Groucho Marxism

I just returned from a holiday in France, during which I visited three medium-sized cities (Rouen, Le Mans, and Tours). Something that struck me about these cities was how nice they seemed compared to cities in the UK. Now obviously this is biased sample as I specifically I went to these places because I knew they would be nice to visit; but even so, it is hard to shake the impression that towns and cities in mainland Europe are more livable than their British counterparts. What particularly impressed me were the extensive tram networks. Trams are my favourite type of urban transit: they are clean, efficient, and can run directly through urban streets, which means they are accessible to all and give riders a nice scenic tour of the city. They also alleviate traffic congestion, and therefore pollution, in city centres.

On returning to the UK I was wondering whether it was just that the places I visited happened to have tram networks or whether this was a sign of a broader phenomenon. A bit of research suggests the latter: whereas the UK has 7 cities with tram networks, France has 28, four times as many; and Germany has 54, almost eight times as many. And it’s not just trams where the UK lags behind. According to the FT, British cities are more poorly served by public transport than those of any other Western country – including the US! It’s not just within cities either. Take the HS2 debacle: originally intended as a high-speed rail network covering the whole of the UK, it has been increasingly scaled back to the extent that when it is finally built it will basically run as a shuttle service between the UK’s two largest cities.

Focusing in on trams again, the obvious question is: Why can cities in Europe build tram systems when equivalent-sized British cities can’t? A bit of digging suggests that the main reason is cost. According to Britain Remade, a campaign group advocating for reforms to the UK’s planning system, building a mile of tramway in the UK costs almost double what it costs in France and over three times what it costs in Germany. Of the ten most expensive tram projects per mile in the world, five of them are British. But why are tram construction costs so high in the UK? One of the main reasons, according to Britain Remade, is that the necessary reconfiguration of utilities must be done entirely at the tram project’s expense.

It is always worth remembering that one person’s cost is another person’s income. If tramway construction costs are being inflated then somebody somewhere must be benefiting, and appears that this ‘somebody’ is the utility providers. In the UK, tram promoters have to pay 93% of the cost of reconfiguring utilities like electricity, gas, and telephones, with only 7% being covered by the providers. This creates an incentive for providers to move more utilities than is necessary, so that they get newly installed infrastructure at the expense of the tram project. In France, by comparison, diversion costs for utilities are covered by the providers themselves. Since they are covering the costs, they will only divert the utilities that actually need to be moved.

The obvious solution, as pointed out by Britain Remade, is to get utility providers to contribute a fairer share of diversion costs. So why don’t we just do that? All it would require is a simple change in legislation. The answer almost certainly lies in the privatization of utility provision. I suspect what is going on is that privatized utility companies vehemently oppose any such change in legislation as it would impact on their bottom line, and therefore lobby (bribe) politicians to prevent it from happening. It is worth noting that Britain has the only fully privatized energy services in the whole of Europe, and England and Wales are the only countries in the world(!) to have fully privatized water and sewage systems. It seems we have here yet another reason why privatizing utilities is a terrible idea.

What’s particularly galling about all this is that the UK used to have an extensive tram system, but then got rid of it! According to Wikipedia, in 1925 the UK had over 100 electric tram networks operating in towns and cities across the country. These networks began to be removed in the 1930s to make way for cars and (occasionally) buses, and by 1965 only one remained (in Blackpool – and this was only retained as a historical curiosity). The widespread replacement of a clean public transport system with a dirty, polluting, privatized transport system must be one of the daftest policy choices we as a society have ever made. Sadly, it is one we are still paying the price for today.