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Travel Fast or Smart? A Manifesto for an Intelligent Transport Policy (Perspectives)
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Britain does not have a coherent transport policy, and conventional transport economics has reached a dead end. A transport policy should incorporate systematic thinking about the travel needs of society, but in Britain public investment in the transport system has been extraordinarily volatile. We closed underused railways and then experienced a doubling of passenger numbers, prompting huge new investment. We gave up making substantial investments in motorways, but we have now chosen to revive the road construction effort in a big way. We vacillate on road pricing, introducing congestion charging successfully in London but backing off elsewhere because of local opposition. We have delayed the decision about whether and where to build additional airport capacity for decades. This mess has come about because policy has focused on big construction projects and time savings when it should have been focusing on the part that people and places play in economic development. This book sets out the principles that could underpin a strategic policy for transport. Instead of focusing piecemeal on getting from place to place ever faster, we need to think about how and where we want the economy to develop, and about how new digital technologies can help us achieve what is needed.
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Additional information
| Publisher | London Publishing Partnership (1 Sept. 2016) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 160 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1907994599 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1907994593 |
| Dimensions | 13.31 x 1.47 x 19.86 cm |
by David Metz
As author of this book, I was pleased to see the review by Rory Sutherland in The Spectator magazine of 26 September who commended my book as ‘excellent throughout’.
Another reviewer, David Starkie writing in The Transport Economist (issue Summer 2016), wrote: ‘This is an important book…..written in an easy-going style: very readable.’
And Andrew Foster, editor of Local Transport Today (16 September), wrote: ‘It’s all delivered with a simplicity that makes the 133 pages a pleasure to read.’
by ALAN MARSHALL
A better way of assessing investment in transport — if only it was widely adopted!
by Mr Economics
This is a subtle argument – but really profound and desperately important for the future development of the UK. It just makes you realise how our transport policy is currently best described as a series of knee-jerk reactions to (falsely) perceived issues and/opportunities. It also makes you realise that transport is about much more than getting somewhere quickly – it also changes the economic landscape. If people can get to a place easily, then they will go there and stuff will happen. We need to think about where we want stuff to happen.