January 2017

Summary

We all knew that people worked on trains.  This note goes further.  It cites a report by Mott MacDonald, commissioned by the DfT, and one by Microsoft.  Taken together, those reports show that business time on a train is almost as productive as time spent in an office.  The implication is that the value of in-train journey time savings for business passengers should be set to zero, destroying the economic case for HS2 at a stoke.

The Mott MacDonald report[1]

The Mott MacDonald report of June 2009 with the title, “Productive Use of Rail Travel Time and the Valuation of Travel Time Savings for Rail Business Travellers” was commissioned by the DfT.  The report provides:-

• At page S-2, “It was found that the proportion of business travellers working on the train was, in Spring 2008, 82% for an outbound journey, and 77% on the return journey, a significantly higher value than the figure of 52% obtained from the National Passenger Survey (NPS) in Autumn 2004, the last comparable dataset. For those that spent some time working, the percentage of journey time spent working was 60% on the outward leg, and 54% on the return leg. For both directions combined, this corresponds to 46% of journey time by all business travellers being spent working”
• At page S-3, “In economic appraisal, if work is done on the train, it has to be appraised in terms of the working time needed were that to be done in the usual office environment. The SPURT surveys showed that some two-thirds (68%) of working business travellers would take “about the same” amount of time, 8% would take “more” time (on average 29 minutes more) and a quarter (24%) would take “less” time (on average 18 minutes less). Across all journey lengths a slight saving of 1.7 minutes per journey would be realised in the usual workplace as compared to the train, this corresponds approximately to a 97% efficiency of working on-train compared with at-workplace”

Hence nearly 45% of business in-train time is used effectively.

The Microsoft report

The Times, 5th Oct 2015, reports a study by Microsoft.[2]  It found, “Employees waste three hours of every shift and only half of the normal working day is productive”.  The implication of that, together with the findings in the Mott McDonald report, is that time in an office is no more productive than time in a train.

[1]  https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/4003/productive-use-of-travel-time.pdf

[2]  http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4576147.ece,

The Government response to the House of Lords Economic Affairs committee, Cm 9078, says at paragraph 2.14, “Over 90 million passengers are expected to use HS2 each year once the full Y-network is complete – not just a few business people. Phase One is expected to carry 138,000 passengers a day, rising to over 300,000 passengers a day in 2036 after Phase Two opens and the full Y-network is complete”.

Well, 300,000 per day equates to 150.000 each way. They would require 150 one-thousand-seat trains or 12 per hour over 12 hours or a 1,000-seat train every five minutes with every seat taken, which is ludicrous.

After all, Virgin West Coast carries an average of only 200 passengers per train and the East Coast, 244 providing an average of 220 representing 56 million passenger journeys per year or 190,000 per day, not all of which would have one end in London. (Source, Office of Road and Rail statistics).

Why on earth does the Government believe this nonsense? It’s not as bad as the £15 billion benefits per year from the scandalous KPMG report but it is in the same league.

(The KPMG figure implies every generated business plus commuter trip yields £1,860 or £3,700 per round trip. To appreciate how ludicrous that is note that the £1,860, if applied to existing business plus commuter rail trips, would generates £1,500 billion pa equal to the nation’s entire GDP. If only that were true building a railway may rescue the nation. Instead the railway takes massive subsidy from the taxpayer every year).

The forecasts for HS1 were three times too high.  Perhaps the forecasts for HS2 would be more realistic if the executives, senior staff and their consultants were liable to prosecution, if the forecasts proved wildly wrong, as would arise if the matter were in support of a share offering.

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.

These notes follow from the Airports Commission’s report, Business Case and Sustainability Assessment – Heathrow Airport Northwest Runway, July 2015.

Our conclusion is that the damaging effect of aircraft noise has been grossly underestimated and that the social cost may destroy the business case for the third runway.

The Commission’s report.

Paragraph 3.55 of the Commission’s report provides:

“The noise contours and population estimates in the local assessment have been used to monetise the noise impacts at Heathrow, for inclusion in the economic appraisal. The effect of noise in terms of annoyance, sleep disturbance, acute myocardial infraction (AMI) and hypertension on the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) of the population living within the noise contours have been considered. These calculations are based on World Health Organization (WHO) Environmental Burden of Disease guidelines and the ERCD report 120930. This approach values the noise impacts by estimating the number of years of life lost or spent with a disability, to get the number of QALYs lost, and uses established values for each QALY lost to arrive at the total monetised noise impact. The quantified and monetised impacts of noise cannot fully reflect people’s individual experience of noise. Some of the qualitative impacts are discussed in the Noise section, and the Quality of Life assessment also includes noise impacts on peoples’ wellbeing”.

And at Para 3.56 “The noise impacts with Heathrow Airport Northwest Runway in the Commission’s assessment of need carbon-traded demand scenario is £1 billion (PV, 2014 prices). This figure does not take into account the Commission’s recommendation to end scheduled flights in the core night period between 23:30 and 06:00”.

We comment; the £1bn represents the loss from the 60 year evaluation period. It equates to less than £100 per flight, or to fractions of a penny per person per disturbance. All those values seem entirely trivial.

In any case, the use of “QALYs” is at variance with transport studies where time saved or lost is the metric, a metric which can be criticised since time on a train or when travelling generally is not lost in the pure sense. Instead such time may be used and enjoyed, e.g. working, reading, resting or simply enjoying the passage. In contrast, noise from an aircraft may completely destroy the effective use or enjoyment of time.

In the following we make estimates of the financial loss to those on the ground using a time loss approach. In principle we multiply the Air Traffic Movements (ATMs) by a disturbance time, the value of time and by the number of people disturbed. That provides an annual cost which may be summed and discounted in the usual way to represent the Present Value of the lost time for comparison with the scheme’s benefits. The price and discount base is 2014.

Paragraph 2.9 of the Commission’s Report says that there are currently circa 470,000 Air Traffic Movements pa at Heathrow, close to capacity. Para 2.19 provides a limit with expansion of 740,000 ATMs – presumably as a result of the new runway. The implication is that the runway enables an additional 270,000 ATMs. We will use 250,000 in calculations. If those are spread over the year and over 16 hours a day we have roughly one ATM every 1.5 minutes. That may represent a minimum disturbance duration due to overlap. A maximum may be 5 minutes, allowing two for the over-flight and three to refocus, but only if there were fewer ATMs.

The HACAN clear skies blog provides the following:

“The numbers under the Heathrow flight paths are well-known: currently over 725,000; a third runway would add around another 150,000. What is much less clear is how many of these people are, or will be, deeply disturbed by aircraft noise.  However, there is some research to help us find that answer. It is estimated that about one in ten people are particularly noise-sensitive. According to the German psychologist, Rainer Guski, these people are likely to become more annoyed by noise than the general population”.

Hence a starting point for calculations is a population of 150,000.

In calculations we use the DfT WEBTAG discount rates of 3.5% for the first 30 years from the base year (2014) and 3% thereafter, a value of time consistent with “other” non-working time, at £6.81 per hour for 2014, and a growth factor of 2.1% pa; all consistent with the DfT’s WEBTAG data book. We set the opening year to 2026, as reported.

On that basis the discounted value of disturbing 150,000 people for 1.5 minutes for 250,000 ATMs pa for 60 years amounts to £270 billion, vastly more than the £1 billion provided by the Commission.  The spread sheet containg the detail is avalable via http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/cost-aircraft-noise

If each ATM affects only one third of the people in the noise envelope at any time (due to varying flight paths etc) then the loss on the ground falls by a factor of three to £90 billion.
If, at one extreme, there are those who lose no focus at all and at the other there are those who lose the full 1.5 minutes, according to noise sensitivity, then, instead of a £270 billion, or £90 billion loss we should halve those values to £135 billion and £45 billion. If the £45 billion is the more realistic number it may then be halved, on the basis that the use and enjoyment of time is never completely destroyed. Even then the value lost, £22.5 billion, would be overwhelming. It would reduce the net present values in the Commission’s report table 3.23 (ranging from £1.4 billion to £11.8 billion) to heavily negative numbers, namely, and after adding back the study estimates of the impact of noise, to the range minus £19.6 billion to minus £9.7 billion.

Possible criticisms of the above include (a) properties may be insulated, so mitigating the effect, to which we rejoin, windows may then never be opened (b) people may adjust, to which we rejoin – some will, some will not; in any case, at what cost.

Conclude

The value of time lost on the ground, due to aircraft noise, may be very much greater than the net present values estimated by the Commission’s economic analysis. The effect may be to destroy the business case for the third runway.

The following was published as our “Viewpoint” in Local Transport Today on 15th April 2016. 

(Text as published available at topic 35 of the Transport-watch web site).

Professor James R Flynn, author of Are We Getting Smarter – Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, shows that there has been an IQ gain of circa three points per decade for nearly 100 years, implying that we are all now raving geniuses compared with our ancestors. One reason for this astonishing trend is that habits of thought have changed. Previously they were rooted in the real, or concrete, world. Today people think in logical terms, at least for some of the time. To illustrate, Flynn cites a question and answer conversation with an isolated peasant people in the 1920s, whose economy depended on camels:

Q: There are no camels in Germany. Berlin is in Germany. So, how many camels are there in Berlin?
A: I do not know. I have never seen a German village. If Berlin is a large city there should be camels there.
Q: But what if there aren’t any in all of Germany?
A: If Berlin is a village there is probably no room for camels.

The naive conclusion may be that the peasants had an IQ of around 50. However, do we sophisticates fail to apply our intelligence when faced with data that contradicts our deeply-held prejudices?

Consider the emerging transport policy for the Northern Powerhouse. The region has great cities such as York, Leeds and Manchester, connected by two distinct and separate transport systems, rail and road. In an attempt to sabotage sentiment we will call these Mode-A (rail) and Mode-B (road).

Mode-A has highly engineered rights of way penetrating to the hearts of towns and cities. However, the track and vehicle costs are extraordinarily high compared with those for Mode B. Worse still, the vehicles are captive to the tracks. This system is revered because of the heroic engineering involved, the beauty of a pair of empty rail tracks curving away in the morning sun and because of the sentiment generated by a steam engine. However, Mode-A carries less than two percent of the region’s passenger-journeys, at vast cost to the benighted taxpayers despite astronomically expensive fares.

Mode-B, has a longer lineage, although only recently modernised to the extent of the asphalt and the motorised carriage. It costs the taxpayer seven times less per passenger-mile than does Mode-A, carries 98% of the region’s passenger-journeys and yields taxes far in excess of expenditure. Furthermore, Mode-B is so popular that demand frequently exceeds capacity, causing congestion, a matter that could be solved by pricing. Against this background, councillors, MPs and other doyens asked themselves and the populace which system should attract the most funding. Astonishingly, and despite the region being the birthplace of the logic-based industrial revolution, if not the age of reason, it was Mode-A that, to much applause, won the day. Here is a list of the aspirational schemes taken from a DfT news release (‘Revolutionary plans for northern transport set out’ 20 Mar 2015).

Major (Mode-A) options for new routes:
• Leeds to Newcastle: £8.5bn to £14.0bn
• Sheffield to Manchester: £12bn to £19bn
• Manchester to Leeds: £6.5bn to £10.0bn
• Liverpool to Manchester: £8.0bn to £13.0bn
• Leeds to Hull £5.5bn to £9bn

Mid-range total: £52.6bn. The reference also lists “Upgrades and cut-offs” (possibly substitutional to the above) with a mid-range price tag of £17.7bn.

These vast sums compare with a paltry £4.8bn for major schemes on the strategic routes associated with Mode-B for the six years to 2020/21.To appreciate the lunacy, note that, nationwide, the strategic element of the Mode-B network is two to three times as productive per lane-km as is Mode-A per track-km (Transport-Watch factsheet 1), and six to seven times as productive in terms of Government expenditure (see the spreadsheet associated with Transport-Watch topic 2).

Such things point to the lunatic. As an example of how warped some “thinking” is, we have the revered Stephen Joseph, of the railway lobby group, the Campaign for Better Transport (itself originally funded by the railway unions), who, in his letter of 21 January, attacks the case for a Trans-Pennine road tunnel on the basis that its (obvious) benefits are not proven. He apparently forgets that the Trans-Pennine railway carries less than one tenth of the passengers on the parallel M62. Presumably Joseph simply cannot imagine a world without railways any more than the peasants could imagine one without camels.

Likewise, in topics such as traffic management, speed cameras, electric cars, and the great dirty diesel scare (Transport-Watch topics 9, 12, 32 and 34). In all these areas logic has vanished in the face of prejudice and ignorance; similarly the scandal of HS2 (topic 15).

So, with a nod toward those peasants and their problem with the camels, we acknowledge that, for the time being, IQ has deserted transport policy. It’s not the steel tyres or the tracks that generate economic activity. Instead it’s the provision of moving floor space. Despite the prejudice, the express coach and lorry provide that at a fraction the cost of the train.

When sentiment, nostalgia and vested interest are rolled out, rational debate ends. Alternatively, do we conclude that we suffer from chronic intellectual corruption, evidenced by consultants and officials who are prepared to cynically accept the rewards of high office in return for the unpalatable task of tricking the Government on a mammoth scale? Perhaps it’s both.

As Alexander Pope wrote in the Dunciad, published 1742, ‘Dulness o’er all possess’d her ancient right, Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night.’

The October 2013 analysis claims benefits from the Wider Economic Impacts of 4.2bn for Phase 1 and 13.3bn for the full network.

However, no allowance has been made for the hit the economy may take in funding this £50bn to £80bn scheme. To appreciate the scale of that, note that HS2 claim the scheme will generate 100,000 jobs, although many of those may be relocations. Then note that the actuarial cost at the 2011 price base faced by those standing in 2033 will be close to £70 billion, see press release 4. It follows that the cost per job to the taxpayer will be £700,000. How many will that vast subsidy destroy in that part of the economy which makes a profit void of subsidy?

In parallel to that there is the extraordinary KMPG report on the Regional Impacts of HS2, Dated September 2013; principle authors, Lewis Atter and Richard Threlfall. That report claims the scheme will generate benefits worth £15bn annually.

The supposed £15bn can only arise from the generated business plus commuter trips, the supply side, since most of the benefits from existing trips obviously pre-exist. Forecast generated trips amount to 76,900 per weekday, equivalent to 24 million per year. Data for Virgin West Coast from the National Rail Passenger Survey suggests 35% may be commuting or on business. Hence, if the £15bn is to be believed, each of these generated business-plus- commuter trips would be worth £1,860 or over £3,700 for a round trip.

To appreciate how absurd that is first note that these are generated trips. Pre-existing ones would be more valuable (perhaps twice as valuable if the same principles are applied as are applied to time values). Secondly, multiply the £1,860 by all national rail’s commuter plus business trips. They number roughly 51% of Network Rail’s 1.6bn passenger rail journeys. The sum provides £1,500 billion, a value which is similar to the nation’s entire GDP!

If only that were true. Building a railway would then equate to undreamed of riches.

Paul Withrington, director of Transport Watch comments:

“Why was any air time at all given to Lewis Atter and Richard Threlfall by either the Transport Committee of the House of Commons or the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords? The claim made by this KPMG report is, at a glance, ludicrous.”

“This scheme, if built, will be a millstone round the nation’s neck for generations, sucking on subsidy for ever, whilst nobody will dare to say that we would do better to dig it up.”

For more details, or to arrange an interview, please contact Paul Withrington on 01604 847438 or pwith@transport-watch.co.uk and open topic 17.

About Transport Watch
Transport Watch is an independent think tank founded in October 2002. Our objective is to become the non-governmental point of reference for factual data dealing with transport generally and road and rail in particular. For full details visit: http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/

The January 2012 and October 2013 economic analyses provide very similar benefit to cost ratios.

That is remarkable. After all, the value of business time was reduced by 32%, from £47.12 per hour to £31.96 per hour, the passenger forecasts were reduced by 15% and the net costs to government at the were increased by 24% for Phase 1 and by 26% for the full network.

Had those changes been simply substituted into the January 2012 study the economic case would have collapsed. Instead, and remarkably, the new study produced benefit to cost ratios which are almost identical to those in the old study.

There are at least two reasons for that.

• The first is that the percentage on business was inflated to 40%, far above the 30% suggested by survey data and far above the percentages used previously (26% for Phase 1 and 29% for the full network).
• The second is obscure. In the earlier study the values of time associated with crowding and interchange for business passengers was the same as commuter time, namely £6.46per hour. In the later study business time, then valued at £31.96 per hour, was used for those items. That alone generated benefits of circa £3bn for Phase 1 and £6.6bn for the full network.

Additionally, we find that those two unjustified changes are inadequate to rescue the scheme – substitution into the 2012 analysis produces stubbornly low benefit to cost ratios (1.24 for phase 1 and ranging from 1.4 to 1.6 for the full network, void of the contentious Wider Economic Benefits). Hence we suspect some other sleight of hand.

As things stand the original benefit to cost ratios would be rescued only if the above changes are admitted and if the percentage on business were to be inflated to 50% and above.

For those reasons we say that this analysis has been shamefully manipulated so as to obtain “the right answer” in defiance of the data.
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Paul Withrington, director of Transport Watch comments:
“The economic analysis is based on a system enabling almost any tune to be played. Tweak this or that and huge changes arise. The tune selected by HS 2Ltd is a Honky- tonk. It should be switched off and HS2 abandoned immediately”

For more details, or to arrange an interview, please contact Paul Withrington on 01604 847438 or pwith@transport-watch.co.uk and open topic 17.

About Transport Watch
Transport Watch is an independent think tank founded in October 2002. Our objective is to become the non-governmental point of reference for factual data dealing with transport generally and road and rail in particular. For full details visit: http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/

Cost benefit analysis was first conceived for evaluating road schemes where, in the absence of road pricing, or tolls, there is no direct market. The original procedure compared the resource costs with the cash value of time and accident savings plus the savings in vehicle operating costs. All transfer payments, such as taxes, were excluded. The rational was that cash transfers do not create or absorb resources. A similar procedure has been adopted for the railways but with two key differences.

Firstly, railways sell a product. Hence there is a market. In a sane world decisions would be made on a financial basis, namely, if it makes a loss, let alone a loss in the tens of billions of pounds, do not build it. However, if that were the case no railway scheme would ever see the light of day. All of them require massive subsidy from the taxpayer.

Secondly, instead of comparing the cost of the resources used with the social benefits, the comparison is between the “cost to Government” and those social benefits – the so called “Willingness to Pay Calculus”, proposed by Professor Sugden of the University of East Anglia.
Under that dispensation and for HS2 the cost to Government is the capital plus future operating and maintenance costs minus the so called incremental fares – the fares taken by HS2 minus those lost to HS2 by the rest of the railway. Further the benefits are reduced by the loss of tax income due to motorists transferring to the train.

We comment, if people were willing to pay, the system would be profitable. Moreover the theory reduces to the absurd. The proof follows.
Changing the tax regime cannot change the resources used but would change the costs to Government. Similarly, changes in fares policy would change nothing fundamental but would change the incremental fares. Further, if, for example, the rest of the railway were outside the Government then the incremental fares would be the full fares taken by the new route. The analysis would then come out ever so much better. On the other hand, if the Government came to own all the motorway filling stations and cafes, or other elements of the economy, then losses to those elements, due to passenger spending on HS2 tickets, would also be subtracted from the HS2 fares, so increasing the cost to Government no end.

A theory, which provides different answers according to the quirks of the tax system, the fares’ structure, or according to the quirks of Government ownership is clearly absurd. This one has been invented because, without it, no railway project would ever see the light of day. Our view is that it is a fraud on the taxpayer. If they want to build railways they should give the true reasons rather than invent a fraudulent “economic case”.

Paul Withrington, director of Transport Watch comments:

“We do not have “brown envelopes” in this country but, in the light of the above we may conclude that there is corruption in that officials and their consultants appear to be prepared to say almost anything in return for salaries in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. It will not do”

For more details, or to arrange an interview, please contact Paul Withrington on 01604 847438 or pwith@transport-watch.co.uk and open topic 17.

About Transport Watch
Transport Watch is an independent think tank founded in October 2002. Our objective is to become the non-governmental point of reference for factual data dealing with transport generally and road and rail in particular. For full details visit: http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/

The report by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords cites the net cost to Government of the full high-speed rail network as £31.5 billion at the 2011 price and discount base, but these are weasel words. Let us be clear what they mean.

They mean the sum which, if invested at the Treasury discount rate (principally 3.5%), would fund the construction cost and all future costs, minus the fares, out to the remote year of 2093.

The words are “weasel” because of the choice of 2011 as the discount base. For example, change that to 2001 and, HURRAH, the sum falls to £22bn. Instead the honourable discount base is the opening year, 2033. Rolling the £31.5bn at 3.5% between 2011 and 2033 yields £66bn.

That is the actuarial loss, at 2011 prices, which will be faced by those standing in the opening year – supposing the cost is as claimed and supposing the fares come in. It is the £66bn which the Lords should focus on, not the £31.5bn.

By 2033 over £50bn will have been spent, or perhaps £80bn as suggested by Dr Wellings of the IEA, if the costs of the links to the new stations etc. are included. Apart from technical underestimates the cost may have spiralled because of the shortages which will arise in the construction industry when faced with this huge project.

Hence taken in the round the actuarial loss faced by those standing in the opening year of 2033 is likely to be at least £70bn. That is equivalent to £2,500 for every household in the land, 99 percent of which may seldom if ever use the system. After all nearly half the population use a train less than once a year and 90% of rail journeys are less than 80 miles long.

So if we assign the 70bn to the one percent likely to make significant use of HS2 the cost amounts to an astonishing £250,000 per household.
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Paul Withrington, director of Transport Watch comments:

“In the face of such gigantic losses why on earth is anyone contemplating this scheme”

“People from households in the top 20% percent of income travel four to five times as much by rail as do those from households in the bottom or second to bottom 20%. Those who may make regular use of HS2 will be overwhelmingly from the better off. Why on earth should they attract such a vast subsidy?”

“The costs cited by HS2 take us to Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. However, pressure will build to extend the system to Edinburgh and Glasgow leading to additional loss making expenditure in the tens of billions of pounds2.

“Why should the taxpayer subsidise this vast folly? It is no more sensible than pouring tens of billions of pounds into Harrods, Fortnum and Mason or some loss-making chain of fast food shops”.
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For more details, or to arrange an interview, please contact Paul Withrington on 01604 847438 or pwith@transport-watch.co.uk and open topic 17.