Mobility Matters Extra - Picking the wrong battles on climate change
Lets start getting political, before its too late
For this week’s post, this will be more the diagnosis of a problem as opposed to a matter which contains detailed policy proposals and lots of actions that professionals can take. It has been something that has troubling me for a while, but really came to a head last week during COP26 when I both visited and looked at the commentary into the event. It is that transport is ultimately political, and those who succeed at the political game are winning. And they are not on the side of low carbon.
I am also doing something slightly different. Whilst paid subscribers will see this first, within 24 hours it will be made freely available for all to view. What is here I feel needs to be heard widely, regardless of whether you agree with it. I would love to hear your comments, either by email or posting them at the end.
Transport is a political game. We suck badly at it.
On Friday, a declaration on zero emissions transport was issued forth from COP26. It focussed almost solely on zero emissions vehicles, with the one mention of walking and cycling coming as the result of a last minute intervention by the EU. At a time when the climate is at a tipping point, and the benefits of low carbon transport are well-documented and evidenced, the fact that walking and cycling had to fight at the last minute to be recognised is awful. Not to mention the fact that the final declaration from COP26 was somewhat underwhelming.
Its also partly our fault as professionals. For years we have played an excellent technical game. The evidence supporting walking and cycling as a way of tackling climate change, achieving public health goals, and making better places is overwhelming. The net result of our efforts is, at a time when the very future of our planet is on the line, to fight at the last minute for the best solutions to be recognised.
An unwritten rule that many of us transport professionals recognise is that transport is a political game. Not only are we bad at it, we are not even playing in the right stadium, and every time the referee is awarding fossil fuels a 3-0 win. And when we do actually get there, we have a team of star players with poor tactics and organisation based upon theories of how the game should be played, as opposed to how the game is actually played, so we still lose.
We are now at a stage where the politics of climate change is running slower than the science of climate change. We must stop losing and now, and if we are somehow winning and I don’t know about it, we must start producing results pretty soon.
Over the last few years, I have seen many urbanists make hay of the fact that many cities are doing good things when it comes to lowering carbon emissions from transport. Yes, many are, and there are many notable examples of cities doing amazing things to reduce their carbon emissions. This has led to many well-meaning urbanists stating that cities are the future and the decisions made by city mayors will be more profound than those of nation states.
Lets call this for what it is. This is what we want the future to be. But this is not what the present actually is. In the present, decision making authority highly varies between countries, but in most places in the world the nation state sets the overall policy direction. The overall policy direction, as shown by the likes of the Transport Decarbonisation Plan, remains that electric vehicles is the priority, with some mention made to truly low carbon forms of transport.
In reviewing the transport ministerial transparency data from the UK Department for Transport, what is clear is that there is no shortage of meetings between advocates for more sustainable modes of transport - particularly rail - and Ministers (although there appears to be a lot of chats with airlines and logistics as well). But policy has barely changed. Why is this?
No doubt you will come up with your own reasons - the Treasury don’t like us, transport ministers are fleeting in their roles, or many other such things. But there is something else at play here. Something highlighted by this map of where the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (literally the car lobby in the UK) have their office located.
The offices of the main motoring organisation in the UK is 5 minutes walk from both the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy. Two of the biggest investors in the motor industry in government in terms of support for electric vehicles and investment in research and development.
They bump into Department staff and ministerial teams during lunch and after work. They catch up over coffee. They exercise a lot of soft power not formally recognised in ministerial meetings and hospitality. It is their job to do this. Whilst we are doing everything by the book and above board, other groups are influencing in other ways, constantly, and performing the dark arts to get their way.
I should stress now that I am not stating there is anything untoward or illegal happening here. In fact, my experience with people from SMMT has been that they have been frustrated at the lack of ambition of their members when it comes to electrification of the vehicle fleet, if only due to the huge potential market. But they are getting results. They have been for the better part of 50 years. Regardless of how you do things, results matter in business, and when it comes to the climate, results are also what matters now.
The failing is also based on our assumptions about how democractic decision making in relation to policy development actually happens. I know many highly committed civil servants, local authority officers, councillors, and even MPs who completely abide by the Nolan principles and fully democratic decision making. But once a policy is written, even in draft, it is hard to unwrite. Radical changes to policy rarely happen as a result of invitations to comment (although that is not to say that they don’t), and so the true democratic engagement in policy making takes place when a policy idea is being generated, and a vision for a place is being crafted, as opposed to a 12 week formal consultation period half way through.
Democracy, in many respects, gives legitimacy to influence. It is the opportunity for us to influence the direction of policy and rein in its worst aspects. But us transport professionals see influence as a purely democratic endeavour. It is not. Influencing policy is much, much wider than that, and we need to act in such a way.
At present, higher carbon ways of getting around are winning. They are playing a different game to us, and they are winning it. It is time we started playing a different game as well. But how do we do that? How do we start to shape policy and legislation towards a direction that achieves meaningful change? It is a long and hard process, but from my own political experience (albeit limited directly, and mainly taken from conversations and discussions with people who work in a more political space), there are 4 areas that we can start to make improvements in.
Co-ordination - lets ACTUALLY do it
There is no two ways about it, we are awful at this as professionals. Notwithstanding my comments on the value of Ministerial meetings, it is notable that the likes of Logistics UK and the Road Haulage Association are better at getting meetings with ministers than the likes of Sustrans and Living Streets. The fact that low carbon transport groups can hardly get a meeting with government Ministers is not a good place to be in.
The likes of the Sustainable Transport Alliance could be useful in this regard, and their aims are certainly in the right place. But they must not become simply a means to do the same lobbying, to the same people, with the same result. Such groups need to co-ordinate in awareness raising, but also co-ordinate in terms of political strategy, and how they seek to influence the political agenda on transport at all levels. Whether this be through another alliance, another formal body, or loose coalitions I don’t think matters particularly. But one thing they need to do is set out how they will change the political landscape in favour of low carbon transport.
Speaking of which.
Set common political goals
Ditch the “working with communities” and “advising policy makers” angle. That’s what you do, its not a goal. Everyone in low carbon transport needs to set a common political goal, and from then on everything done in the transport political space needs to work towards it.
These goals need to be ambitious, reflecting what is needed to advance the low carbon transport agenda. They need to be overtly political, and set out how we want politics to change in our favour. No more waiting for the politics to catch up with the evidence.
Here are some ideas to start with:
In 5 years time, the Secretary of State for Transport / Senator for Transport (whatever is applicable to your national situation) will have signed up to our ideas and goals before they entered office.
Within 2 years, every city Mayor in our area will have recieved policy briefs from us, and signed up to deliver them.
By the next General Election, we will have advised every major political party and had a direct input into their transport policy development.
Even if those goals are ambitious, we must set them, and do everything in our power to achieve them. Let the political goal drive the political strategy.
Move from awareness raising to legislation-changing
We have the evidence on our side when it comes to how positive the change could be for our places. But all we do is raise awareness of it. All we do is advise. We need to start writing the legislation.
First, we need to be useful to the dozen or so people in each party who actually write the policies. Ignore the comments about how parties consult widely with their members. Actual policies are written by a few people in central office. Get in with them. Go and meet them. Write policy papers for them. Influence them, and the policy inevitably follows. Aligning with think tanks could help our case in this regard.
Use this basis to start working with Members of Parliament, the Senate, Congress, or whatever legislative house is in your area. Draft amendments to bills and encourage MPs to adopt them. Work with them to advise on private bills and legislation. Whilst you cannot write the bills and legislation itself, we can advised MPs and Civil Servants on what to write, so lets do that more often.
Ask “how can we help our leaders politically?”
This is the question that very few local authorities ask themselves. A new transport portfolio holder comes in, and immediately the question is asked: “how do we achieve what we want to achieve with them?” You build much-needed credibility by turning this question around: “how can we help them achieve what they want to achieve?”
Meet them within a week of them being confirmed in their new role. Introduce them to what you and your team does, and how it works. Then throw in some slides that highlight their key campaign promises, and how you will help deliver them in the first year.
Tackle problem parking? Well, what we could do is shift this budget around, and within 6 months we will have some ideas for your approval. By the way, won’t it be great if we looked to reduce emissions at the same time?
Cheaper bus fares? Within a month we will get you in front of operators. Our initial thinking says that it will cost £5 million a year to do. There may be government money to help with that, or we could reallocate parking surpluses to help pay for it. It needs more work, but lets make it happen.
Lots more cycle parking? Wow, we would love that. Won’t it be great if we worked on a business case to the Council’s capital fund together? We do the finances and the technical works, but what we need you to do is lobby the Leader, who needs to sign it off.
Ask not what they can do for you, ask what you can do for them. It makes for a highly productive relationship. I speak from experience. Councillors and leaders do not want to be managed. They want you to speak to them plainly, they want you to help them, they want to do something and deliver what they see as best for their communities. Help them.
How to balance this with public support and engagement
You may read this and then think to yourself that if we are to use the above - which is getting close to the dark arts of lobbying - is it worth engaging the public in our ideas? What about governing by the consent of the people after all? If you think that what is stated above is fundamentally incompatible with wider community consensus, then let me enlighten you.
The obvious thing is that political leaders listen to what is popular, despite how they may sometimes act. If being pro-active travel is popular electorally, more often than not politicians will support it. By changing people’s minds locally, we change the minds of the electorate, and those views start to influence politicians.
The second thing is credibility of our ideas. By consent of the people does not mean always asking for consent on everything, yet in any case. By showing that we meaningfully engage in policy development in an informed and evidenced way, we give our own policies credibility.
Related to this is the fact that, how to put this, active travel is popular with a certain slice of the political spectrum - notably left wing and / or liberal attitudes. For low carbon travel policy to stick, it needs to be popular across the political spectrum. We do this by being open and engaging in our approach to how we develop our ideas and our policies.
The final thing is a simple reality check. By focussing purely on public engagement and developing such a groundswell of support for ideas that policy must change is how we would like policy to change. It does not reflect how policy actually changes, which is a much more murky process. We need to make policy where it is made, not where we would like it to be made.
Concluding thoughts
Much of these thoughts are initial and somewhat random. But if you come away from this with nothing else, then it should be this. The political game when it comes to low carbon travel is being played wrong. We can change that game, and while it is hard it is not impossible to change. The way are are doing things now doesn’t lead to meaningful change quickly, and that is what we must achieve and quickly.
We need to get our act together, and quickly. There are a lot of good people doing excellent thinking, excellent research, and excellent doing. But nobody - with a few exceptions - is doing excellent political influencing. The technical argument on low carbon transport has been won, and we’ve won it convincingly. Its now time to start our political fight. The future of our planet may just depend on it.