👎🏼 Not Good Enough - MM#612
Network North is a case study in how not to produce a transport strategy.
Good day my good friend.
Just a quick message you let you all know that I will be taking an unexpected break from the newsletter next week. Unfortunately, it turns out that my little dog is far sicker than we thought he was, and so I am going to spend some time with him. Bloody dogs. You’ve got to love them, haven’t you?
It is also why I managed to miss out the academic links from Wednesday’s newsletter. For which I apologise.
If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else who you think will love it. I will love you forever if you do. ☺️
James
🔄 Network to nowhere
I’m just going to get right to it. Network North is the single worst transport plan I have ever had the displeasure of reading, purely written to get a Prime Minister out of a political bind. And planners everywhere should state as such and reject it.
When reviewing transport strategy documents, I find it useful to remember the following rules to understand whether it is a good strategy:
A good transport strategy either sets a clear vision for the future it wants to achieve, or clearly sets out how it will achieve a wider shared vision;
A good transport strategy is based upon sound evidence and good judgement that is clearly auditable;
A good transport strategy has a sense of wider ownership, ideally evidenced by support for its outcomes by critical stakeholders;
A good transport strategy should have a clear roadmap to the future it seeks to achieve that is plausible, and ideally funded.
Its worthwhile saying at this stage that it is entirely possible to have a strategy that you don’t agree with that is still technically a good strategy (i.e. abides by all of the above rules). Likewise, a strategy could be full of things you agree with, but falls apart at the slightest scrutiny because it makes no sense at all. While a strategy containing what you want is a good thing, it does not make it a good strategy. Anyway, so how does Network North fail?
1) There is no strategy, only tactics
I often quote Sun Tzu in times like this, when he says…
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
In Network North, there is no strategy. The tactics are to cancel HS2 to Manchester and to redistribute the funding to other things. But when I say that there is no wider strategy or vision. There is none. Literally.
The case for change, which usually sets out what such a strategy is, is basically in two parts. One is about how HS2’s costs are spiralling and something must be done, and the other is a mix of “people kind of want more spent locally” and random snippets on economic opportunity.
There is no link to an overarching vision for the nation. Or even the Prime Minister’s 5 Priorities. There is no link between this and other transport objectives in established plans. I cannot say it any more. There is literally no vision here. Its a list of transport projects cobbled together with a bit of branding to give the facade of a vision. It probably sounded good at a 10pm brainstorming session the night before the Prime Minister gave his speech, but its a really bad vision.
2) Its employs the Lionel Hutz approach to evidence.
Looking at the document at face value, there are a number of sources cited and arguments cobbled together, though not in a way I recognise that any civil servant would say. But in doing so, it falls into a classic trap in strategy development whereby random evidence stitched together makes a case on the surface, but falls apart under scrutiny unless you believe a lot of hearsay and conjecture. As Simpson’s lawyer Lionel Hutz would want you to do.
In the section “The transport the North and Midlands needs, uses, and wants” deploys this to good effect. Stating how public transport journey times in northern cities are poor compared to similar European cities, taking quotes in OECD reports out of context, relying on a study from 2006 to show that local schemes are better value for money, and citing a YouGov poll saying that only 7% of people want the investment priority to be long distance trains.
All it does is say why HS2 to Manchester is bad, and partly states the challenges faced in urban areas. And therefore by conjecture, because the plan is not that bad thing, it must be good. Despite there being limited evidence to support the plan, or make a case for it.
Now, what you might do is pick up on individual bits of random evidence, which support a new approach. And that’s fine. But that is not making the case for a comprehensive strategy to do something new. The case for change takes time, research, thought, and consideration. Its not built on snippets from random reports and a little bit of analysis.
3) There is no ownership of this strategy by anyone with the means to deliver it.
I have it on good authority that the first time that most civil servants at the Department for Transport heard about this plan was when the Prime Minister announced it at the party conference. In reading the document, it is clear that this has not been written by a civil servant, and the subsequent amendments reveal that it probably wasn’t even sense-checked by one.
In all likelihood, this was a strategy written by advisors. It reads like one, and contains really, really basic mistakes on evidence, referencing, and basic strategy-writing competence that would not pass any civil servant sniff test. We can complain about civil servants all they want, but they can detect BS very easily.
I also know that regional and Combined Authorities, as well as Network Rail and National Highways, only heard that a plan was going to be announced the night before it actually was. Even then they did not know the detail.
This means that none of the key people responsible for delivering this strategy have any ownership over it. Worse, they are now being told they are expected to deliver it. Well, maybe, as apparently the schemes are now examples according to the Transport Minister.
At best this means that officials in the Department for Transport and all organisations involved in delivery are scrambling around trying to find out where all of this has come from so they can hopefully start delivery. A pattern that has been common in transport for the last 3 years as anyone involved in Active Travel Fund bids knows. At worst, it means those tasked with delivering it…won’t.
4) There is no plan to deliver.
On the surface, this plan takes £36 billion that would have been spent on HS2, and allocates it to other schemes. As this graphic shows. The thing is, it provides no sources for these figures, does not source the estimated costs of projects, and most critically does not give a timescale for delivery.
There is a very simple problem underlying why this is so. We know from the National Infrastructure Pipeline in 2021 that the majority of spend on HS2 Phase 2 will take place over the course of 15 years between 2025 and 2040. While we do not know what the new costs of HS2 Phase 2 are, we can reasonably assume that it won’t be a case of that £36bn being made available right now to spend in the next few years.
Considering that the Department for Transport barely knew about this plan, there is no way on this Earth that the Treasury would have signed off on any reallocation of spend of this magnitude without a really, really sound test of the plan. This requires months of working with scheme promoters to get a good understanding of costs and spend profile to stand any chance of passing Treasury bean-counters. And since many of the schemes do not even have a Strategic Outline Case yet (including the “Leeds tram”), we can safely say that this plan would not have had Treasury sign off.
Its not that the delivery plan is flawed. There isn’t one. Its a list of schemes they hope to fund based on what seems to be a funding reallocation exercise done overnight with a spreadsheet. This is no way to do public policy at all.
I could go on. But this is such a bad plan its unbelievable. It has no vision, is unrealistic, and is fundamentally unsound. Its a 40-page think tank report masquerading as a policy paper, designed to get a Prime Minister through a tough party conference. It should be ignored until the job of a proper transport vision for the nation is done.
But I sadly feel we cannot. With an election likely in the next 18 months, transport funding will be announced, and getting that funding will be linked to this poor excuse of a strategy. God help us all.
What you can do: Unless there is funding on the line for you, ignore it. If you have a project that could be funded, interrogate it. Request details on project cost assumptions and the spend profile from the Department for Transport. Get written confirmation from the Minister for Transport that your scheme is considered to be funded. Be productive in your relationship with the Department for Transport civil servants, but challenging.
🎓 From academia
The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author - they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.
TL:DR - Making it easy to transfer between air and rail changes travel patterns between cities.
TL:DR - The maritime industry sees green tech as the solution to its emissions problems.
TL:DR - The problem can best be summarised by the words “Not my job.”
Mandatory helmet legislation and risk perception: A qualitative study in Melbourne, Australia
TL:DR - Helmet laws lead to complex feelings as to whether they are a good thing (they aren’t)
✊ Awesome people doing awesome things
Dogs. Just dogs generally. They bring so much joy and ask so little. We truly do not deserve them.
Give yours a hug right now if you have one.
📼 On the (You)Tube
This is a great video on one of the most misleading statistics when it comes to transport planning - that of population density. This is a statistic that can play all sorts of tricks on you. For example, a dense population in a small area is still a small population.
What you can do: Read this brilliant paper on the use and misuse of population density as a statistic. Remember it, and apply some rigour when you next see it.
🖼️ Graphic Design
Walking is the oldest form of transport there is. And this amazing graphic shows that humans have migrated at least 21,000 miles. This map tells a story as opposed to saying something insightful. So enjoy that story.
📚 Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
How to Board a Plane Quickly (EconLife)
Rising oil prices, surging inflation: The Arab embargo 50 years ago weaponized oil to inflict economic trauma (The Conversation)
The US Inflation Reduction Act: How the EU is affected and how it should react (CEPR)
How does microenterprise growth impact child outcomes? (VoxDev)
Now we can blame spacecraft for polluting the atmosphere (The Register)
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