Date published: 2009/06/19
The BBC says:
The government is wrongly prioritising investment in rail over roads, despite 92% of all passenger journeys in the UK being made by car, the RAC has said.
According to the motoring body, "the road network is the true provider of public transport".
It said focusing on roads, not rail, would bring much higher rates of return for every £1 of public money spent.
...
More than £5bn of public money was invested in rail in 2006/07 compared with £4.8bn on roads.Some £15bn has been earmarked for rail over the next five years, compared with £6bn to improve the strategic road network in England.
The DfT's public service agreement requires it to prioritise spending in order to get the highest rate of return for every £1 of public money spent.
The RAC Foundation said it wanted to know "why this clear procedure is being ignored by ministers".
It quoted figures from the 2006 government-commissioned Eddington Transport Study, which showed the average benefit-cost ratios (BCR) for transport schemes.
Highways Agency roads had a much higher BCR of 4.66, compared with 2.83 for heavy rail schemes and 2.14 for light rail schemes.
The RAC said that of 35 rail expansion schemes suggested last week by the Association of Train Operating Companies, just two had a BCR above 2.0.
It is about time that the RAC made more of a fuss about the blatant anti-car ideology of UK transport planners. The AA should do the same. Unfortunately cycling organisations, for example, with the odd thousand members, get much more attention than do the car organisations, with millions of members. And this is not just because of the academic middle class bias of the media, the civil service and politicians. It is also because the RAC and AA are pretty useless at representing the interests of their members.
The article does not even make the point that car drivers pay many times over into the government what they get out, whereas it is the exact opposite for train customers. That is a far more important issue than the BCR figure.
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