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Countdown to the Spending Review: the road to nowhere

The spending review looms. In our latest in a series in the run-up to Wednesday, we brief you on drastic cuts to transport spending.

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by Chris Marshall on Oct 18, 2010 at 12:36

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Countdown to the Spending Review: the road to nowhere

The day of the spending review looms. In our latest in a series in the run-up to Wednesday - see our other articles here – we brief you on the outlook for cuts to transport spending.

What must go? Between 25 and 40% of a £15.9 billion annual budget

What is at stake? Decimation of public transport, road safety, rail passengers' paper-thin patience...

In the coalition government, one cabinet minister’s victory is another’s defeat: Liam Fox has managed to wrangle down the cuts to defence spending, while health and international aid spending are ring-fenced, but this only increases pressure on other departments, none more so than the Department for Transport.

The £15.9 billion transport budget may be particularly hard hit with reductions of between 25 to 40%.

Even before Wednesday’s review, the cuts to transport spending have already started. As part of the immediate £6 billion package of spending cuts announced in May, £683 million has already been cut from Philip Hammond’s transport budget. Of this, slashed grants to local authorities account for £309 million, some £100 million of savings will be made from Network Rail and Transport for London will lose £108 million in funding. The coalition has also effectively frozen all further work on local roads and public transport projects and orders for new trains ahead of Wednesday’s review.

Nor was the transport department safe from last week’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’, with six transport-related bodies, such as the Disabled Persons’ Transport Advisory Committee, facing the chop.

Cuts ‘on track’... but are trains?

The government’s spending cuts will ‘stay on track’, Hammond said last week. This was an odd choice of words for a man presiding over some severe pain for rail passengers.

There are reports that rail users could face fare increases of up to 40% over four years because state subsidies to train operators are likely to be cut. According to Channel 4 News, instead of annual rises being pegged at 1% above inflation, passengers could face rises of 3 or even 5% above inflation.

There has been speculation about the future of the planned £16 billion London and south east rail service, Crossrail, with engineers asked to find ‘significant savings’. The project could at least be delayed from 2017 to 2018 or later. However business groups have lobbied for Crossrail to go ahead as planned and chancellor George Osborne said on Sunday that ‘big infrastructure developments like Crossrail’ were priorities. ‘Those things are actually going to get us out of this stronger and able to pay our way in the world,’ he told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show.

Less secure though may be funding for a £5.5 billion upgrade to the Thameslink which is intended to fund new stations, routes, trains and tracks for the London service.

Additional cuts might halt electrification projects in the north-west of England and on the Great Western line, a £7.5 billion order for new Hitachi Inter-city Express trains and about a thousand new train carriages scheduled for lines including Thameslink.

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6 comments so far. Why not have your say?

Buying Hitachi trains says it all. Would like to see some differentiation to select the projects to fund based on proving that say >80% of the costs go back into the UK economy - parts, labour, profit etc.

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Its quite simple if you can't afford a new car and your already mortgaged to the hilt, what do you do? You make do with what you've got or you walk.

It's not a case that you never ever buy a new car you just wait until you can afford to.

I do resent the fact we have ring fenced defence. Especially as the defence budget has been so historically mis-managed (Al I bet Hitachi do a lot better job with our money than BAE) and our spending has little to do with "defence" being mostly spent on invading countries thousands of miles away.

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Anonymous 1.

I like the point about the defense budget, not sure who we are supposed to be defending ourselves against. I think the only people who want the defense budget 'ringfenced' are the ones who still think it's us against Europe, about time they moved into the 21st century.

Not so sure about the comments relating to public transport. I can't walk to work, because it's about 50 miles from where I live, and working locally isn't an option, i.e. there is no work. We have all paid huge amounts into the transport network since Thatcher sold it to the highest bidder, and yet most of the trains and equipment is still from when it was sold to the private sector. To cut the budget to public transport is utter stupidity. If we can't afford to get to work, how do private companies provide a service, and thus how do they make a profit and pay corporation tax. Public transport is the blood flow of any country. I can't for love nor money work out how cutting it's budget will help pay of the deficit, it will over time cause it to grow!

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I am completely baffled with regards to rail travel.

Take the East Coast main line for instance. Its virtually a straight, level piece of track for 300 miles with very few stopping stations and no complicated junctions to worry about. The economics of that line should have been simple. It was supposed to run the ultra-modern HS 145s and top spec' carriages. GNER set off with the best of intentions but failed to renew its franchise. National Express took over but the venture almost bankrupted them. Now we have the state controlled "not for profit" East Coast mainline operating company. The last time I travelled with them, the best they could do was to provide 30 year old diesel locos on and electrified track!

But what do I know? It seems Richard Branson's high tech pendolino trains for the winding west coast line are not fast enough! They propose building a completely new line with trains travelling at 250MPH!

Oh yeah. I think I'll just wait for the next flying pig!

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You look for a car to buy. You check the papers, showrooms etc for the best possible deal and then you haggle. You've got what you wanted at a price you're satisfied with and then you take it out on to the road. Then, you get shafted everyway possible. Road Tax, Insurance, Fuel, Parking Charges the list is practically endless. What'll happen on Wednesday? We'll get shafted again.

Oh by the way, be careful what you bin and how you bin it. If you put any recyclable into your non-recyclable bin the council will fine you. How else are the councils of the UK going to claw back the money with all the cutbacks?

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Jon Gallagher

Oct 18, 2010 at 21:41

Wot a bloody mess - all of it. This country is finished I think. Can it get any worse.

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