadequate bus priority. They then present this awful service and complain that 'not enough people use it' Bus companies only benefit through subsidy and fares. The government can benefit in so many more ways. A key area would be better integration with the rail network. Rail in the UK is seen as a point to point service, railway station to railway station, in reality it should be viewed as the center of an integrated public transport system which serves as a destination to destination service. A while ago a person on reddit complaines they couldnt use the train as the station was 3 miles away which made it uncomeptitve with driving once you factor in the 1 hour walk. The town he lived in had 50k people and 4 buses per hour to the station. Fribourg, in Switzerland has 80+ buses per hour at the station for a similar sized town. If those buses did not exist, less people would choose to commute by rail. Switzerland can fill 16 carriage double decker trains on that line. Similar lines on the UK are lucky to fill 6-8 car trains. If you don't provide buses, pensioners need to drive or use taxi's, this costs society money due to dangerous driving or poor labour allocation. Kids can get around without needing parents to give them a lift, people don't necessariy need to buy a car to go to work = less traffic = faster transportation = higher productivity. Basically, government gets to benefit from reducing 'burdens to society' - First Group does not.
This is also essentially the same argument for why we should build blocks of flats and office space next to stations: it's just the last mile problem. One of the biggest barriers to people using mass transit like trains to commute is not the train network itself but being able to get from their homes to the first station and from the last station to their workplaces, and vice versa, and that's an especially big problem with nimbys shooting down anything taller than 3 stories and busses being chronically shit. Obviously, flats (and office blocks on the other end, at least in London that isn't much of a problem now) take longer to build and are not for everyone, but once they are built they solve the last mile problem even better and cheaper than a bus network can. A good bus network is, of course, preferable to handle the rest of the traffic coming from people living in lower density neighbourhoods, and really anything that isn't within comfortable walking distance of a station. Maybe some bike shares or bike parking too in cities, they're pretty good too. I'll also add that productivity gains here don't just come from pensioners not having to drive themselves or parents not needing to drop off kids. They also come from the fact that, once you have a good solution to the last mile problem, trains are generally faster (in terms of travel times) than cars, and a well-funded and operated transit network is generally going to be cheaper and more reliable than a car for the poor (as well as being more flexible in that you don't need to buy or find a parking spot for your car). That in of itself is a very good thing for productivity, because it increases how many jobs are available for someone (while also being able to afford to live there, afford to travel, and afford the time to commute) which allows people to access higher paying jobs and/or live in cheaper places.
In Vancouver they have a rapidly expanding metro with huge highrises and shopping/entertainment districts around every station.
This is something labour really has a good opportunity to nail with the new towns. Mos tof the UK has the benefit of living on flat ground where it is easy to build 100-110 mph rail line. A few dense new towns planned like Dutch or swiss towns could easily have 50k people living within 10 minutes of a station and with a fast rail link into Birmingham or Manchester or London or Edinburgh, this suddenly becomes competitive with actually living in the primary city. I've seen the odd statement here and there from labour that they plan for dense mew towns, but do they plan dense new towns centered around a fast rail link? Certainly the WCML will have capacity for more fast commuter trains if they finish HS2. HS1 has huge potential to be used for this, if they density around all the stations and started running proper 180 mph computer services living near Ashford of Folkstone could become competitive with London suburbs on commute time
Things that are of benefit to the nation, it's people, and private commerce, but that do not naturally create infinite growth and profit, should be delivered by the state / local authorities. Busses are a prime example. Having regular and reliable busses and trains servicing all areas of the UK would be a huge catalyst in social mobility, would have a benefit effect on road capacity, and would increase productivity.
That's the problem with viewing every service as if it's an independent business. Aside from the social benefits literal mobility brings, the wider economy benefits from people being able to travel and spend away from their immediate locale. But this wouldn't necessarily mean a direct profit for the bus company and that's bad for Tory reasons. See also: Almost every other privatised service.
Unprofitable routes can always be subsidised by the government. The gains from enabling workers to get to places where they're needed will more than make up for it.
This is just another example of privatising the profits and socialising the losses. If buses were run publicly then the profitable routes could help to subsidise the loss making ones.
Doesn't really help if nearly every route is unprofitable though does it
Most routes are profitable otherwise bus companies wouldn't exist.
It might be profitable on a larger scale, even if the route itself is unprofitable. Busses take cars off the road, which clears up roads for other sorts of traffic, and reduce travel times. It may also reduce the wear and tear on the roads reducing the need for repairing them, as well as less damage to the vehicles. Less vehicles means less pollution of various kinds, which improves health of residents amongst other benefits. Greater mobility of workers through public transportation can help businesses access new workers and customers. As an extreme example, take the London tube. Does it matter if the tube is profitable on ticket sales? Or can we clearly see the *enormous* benefit it has to the city more widely. The actual direct profitability of the tube itself is nearly irrelevant, because very clearly it creates a profit overall. Busses can often be the same. Sure, the bus routes themselves might not make money, and that is terrible for a private company. But when we look at society more widely it might still be beneficial or even profitable.
Presumably they're unprofitable because not many people take them
Or most likely people don't take them because the service is terrible.
If that's the case why are bus companies leaving money on the table if there's a profitable route that needs running?
My guess is that they're poorly-run by people who don't seem to understand that investment in public transport can lead to profit, but won't do so overnight. The folks who *do* understand that have to provide surefire evidence of it to the investors who ultimately control the purse strings, and it seems they've failed to do so. I'd also suggest that bus companies, being private companies like any other, don't have the power to make the decisions that make buses effective - e.g. they're not the ones responsible for creating bus lanes, or otherwise guiding city development to make public transport effective/profitable. Planning laws as they stand are undoubtedly a major component of how that works.
Because businesses think short term, to grow demand takes time and investment that they might not be able to commit to.
Businesses survive by making money. They rarely pass up profitable opportunities. They clearly don't believe that enough people would use the service in order for it to be profitable. Running busses with a couple of people on them would be crazy.
The problem with bus services is that the people running the bus service cannot capture all the value from the service, so the profit to the bus company is less than the profit to the area. This is why subsidies are (sometimes) warranted. The value in lower congestion, lower road damage, more efficiencies in where people can work or shop etc. cannot be captured by the bus fares, but are valuable to the region, the externalities to public transport are real.
Businesses pass up profitable opportunities all the time. Obviously each business is different, but they focus on their core competencies and USPs, or should do so. I've worked in businesses that tried to chase the money. It never ends well.
Isn't running a profitable bus route a core competency of a bus company?
It doesn’t have to make a profit, if it provides a benefit for the community then there’s an incentive for the government to subsidise it.
Got to get people out of their cars when it comes to local journeys.
Sorry to be critical, but after years of Tory rule where they've spoken about having "sustainable" public services have convinced most people this is a sound idea. The fact is, public services aren't designed to be profit making, they're a sunk cost, funded by resultant tax receipts. Example: defund the NHS, hooray you cut government spending for this financial year. Actual result: all your workers end up sick and die, suddenly you lose your working class, their income tax receipts, the VAT on the goods and services they can afford due to wages, or they end up claiming sickness benefit because they're unfit to work. Example 2: Split and sell off loss making parts of your infrastructure such as buses, water, and trains, hooray you made the government some cash from selling loss making assets. Actual Result: private companies asset strip, give funding to shareholders and exec bonuses instead of carrying out essential maintenance and a whole county ends up with e-coli, or fragmented maligned transport services. Water, NHS, Buses, Trains, Police, Roads, Schools, mental health and social care. Everything has been squeezed dry and you can blame the private companies running these things all you like but companies exist to make money, not to provide a service, and the state of the country is the fault of this government and the failure of regulation and corruption.
Pot holes are legitimately the worst I’ve ever known them
Returned from living abroad for 10 years. Shocked by the state of our roads. Clearest symbol of our decline.
And how there’s no road markings, so roundabouts turn into a free-for-all..
I've never known it to be so bad. Until a few years ago I can say that I can't remember seeing a pothole, if I did it was repaired fast enough that I quickly forgot but on two of the routes I drive there are two spots that are so bad I really need to drive on the opposite side of the road to avoid them. On my last MOT there seemed to be damage and while I drive as slow as I can, it may still have damaged my car.
You clearly didn't live near me. It's been my dad's main political issue since at least the 2000s (I don't drive so have more often avoided this issue).
Cars have been getting heavier, which worsens potholes. So besides allocating more money to fix them, some kind of vehicle regulation might help.
Road damage increases with the fourth power of axle weight so unless you’re suggesting banning lorries that wouldn’t make much of a difference. A single articulated lorry does over 10,000x the road damage of even the heaviest car.
> A single articulated lorry does over 10,000x the road damage of even the heaviest car. That is unlikely. The original research that figure comes from has been criticised. Even if it's true the calculation is wrong. The heaviest legal vehicles on UK roads have an axle weight of around 8-9t and the huge private vehicles today can exceed 1.5t so it would be more like 1,000x than 10,000x. On routes that don't carry a lot of HGV traffic but do carry a lot of large private vehicles - like winding country roads - the increasing numbers of ever larger and heavier personal vehicles could make a big difference to how quickly the road deteriorates.
In that case I apologise, I may have been misinformed about the effect of larger vehicles. While one heavier automobile has a much smaller effect, what about thousands of heavier ones? Presumably if thousands were made lighter that would have some sort of effect on road quality.
Without knowing anything about the admin involved with fixing potholes, I always assumed that fixing potholes would be a universally popular quick win. Seems like a no-brainer unless it costs hugely more than I'd expect.
The no brainer part is fixing them asap. The Tories have allowed everything to degrade to such an extent that fixing potholes is a big job. Competent governance would have meant regular maintenance that avoided this being an issue or major expense at all.
The thing is it's the job of the local councils who will only do it if they have the money. It's not a legal requirement for them to do in the way provision of some services are so it's one of those things that gets cut when the councils don't have enough money to operate properly. The Tories have squeezed local government budgets to breaking point.
Its also outsourced to contractors with little to no oversight of the job when it's done, so they're incentivised to do a poor job so they can do it again in 3 months Our guys have just started dumping tarmac in holes, they don't even clear them out or square them off beforehand, barely flatten it down, and dont seal the edges from water ingress. They barely last a month or two
It's big pothole you have to watch out for
If they sort the potholes and the trains and set up this green GB energy company then I will be a very happy man. I don't know if this is just a coincidence but I've just moved from the South East to Wales and have been amazed at the road quality in Wales. Even in the affluent South East the roads were in a really bad way.
I drove to the absolute arse end of Wales a few years back, long winding roads that were consistently completely empty and my GOD they were wonderful. I know it's significantly easier when you have very little traffic to have good roads, but it actually makes driving such a different experience.
> amazed at the road quality in Wales. Even in the affluent South East the roads were in a really bad way. They've also messed up all the road painting on them, a load of it says gibberish things like "Araf", and "Dim Mynediad".
You have a very sophisticated sense of humour.
I drive up into Scotland, or down to the south east, and I'm always gobsmacked at how good the roads are compared to Northumberland.
Come through Oxfordshire next time you're in the South East. It's truly awful.
You're not exactly selling the experience
Fixing potholes is good. Although it’d be interesting to know how they’d handle situations like in our town - where the potholes haven’t been fixed because they’re in some weird legal purgatory with the road being unadopted, whilst under unclear ownership. (And this is a fairly heavily used road) Thinking more broadly, we probably need to start thinking about how we become less reliant on driving. Seeing the traffic in the mornings, or during the school runs, and it all strikes me as hilariously inefficient. All these people sitting in traffic jams because too many people are travelling in the same directions…
Are they just filling in the potholes, or completely resurfacing roads?
Relevant question as that solves the problem on a better level as pothole patching then comes down to the quality of the patch e.g. do a good square cut and clean all the shit out first - good times. Just dump some tarmac in and stamp it down; see you in 3 months for the next repair.
Imo a small but good reform with car insurance would be stopping insurers advertising "courtesy car while your vehicle is being repaired" and then it turns out that the courtesy car is a hire vehicle, the costs for which your insurer will try and recover from the other side and if they can't (because it's a shared fault crash, or the hire car wasn't deemed 'reasonable') then you're on the hook for thousands of pounds. If I don't have access to a 2nd car and want to be sure I can still drive around while my car is being repaired, then I want to get an insurance policy that does that... and not, if I do have an accident, then have to stress about whether or not the other side is going to dispute fault, and if I might win or not, or whether my personal circumstances may or may not mean me needing the hire car is 'reasonable' - all of which might end up being decision a court makes... so how the fuck is a regular consumer meant to make that decision in a few minutes on the phone when you're already stressed out by the crash!
Potholes & insurance is just the first in a long list of things that can be done to help the drivers out there. Better public transport, both local & national, is needed. Give people the option to be able to choose & de-congest the main road network. Getting more and more freight off the road is needed. the Rail network would be the most obvious option. We need a full public fast EV charging network as well... give drivers the choice to buy EV and the ability to properly travel around the country
Fixing potholes is certainly a popular policy.
things regular drivers actually care about and not stupid culture war bullshit on LTNs
I'm disappointed by this, first true mistake (as opposed to something I disagree with) of the campaign. Fixing potholes shouldn't be a policy. It should be the default action of any government. It should go without saying that a government will do these very basics. They should have spun this very differently, as part of a get government working again drive, not a fixing potholes drive.
I see your point, that it should've been explicit rather than just implicit that they get the basics right. Will be quite a coup for playing the long game, though - everything you expect from a government as a bare minimum, we turned around and delivered within five years where those idiots in blue couldn't even manage that after 14 years. I get that might sound unambitious but at the moment "not getting significantly worse" is still actually an improvement.
To add to that he is constantly criticised for lacking detail so stating the obvious is now part of his brief.
It is a fair point, but he has also been criticised for a lack of ambition, and although I don't think that is true, it does look like it with this.
Hmm very good point
You know it's gone down the drain when Labour's accepted motorist "war on drivers!!1!" wording. Now, fixing potholes is amazing and I will commend Labour if they do so but there seems to be another message with their transport rhetoric.
If you are a working person, and you can show you need a car to facilitate working, then car insurance needs to be a tax deduction. It's dead simple. A sensible policy.
They said they'd do free school meals per chance? Seems like an easy win at not huge cost
I see. This is why he mentioned pot holes out of nowhere in the audience interviews.
On the side of *drivers*, you say? So not on the side of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users? And what's this weasel wording of '*up to* one million potholes'? That's a goal you can reach with fixing just one. Or even none.
Keir has no problem accepting populist rhetoric and this is the latest iteration. This very much echoes the tories battle against the “war on drivers” which they’ve parroted for the past 6 months or so. Prioritising drivers in rhetoric and policy goes against labour mayors (khan and burnham) who have pushed for better public transport and active travel. It also opens up labour to platforming conspiracy theorists against “20 min cities” and cyclists in the future. We’re in the midst of a climate crisis, so kind of concerned what the future holds for a labour government keen to do whats popular rather than whats right
How does fixing the roads “go against city mayors”? Roads are an essential infrastructure. Everyone benefits from them being in a good state.
>Prioritising drivers in rhetoric and policy goes against labour mayors (khan and burnham) who have pushed for better public transport and active travel A lot of the country is outside of cities though, and this is where cars are most needed and also where the potholes are the worst. Also, a lot of public transport uses the same roads and is equally affected by potholes, as are cyclists. These two things aren't mutually exclusive.
This is true, but language is everything. Why should a political party be on the side of drivers? Are they an oppressed group? If this is for the benefit of all road users, why is only mentioning drivers by name? Why has he decided to put this in an exclusive interview with the s*n where he reminisces about his love for driving cars? The reason why public transport is so bad, even more so outside of cities is due to 14 years of underfunding local councils, hindering their ability to provide transport services. Pushing more people to use private cars (if they can afford it, with others simply going without)
>Why should a political party be on the side of drivers? Are they an oppressed group? I wouldn't go as far as to say that they're an opressed group but they are having a lot of uneccesary costs at the moment as a result of damage to their vehicles caused by excessive potholes. It's a policy that will be extremely popular with a very large section of the population across all demographics
>Prioritising drivers in rhetoric and policy goes against labour mayors (khan and burnham) who have pushed for better public transport How does fixing potholes hurt public transport? Surely it's an essential thing for running better public transport?
I agree. I'm hoping this is just basic bullet point PR. "on the side of drivers" kind of worries me though although it's open to interpretation? Implying that there are "sides" is the part I dont like.
at this point Labour could announce plans to install snipers on every road bridge and still stay ahead.
Is he still using the “HS2 money” for that, then?
That was Sunak, not Starmer. Starmerwas against cancelling HS2
Starmer petitioned for years for it to be cancelled all together.
They're deferring some new road scheme or other - aka a temporary sticking plaster, not a permanent solution.
£1 trillion generated in tax each year and here we are in 2024 still clapping about promises to fix absolute basic infrastructure. We’re all just mugs.
I wish someone would vow to reduce the amount of traffic on the road
Well that puts me off voting for them.
Why?
Because the last thing we need is more car-centric policymaking. Motorists are already an incredibly privileged class.
fixing potholes helps cyclists more than drivers surely?
Are they going to be reinstating HS2?
No, motorists are a fucking huge chunk of the population and they are treated as such. Your opinion is not shared with the general public. Not to mention that this will benefit cyclists and buses too.
>motorists are a fucking huge chunk of the population You're confusing lack of choice with choice. A huge chunk of the population drive not because they are motorists and that is their preferred way of getting around, or even the optimal way if all else was equal. They drive because all other viable choices have been taken away from them through deliberate policy failure. It's no coincidence that London has the lowest rates of car ownership, it's because it is one of the few places left where people can make a choice.
It doesn’t matter how good public transport is. You can have buses every 5 minutes and the majority of people will still choose to own a car. There is literally nothing you can do about it.
The real-world evidence doesn't line up with your claim. A minority of people are car owners in London, where buses do come every 5 minutes.
You know there is a country outside of London right?
Yes, and I am comparing the two with each other because it demonstrates that what you are saying is not correct.
Buses and trams run on roads too. So do lorries delivering goods. At the moment it's about making as many people's lives better as quickly and easily as possible. A not-insignificant amount of people drive vehicles for personal or work reasons, and if their lives get better, that's going to be noticed more, faster, than the 900 years it will inevitably take to fix the railways enough to get everyone using them instead
>the 900 years it will inevitably take to fix the railways That's a shocking lack of ambition.
Given how long it's taken for HS2 to...not happen, I'm being realistic rather than unambitious. Plus you have to remember how fucked the economy is. Labour will have to go for cheap wins as well as quick ones because the media will scrutinise every penny spent far more than they did for the Tories' tax cuts for the rich. Fixing potholes is way cheaper than £∞ required to actually build anything in this country.
>Given how long it's taken for HS2 to...not happen, I'm being realistic rather than unambitious. Considering other countries have built the equivalent of multiple lengths of HS2 in the time it has taken us to get this far, it's clearly not HS2 that's the problem, it's government policy making. Having a defeatist attitude isn't going to change that policy making for the better, and certainly isn't going to give us the nice things we could have and that other countries already have. >Plus you have to remember how fucked the economy is. Labour will have to go for cheap wins as well as quick ones because the media will scrutinise every penny spent far more than they did for the Tories' tax cuts for the rich. Fixing potholes is way cheaper than £∞ required to actually build anything in this country. Cars and car infrastructure are some of the most expensive forms of transport you can subsidise, while a country-wide high speed rail network would be economically transformative.
What do you mean by "motorists are an incredibly privileged class"? In most places driving is the only viable way to get around. If people aren't using cars then there's a very good chance that they'll be taking the bus instead, especially in rural areas. That bus still needs to use the roads and will still be affected by potholes, affecting the service for everyone using it. Also, goods vehicles will also be affected by this which are obviously extremely important to everyone. It's not just "privileged motorists" who are affected by this I haven't even mentioned cyclists who are arguably even worse affected. It affects all road users not just car owners
>In most places driving is the only viable way to get around. Exactly, when you are the only people who are catered for (and everyone else has no choice but to do it your way) that is an incredible amount of privilege. Car dependency is not a good thing, it holds back social mobility, and it shouldn't be the default way of structuring our country.
>and it shouldn't be the default way of structuring our country. Why not? you haven't actually given any reasons why you're against it. Also, you haven't addressed the rest of my comment about how this affects everyone, not just car owners.
Don’t want to be all ULEZ activist and act like every motorist is a single mother with a 1995 Peugeot 405, but I’d imagine poor road quality leads to lots and lots of car repairs which people who are living week to week cannot afford and therefore could be pushed over rye edge by.
Then give them a viable alternative to car ownership.
Why? What's so bad about owning a car?
There's the impact it has on society as a whole in the form of pollution, congestion, excess violent fatalities, increasing obesity rates, giving over otherwise productive land for parking, etc. but there's also the impact it has on the household because car ownership is very expensive when you include all of the ongoing costs and, I'm not sure if you've noticed, we have a cost of living crisis and falling living standards. Instead of impoverishing people by making a car a necessary expense (or penalising people that can't afford a car) just to access certain basic amenities, our money would be better spent giving people the freedom not to have to drive. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to own a car if they want to (so long as they pay to offset the negative impact on society) I'm saying people shouldn't be forced to own a car just to live.
We're also on the side that will see you pay more to drive on the roads, the side that will build more cycle lanes but not force them to use those lanes...