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- [00:00]
Chris
When the first government announced that it was going to build a integrated transport system in Leeds. Gareth, how old were you?
- [00:10]
Gareth
I was two years old.
- [00:14]
Chris
Now, how old is your.
- [00:16]
Gareth
She is two years old. Okay.
- [00:20]
Chris
All right.
- [00:21]
Gareth
Generational delays. Literal generational delays. Quite something.
- [00:26]
Chris
Pretty good.
- [00:27]
Gareth
Pretty good. Oh boy. So, yeah, so that's argument whether that's arguments, whether that's a failure of, of oversight within the command authority, whether it's central government going, ah, no, you're moving too fast, by the way, the reviewer said you are moving the planning part and the business case part in parallel. You can't do that, even though that would reduce the design times by two years, because the business case, a completely fucking pointless process. By the way, if politicians have said they're going to build the thing, why do they need a business case to tell them whether they should or shouldn't build the thing? Either build the thing or don't build the thing. Don't pay consultants upwards of 10 million quid to just run around in circles and say, oh yeah, here's some utterly meaningless numbers that have absolutely no bearing on reality. Just what a cucked country we are.
- [01:07]
Chris
Anyway, genuinely, it does go back to, I think, the governing philosophy that was instilled when we decided that the UK government was to be a service procurer instead of an entrepreneurial state that did things, which is largely if the state wants to do something, what it's able to do is try to create incentives de risk commission studies. But it's so allergic to the digging of a hole.
- [01:31]
Gareth
Yeah, that's it. Picking up a shovel and putting it into the ground and making a hole. As soon as that happens, people get extremely scared.
- [01:38]
Chris
You wonder why we never build anything or why it costs sort of so many more. Millions or hundreds of millions or billions of pounds per sort of unit length of track to create railroads or transport systems or buildings or anything here. And it's not because of some, you know, triumph of NIMBYISM necessarily. It's not because of some great moral failing or it's not because you don't have ambition. It's because the state was reconfigured to be something where all the incentives are to produce paper.
- [02:04]
Gareth
Yeah, it's fundamental and deep economic problems with the UK of everything is fragmented into pieces, more so than in Europe. I've talked about this over and over again in a million places. But acknowledged problem with the UK construction industry is that it is absolutely fragmented to hell. So you have deep tens of layers of outsourced subcontracted, subcontractors and all of that just adds extra delays, extra complexity, cost, legal fees and so on, making it almost impossible to actually physically deliver anything. It might look like it creates economic activity, which incidentally it also doesn't, but it's completely incapable of actually delivering anything physical or a public service for that matter.
- [02:40]
Chris
Yeah, this is where we are essentially with like the stuff the government was supposed to do. And if you take that as your lens, it's actually kind of consistent. The things they were able to do are administrative changes to the way in which we rent something, but they're completely unable to expedite the putting of a shovel in the ground, especially somewhere that is in London.
- [03:00]
Gareth
Yeah, exactly. And there are other challenges as well because we've alluded to already the fact that Leeds Trams, West Yorkshire Mass Transit, call it what you will, is now being moved into central government by the look of the statement, and kind of likely to get oversight by whatever the latest iteration of Partnerships UK is like. It was called the National Infrastructure Commission, then it was merged with the Major Project Association. These are all bullshitty treasury quangos, all of them derived from the original. You must do PFI organization called Partnerships uk, which is worthy of an episode, it's worthy of like a look back episode at some point in the future because it's like causes a lot of the misery we have today. But that is essentially a spin off of that. In fact I have John Armit's TR here he is the shit boy behind me. I've got a thing that I stole off one of his trains behind me that I'm holding hostage just because it makes me feel slightly more powerful about my life anyway, so that's one of the challenges, the centralization and this is the same for GBR is this level of DFT oversight. It's not entirely clear and at the moment it looks like they have too much like too much central control over the railway organization, not least in reducing the level of autonomy when it comes to funding that remains entirely unclear. So at the moment we have five year funding cycles for enhancements and renewals, but even those move backwards and forwards. But absolutely no forward plan for capital investment. And as we've seen all capital investment seems to just be absolutely on the line for getting cancelled at the drop of a hat anyway. And I think one of the things that really worries me is my last bit on the railways bill is it's extremely inwards focused still. So like the top objective of the GBR sort of bill of what GBR must do, the top objective is to maintain railway infrastructure and move trains around. It's like, well, no, that's not what GBR is about. GBR is about moving people and things around in trains, on track, but its key objective is not to move trains around. Its key objective is to move people and goods around. And this kind of comes back. We don't have to look far to see a slightly better approach on this stuff, which is Wales, actually, because Wales has a reasonably good integrated transport policy structure at the moment. They are thinking about trains as part of the wider whole of buses and cycles and trams and what have you. They are thinking about it. Well, that's the thing. If you cancel the trams, you don't have to do that. Exactly. No, but, yeah, very good point. And the lack of that on a UK basis. And again, that ties back to the devolved authority bit, because generally, things like trams and decent quality buses are the matter of the devolved authorities. So, again, that lack of integration with devolved authorities, plus the lack of consideration of integration with buses and stuff, is, I would say, red flags. That's the main one. But there is one fundamental crucial issue, and this comes back to the problem that we were saying that needs to be solved, is that none of this is all. Whether it's good or bad is kind of immaterial. It's kind of something that will give stability to the industry, which is good. But none of it talks about the levels of investment needed to deliver the scale of change that our transport systems need. And I know that I'm like a stuck record when I make this point, but without that commitment, all of this is kind of nice, but doesn't get us where we need to be or even close.
- [05:53]
Chris
All right, look, the thing is. The thing is, every time, Gareth, we come and talk to you about the UK transport system, it feels like what we're looking at is a slow collapsing of a Jenga Tower. And then around that Jenga Tower are a group of politicians who are trying to commission studies as to where to put the block to shore it up and trying to do commission a study on, well, can we afford the block to shore it now, if the Jenga Tower collapses, doesn't matter what we can or can't afford, because that's a catastrophe. We still have to make sure we can afford the block we're going to put in somewhere to shore it up. So from that perspective, right, of just thinking about the Jenga Tower, what can we say about, like, the entire transport system and what we can know about it from what's happened and how we can extrapolate that to like just the problems of the UK's slow rolled collapse more at large. And before I let you answer, I'm going to say, hey, Riley, you seem to be ending the main segment a little early today. Yes, it's Christmas. I have an amazing present for all of us.
- [06:48]
Gareth
Yeah, Chris. Okay, right, Pres. Well, now you've got me excited about presents. I could barely concentrate on the misery. No, Riley, you're absolutely spawned. There is no urgency. It's just not seen as serious politics by Labour or their media cheerleaders. So, you know, they've attached as many flags to it as they can. So why pay much more attention? The reality at this point is the fact that the UK transport system is put simply on the brink of collapse. Whether it happens tomorrow, whether it happens in a year or even in five years, the consequence of that is the fact that our roads are simply unable to move the tonnage of trucks. Right, shifting goods. It's the HGVs, it's the haulage, the heavy goods vehicles that cause all the damage to our roads that block it up. And the fact that our economy is so fragmented, we just have so many of our treats are traveling around in all directions with our wonderfully complicated logistics systems. The haulage industry itself can't move that stuff anyway. It has a cripplingly short kind of. It's a chronic lack of drivers. Electrification of road haulage is essentially impossible from a power supply perspective, ignoring batteries or whatever. Actually you require a city to put enough electricity into a service station to put the juice into the SUVs. This is already impact on supply chains. It's not a future issue. It's already impact on supply chains and what's on shelves in supermarkets. It's having that impact now. And you combine that with some of the stuff that you've talked about elsewhere about other impacts that climate change is having on supply chains and people are going to fairly. There is going to be a tipping point where all of a sudden people get really angry really quickly because they can no longer buy their basic goods off the shelves of their local Big Tesco. This is going to be noticeable. And at that point, what will government have done about it? Well, we'll have a decade or more of extremely wasted time when we had opportunity to do things and we don't. Not Big Tesco. No, not Big Tesco. Hey, look, very briefly, because I want us before we have our presence, I just very briefly want to say, look, there's some happy opportunities last episode I did. Zach hadn't won the leadership of the Green Party, and I want to dwell as a listener. Remember, Trash Reach is the podcast that will. If you're a listener, you will be a guest at some point. And I'm one of those people.
- [08:45]
Chris
It's like George Osborne. We are working our way through everybody. If you're in line, stay in line.
- [08:51]
Gareth
Look, I just wanted to say, look, there is hope because there's all this misery before we get to our present and laugh about what I hope is going to be a very tasty present that you've wrapped up for us. Riley, I just wanted to say it's good that Zach is here and we must take some joy in how much he is whipping ass and wrecking up Labour Party polling. It's a delight. We have to enjoy some of that. So there is hope. But also behind that, as we said last time out, there's also the infrastructure of we have to get the right policies in place for the Green Party to then become an actual electoral force. And there's lots of good policy there, but it requires more. It requires more of that. So there's a call to action for TF people is if you can, and where you can get stuck in, get involved in organizing, but also get involved in policy stuff if organizing isn't your cup of tea either. So, yeah, there is hope. So we should feel good. And also, of course, laugh at Luke Akhurst specifically.
- [09:37]
Luke Akhurst
The other aspect of this is also because I think the point you make about the Labour Party doesn't really care about trains as policy. They don't really talk about public transport as serious policy. And when they do talk about it, it's like in these very. The way they talk about it is weird.
- [09:51]
Gareth
It's fucking patronizing to 600,000 railroads, and it's incredibly patronizing.
- [09:55]
Luke Akhurst
But it's also just because the sort of demographic that they kind of play to is also one that is intrinsically linked to car culture. And we've spoken a lot about car culture, the way that it shapes politics in the uk, how increasingly, as politics becomes more reactionary, the car is sort of really one of the sort of objects that sort of was the best expresses that sort of very hostile politics. But we also have, in terms of as far as transport goes, the driver has sort of always kind of been prioritized, at least, like in terms of lip service.