Claire Haigh, Chief Executive, Greener Journeys, has a piece in the Transport Times blog of January 2017 which suggests buses are a solution to congestion, air pollution and all indicating a startling a lack of knowledge.

• A so-called green bus, presumably electric powered, will emit as much, or more carbon than, a diesel one once the emissions from power stations are taken into account.
• Heaven knows the environmental impact of disposing of all those lithium-ion batteries. Incidentally the battery of the hyped Tesla weighs half a tonne. So, in city conditions its fuel consumption, on account of stop and start, may be massive.
• A diesel car designed to pass the tests imposed on lorries and buses would emit a fraction of the NOx currently emitted by such vehicles. The target should be an appropriate change in the legislation.
• There is no more environmentally damaging vehicle than a subsidised bus lumbering around with a couple of passengers aboard – except perhaps a train.
• The idea that congestion can be solved by transferring a significant proportion of passenger journeys from car to public transport is unsustainable, see the first diagram below. It is from John Prescott’s white paper, “A New Deal for Transport: Better for everyone” Cm 3950, July 1998.  Obviously increasing bus and train use by e.g.  50% would have at best a marginal effect on cars.  Presumably Prescott and his advisors had no idea what the diagram implied.  If they had, the policy would not have been so idiotic.
• The second diagram, taken from Cm 7176: Delivering a Sustainable Railway, July 2007, when Ruth Kelly was the Sec of State, illustrates the trivial effect that transferring a few handfuls of people from car to public transport could have on carbon emissions. Despite that they continue to bleat about transferring people out of cars etc.
• A hydrogen powered vehicle is pure nonsense. Readers may not know it but there are no hydrogen mines.  Instead manufacture takes lots of energy and the gas is so volatile that it is nigh-on impossible to store.  It’s then bunt in an internal combustion engine which may be little more efficient than a diesel.
• (Burning wood chip is probably worse than burning coal. The wood chip would otherwise take decades to rot and give off its CO2 in which time other growth would absorb the same.  Burn it and find some more trees to burn …….).

So, I ask, who needs enemies when we have ignorant people like Clair Haigh, Prescott, Ruth Kelly and the rest of those Secretary of States, through to Philip Hammond, Patrick McLoughlin and Chris Grayling, along ,with their advisors, making “policy”.

Ms Haigh will be speaking at the Transport Times Conference, the UK Bus Summit on the 9th February in London – a seminar costing £195, thereby debarring all but the wealth or those on expenses.