Transport Insights

The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media

Author

Chris Ames

  • Is road building up in the air too?

    Still on the subject of Heidi Alexander’s speech to the Labour conference, it has been pointed out to me that she also made no reference to any of the major road schemes that the government is officially taking forward, such as the A66 scheme or the Lower Thames Crossing.

    Has the government gone cold on road building?

    Here are the transport secretary’s references to roads in a speech that had a lot to say about the railways:

    Roads riddled with potholes

    Record investment in roads maintenance, Conference. The first Road Safety Strategy in over a decade.

    Our newest Minister, Justin Madders, who is gripping the problem of driving test wait times and overseeing our investment in roads.

    Given that the first reference to investment in roads is specifically to maintenance, it might be reasonable to assume that the second one is also and that the absence of reference to road building suggests that ministers are less keen on it than they were.

    This seems to have been the case with Heathrow expansion, as I noted yesterday.

    On that subject, City AM reports that

    …Alexander told the News Agents podcast that Heathrow’s expansion was a “very significant infrastructure project” that should be weighed up against the country’s climate obligations and its impact on locals.

    The comments represent a striking departure from the full-throated support that the Keir Starmer government gave the runway, which former Chancellor Rachel Reeves singled out as a key pillar in her bid to boost economic growth.

    Having said that, the Independent reports Treasury minister James Murray as giving the scheme full-throated support, in spite of Andy Burnham’s refusal to do so:

    But I think we recognise that having that third runway is really important for jobs, it’s really important to get that investment into Heathrow and it’s actually really important for the whole country because that investment in making Heathrow stronger, making our country stronger, making sure that we boost trade and making sure we get more jobs right across the country is really important for our future.

    Is there a row going on down near Slough?

  • Something old, something new, something uncertain, something untrue

    Heidi Alexander’s speech to the Labour conference yesterday included an interesting new policy on rail, an old policy on rail, and a few opportunities to read between the lines in other areas.

    Of course, her department stepped in with two public announcements to back her up.

    The new and interesting policy is the pledge to explore “buying trains over leasing”, as the Department for Transport (DfT) put it, as it published a Great British Railways’ (GBR) rolling stock and infrastructure strategy.

    As Alexander put it:

    In 2024, franchised train operators spent over £4 billion leasing and maintaining trains they didn’t own. £4 billion. That around a third of the total day-to-day running cost of operating railway services Every ROSCO contract includes financing and transaction costs and investment returns – costs which are ultimately borne by taxpayers and passengers.

    So, as we set up Great British Railways, we will explore whether the state can directly own the new trains we order. Because, I say again, Conference, who should the railways serve? If GBR owning trains would best serve taxpayers and passengers then we should do it.

    Many people would agree with this – and that with ROSCOs owning the trains, what is being delivered so far is not true nationalisation.

    That didn’t stop the DfT saying that the transport secretary will

    nationalise Avanti West Coast services at first opportunity

    which isn’t really news as it is happening at the time that it should happen under Labour’s manifesto.

    On Heathrow expansion, Alexander’s speech was notable for what it didn’t do – give a full-throated commitment:

    (more…)

  • DfT pays as it goes nowhere fast

    I’ve had an update from the Department for Transport (DfT) on what its next (planned) steps are over the delayed rollout by Transport for London (TfL) of contactless pay as you go (PAYG) to 233 rail stations outside the capital – and it’s not getting better any time soon.

    The DfT has told me that its partnership with TfL and Network Rail has successfully delivered PAYG at just 103 stations in and around the South East – and that’s with the 233 due by 2024.

    That was the figure I had on Friday.

    The DfT said it continues to work on expanding the technology to new stations and that 52 new stations will go live in 2027, with details on future delivery “in due course” – that old bureaucratic phrase for we can’t/won’t say just now.

    But it does look as if by 2027 they mean early in the year:

    This Government’s £156 million investment in PAYG contactless schemes means that by spring 2027, Pay as You Go will be available at over 140 more stations across Greater Manchester, the Midlands and the South East.

    This claim combines attempts to roll out contactless PAYG in three separate parts of England, i.e. adding Project Oval in the South East with schemes in Greater Manchester and the Midlands under what is now called Project Coral.

    Adding the 52 to 17 planned in Greater Manchester and 75 in the West Midlands will indeed give you something slightly north (sorry) of 140.

    But is it “This Government’s £156m investment”? Actually it was the last government, or the last but one if you include Starmer.

    The DfT’s £68,100,000 contract award to TfL for Expanding Pay As You Go on Rail in the South East was reported in 2021, while the rollout in Greater Manchester and the Midlands was announced in February 2024.

    I suppose if you consider that it is the current government that is paying as it goes along…

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  • Rail delivery shambles continues

    The shambles that is the rollout of contactless payments to rail stations in the South East outside London continues with a programme that should have been completed two years ago still less than half way through and no confirmation of the next steps.

    I have been reporting this issue for years and it’s going from worse to worser.

    In January of 2025, I reported that the delayed delivery of contactless to 47 stations the following month was due complete the first phase (53 stations) of a programme covering a total of 233 stations.

    This first phase was due to have been done by the end of the 2022-23 financial year, with a revised date of December 2023, with the remaining 180 stations upgraded by the end of 2024.

    This is all based on a paper from Transport of London (TfL), which is delivering the programme as it depends on its technology.

    By November 2025, the DfT was promising the delivery of 50 more stations the following month, but was unable to give a completion date for the programme, although it did say that it expected to announce further stations for delivery mid 2026 “in due course”.

    But the following month the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) reported:

    From 14 December 2025, pay as you go (PAYG) with contactless cards and devices will be available to customers at another 30 National Rail stations in South-East England.

    PAYG contactless will be rolled out to a further 20 stations, including Stansted and Southend airports, on Greater Anglia route during Summer 2026 after issues were identified in testing.

    The following explanation was given:

    (more…)

  • Is Burnham about to pull a U-turn on the runway?

    Among the many people who think that building a new runway at Heathrow would be a bad idea we must now, apparently, add the current prime minister.

    The FT (paywall) reports:

    Andy Burnham has plunged the plan for a third runway at Heathrow into doubt by privately telling MPs he has always opposed the project, and the new prime minister is said to be “open minded” about whether it should go ahead.

    One Labour MP is quoted (anonymously) as saying:

    He’s indicated that in the past he has never supported Heathrow’s expansion . . . I get the impression that he’s now waiting for a report into the third runway by the transport committee before saying more on this.

    This is a reference to the Transport Select Committee’s scrutiny of the draft Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement, which the Department for Transport published for consultation in June.

    My impression is that the committee, or at least its chair, Ruth Cadbury, is very sceptical and the evidence I have seen to the committee’s inquiry is unlikely to have persuaded anyone that the plan is a good one.

    Speaking of which, Keith Buchan of the New Transport Taxation Group has published a piece on “The fantasy economics of a new Heathrow runway” on the group’s website and also on Local Transport Today/TransportXtra.

    Buchan wrote on LinkedIn:

    (more…)

  • EWR still stuck as Labour backs destaffing

    The transport secretary has admitted that she is unable to give a start date for services on East West Rail (EWR) as ministers continue to back the destaffing of the railways.

    The Oxford Mail reports:

    Callum Anderson, MP for Buckingham and Bletchley, wrote to Heidi Alexander about the ongoing delays to East West Rail passenger trains running.

    He said: “My constituents remain frustrated by the continued absence of passenger services on a railway that has now been physically reinstated for some time.

    The paper reports that Heidi Alexander acknowledged the letter over a month later, but admitted that the situation had not changed substantively:

    She said: “Significant progress has been made, including the training of new drivers, the completion of a new colleague hub and driver depot at Bletchley, and the fitting out of Winslow station.”

    She also added she understands how “frustrated” it would be for her to set an opening date only to have to move it later.

    She said: ” I hope you will therefore understand that I am unable to commit to a date at this time.

    “I accept that the delays have been (sic) inevitably affected public confidence in the project and have been frustrating for communities.”

    Saying the delays have affected public confidence is quite an understatement: East West Rail is a laughing stock. But it’s clearly a situation that Alexander is happy to see continue.

    In a story about the nationalisation of Chiltern Railways, Rail magazine notes:

    it’s the EWR saga that continues to loom over the operator, despite the government saying public ownership would provide “a fresh opportunity” to deliver long-delayed Oxford-Milton Keynes services.

    It seems pretty clear that what is holding it up is the attempt to run trains without a second “safety critical” member of staff on board.

    RAIL understands Chiltern and the Department for Transport (DfT) don’t plan to change their position that a second person would not have a safety critical responsibilities.

    Described as driver-only operation by the RMT, Chiltern and DfT view it as driver-controlled with the second staff member in a customer-facing role.

    The problem for the union, and for passengers, is that if EWR launches without a second safety critical staff member, the “customer facing” person becomes optional and can be removed in future.

    Rail notes that:

    2018 research by the Rail Safety and Standards Board said driver-controlled operation was safe, with a lower dispatch risk on metro and suburban services (which EWR is being called as) compared with a train manager being responsible. The RMT disagrees with the findings.

    But EWR does not really fit into the category of metro and suburban services, with many aspects of its set-up being very different. It is being marketed as “metro‑style”, but is really a regional inter‑urban railway. As far as I can see, it does not have the same platform‑train interface (PTI) infrastructure, station staffing levels and rolling stock technology.

    Similarly, Rail quotes Chiltern’s interim managing director, Tony Baxter, as saying that the firm is:

    proposing to run these services the way that Chiltern has safely operated many of its trains over decades.

    But, as far as I can see, the characteristics of these routes do not map on to EWR.

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  • What could possibly go wrong?

    I’ve been looking at the Final stage Impact Assessment of the Highways (Financing) Bill published by the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) team at the Department for Transport (DfT), which obviously tries to big up the legislation, but also flags a few pretty obvious risks.

    The LTC appears in the assessment as an example of how the mechanism of a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model might get private money to build highways infrastructure in exchange for (toll) revenue and how some highways infrastructure might be handed over to a private entity.

    The section on Risks, unintended consequences and assumptions sets out a few things that might go wrong, all quite likely and very good reasons not to deploy the model.

    The section on Risk of higher road user charges sets out the basic model:

    Under the RAB model, the regulated company (RegCo) is entitled to recover efficiently incurred capital and operational expenditures associated with the asset. In addition, the framework can allow for the RegCo to recover costs that would not typically arise under conventional public delivery, such as private financing costs, transaction and administration costs, and, depending on the licence and transaction, certain tax costs. These costs would be recovered by Road User Charges (RUCs) and associated revenue mechanisms.

    So already there are additional costs, with the obvious consequence:

    As a result, there is a risk that charges could be higher, or structured differently, than those that might be set under a public delivery model.

    But its ok because:

    Regulatory oversight can provide cost incentives, prevent excessive charges, and ensure that RUCs remain proportionate over the life of the scheme.

    Note that the mitigation imports the word PR “ensure”, albeit attached to can, which makes it meaningless as a statement of certainty.

    There is also the risk of Private sector inefficiencies:

    (more…)

  • No credible pathway for new runway: bring on an incredible one

    Interesting journalistic takes on the latest advice on Heathrow expansion from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which appears to rule the whole thing out, barring some major fudge or magical thinking from the government, which of course we can expect.

    The FT (paywall) reports:

    Heathrow expansion incompatible with climate goals, UK government advisers warn

    Expanding Heathrow would add as much carbon to the atmosphere as the city of Birmingham and is incompatible with the UK meeting its legally binding climate targets, the independent Climate Change Committee has warned.

    But here’s the rub:

    “There is no credible pathway for Heathrow airport expansion within the UK’s climate commitments under current policies,” the committee said in a report.

    The CCC appears to have left the door open for the government to bring in new policies – or pretend to do so.

    In fact, the Guardian has a different take on the story:

    Heathrow airport should be allowed to expand only if airlines pay for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the government’s climate advisers have said.
    …
    The “only way” to manage such expansion within the UK’s climate commitments was for the aviation industry to become more efficient, use an increasing proportion of “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAF) in place of fossil fuels, and pay for the permanent removal and storage of carbon from the atmosphere.

    This has led to some people smelling a rat:

    But campaigners rejected the CCC’s plan of relying on nascent technologies to wipe out the impact of an expansion that would commit the UK to much higher emissions for decades, and called on ministers to halt all airport expansion.

    Tony Bosworth, campaigner at Friends of the Earth, accused the CCC of “pulling its punches”, pointing to recent research by the Tyndall Centre that found SAF and carbon removals were unproven and unlikely to ramp up in time to the extent needed to justify airport expansion.

    The airlines are unhappy and say the costs would price a lot of people out of flying. The FT says:

    The CCC forecast that the costs borne by the industry lowering emissions, which would run into the billions in total, would add about £150 to flights to Alicante in Spain and roughly £400 to the price of a ticket to New York.

    Of course, if that were to happen, you probably wouldn’t have the demand to justify the new runway, which still seems to be predicated on helping people make these types of flight en masse in a climate emergency.

    In fact, putting the costs onto the airlines, and therefore the passengers, is a matter of equity. The FT says:

    Half of UK residents did not fly abroad, and a third of all international flights were taken by the top 5 per cent of travellers, classed as anyone who takes more than five round-trip flights a year, the CCC said.

    On the subject of magical thinking, Carbon Brief reported last week:

    The UK government has slashed its hopes for electric planes and “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs), ahead of giving the green light to a third runway at Heathrow.

    An “ambitious” rollout of new technologies and efficiency upgrades will only cut flight emissions by a quarter over the next two decades, according to forecasts quietly released in June.

    This would leave aviation emissions in 2050 nearly 50% higher than expected under the “jet-zero” strategy, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022.

    This appears to be already factored in to the CCC report. So what will the government try next?

  • West Yorkshire confirms delay to mass transit business case

    I have had confirmation from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) that its main paper on the development of a mass transit scheme has been delayed…again.

    As I wrote yesterday, the authority said earlier this year that it would submit the Strategic Outline Case (SOC) to the government “towards the end of summer 2026”, rather than in March, as previously planned.

    The delay was said to be:

    to ensure a more robust and high-quality outcome

    A spokesperson for the authority has now told me:

    We are currently finalising our Business Case and will be submitting it to the Government later this year.

    I assume this is a reference to the SOC, which a January report to the authority (cited in a March Scrutiny meeting) described as “the crucial first stage in developing a business case”.

    To be fair, the man in charge of the process, director of mass transit Mike Birch, did leave shortly afterwards, as did a couple of other key officials.

    The delay may also be because WYCA is having to put a lot of time and effort, at the insistence of the Department for Transport, into showing why mass transit means trams and not a few better buses.

    It may only be a small delay in the context of a scheme that will not open for another decade but it does put further doubt on Mayor Tracy Brabin’s pledge of “spades in the ground” the year after next.

    And, given that it is part of an ongoing fiasco with one delay after another, who knows if “later this year” may go the way of other timescales.

  • Has the Leeds tram stalled again?

    Back on the saga of the West Yorkshire Mass Transit – which may or may not be a tram – it appears that the region’s combined authority has fallen behind on its revised timetable for developing the scheme.

    The story so far is that nine months ago, a report from the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) led to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s (WYCA) plans for mass transit being put back from the early 2030s to the end of the decade.

    A report to the authority’s Scrutiny Committee in March stated that:

    The changes to the programme following the updated sequential timeline have resulted in a resetting of resources. This means the programme’s clear focus will be on the delivery of the Strategic Outline Case

    (and in fact a surprisingly long list of other matters to be the subject of a “clear focus”)

    The report said:

    Preparation of the Strategic Outline Case (SOC) remains underway.

    …

    In September we advised the Combined Authority that the SOC was forecast for submission to the DfT in March 2026 it is now expected towards the end of summer 2026 to ensure a more robust and high-quality outcome.

    I think we have gone beyond the end of summer 2026 but the WYCA webpage for the scheme still states:

    Right now, we’re preparing the Strategic Outline Case (SOC), an early stage in the Government’s business case process, which we will submit later in 2026.

    I’ve asked the WYCA about this; it has not responded but it does look like things have fallen even further behind.

    In the meantime, the Yorkshire Post reports:

    A disused rail tunnel that has been gated off for over two decades was opened to the public on Saturday and Sunday.

    …

    There have been calls for the structure to be re-opened as a public greenway, and it could soon become hugely significant for the region – the former rail line has been touted as one possible route for the planned tram system linking Bradford with Leeds.

    The tunnel in question is the Greenside tunnel and the picture above by Damon Sugden is from Greenside Greenway, a charity that campaigns for the preservation and utilisation of the tunnel as a community asset, “either as a greenway or part of a wider mass transit scheme”.

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