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A FAIR DEAL FOR THE MOTORIST |
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It’s only your money – down the drain |
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Buried deep in an obscure ‘reports
pack’ for the December 2016 meeting of Hammersmith and Fulham Council (LBHF)
were some spending plans. LBHF proposes quite a few gems for 2017/18. The GLA and local councils talk of being short of money.
London Mayor has had to abandon
his pledge not to raise tube fares (only singles are being frozen). The
levy on London residents’ Council Tax is rising in April 2017. However it seems there is plenty of cash for vanity and virtue-signalling
projects that politicians want! PSEUDS’
CORNER… (p156 et seq) "portable growing spaces
that provide instant transformation of areas alongside the highway. The
portable gardens will help deliver flexible growing spaces as well as durable
modern street furniture. The units will be prefabricated to the council’s
specification and tailored to the chosen location’s needs. The proposal is to
trial out greening interventions in areas where currently they are not
present to gauge the public support for them. They will be sized to fit within existing parking bays"
(The promoters are The Edible Bus Stop, “a London based
award winning collective, compromising of landscape architects, artists, and
activists”. The core of their ethos, is the belief
that a brutal landscape makes for a brutal outlook....) "Pocket Parks... usually temporary or semi-permanent
structures built in the carriageway
where other motorised uses may have previously been prevalent." "Green Street Art... using
the new street type methodology to increase
the place function of a street (rather than its movement function) ".
- In plain English, the gratuitous removal of road space by stealth!.
The cost of these 3 items alone is estimated at £170,000! It is basically removing road or parking space at a pious
excuse. LBHF has separately had a number of tacky 'traffic-free' Saturdays
around a street market. It also supports ‘play streets’ – road closures that
encourage children to play in the street. (Apart from denying local residents
the roads they’ve paid for, this is a poor substitute for playing in parks
and recreation grounds, and might even set a dangerous precedent
?) And this is a Council elected on a slogan of being 'fairer
to motorists'. It certainly has form. In 2005/6, under the £3 million
‘Street Smart’ initiative, the same ruling group used the excuse of footway
widening to remove a whole road lane at King Street despite it being an
artery from the congested Hammersmith Broadway roundabout. The works led to a
dangerous tailback on the A4. A local car park was also removed, denying drivers scarce parking
spaces. (p158) A study on North End Road which has a street market
and a number of casualties. Pedestrians have been regularly observed to step
out willy-nilly in breach of the Highway Code. As the new 20mph limit has
obviously not cured this, LBHF's outline 'solution' seems to be to want to
restrict traffic during certain hours! Whatever happened to road user education?
OBSESSIVE: Purcell Crescent SW6 – a cul-de-sac
where it would be hard to build up any speed. A parked car might travel up to
5-6 cars’ length before meeting the main road (Lillee
Road). Still stuck with unnecessary 20mph signage. At council taxpayers’
expense. 20’S EXPENSIVE… It looks like LBHF will try it on over 20mph 'enforcement'
measures. The same ‘reports
pack’, (p155, section on ‘Integrated Transport Programme 2017/18’, 20mph
extension project) warns of: “…further features to encourage compliance
with the new speed limits.” LBHF’s history strongly indicates that this might take the
form of vehicle and property-damaging speed humps. The bill might run to another
£300,000 out of £1,000,000 – yes a million
– in total on a scheme that hardly anyone wanted. Manchester City Council recently (2017) concluded that its 20mph
experiment should be scrapped. The average speed reduction was a puny
0.7mph, and accident rates fell faster outside the zone. The local paper revealed
that “£500,000 of public health
cash” had been earmarked for the scheme”. Liverpool should take note! It was previously
announced that the Primary Care Trust was paying the City Council £665,000
towards making 70% of the city’s residential streets 20mph zones. £265,000 of
this for a programme of ‘perception surveys and community engagement work on
slower speeds’ (i.e. propaganda). Their spin-ridden press release claimed
that this was ‘extensive health promotion’. Twenty’s Plenty’s Rod King also
crowed that "Liverpool are giving people a real choice in how they
travel..." Perhaps the people should be given ‘real
choice’ over measures that actually improve their health.
OBSESSIVE: St John’s Close SW6 – a road maybe of
just 7-8 cars’ length Still stuck with an unnecessary 20mph limit
and sign. THE
WIDER PICTURE In broad terms, drivers pay about £50Bn a
year in tax, and get about £8Bn spent back on the roads. The latter figure
may be swollen as •
It
includes spending on vehicle-damaging road humps and other anti-driver
measures •
The
accounting system is not watertight – read on... |
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The National Audit Office (NAO) has
warned that DFT’s plans to cut tens of millions of pounds from its spending
on road maintenance and rail may not be financially sustainable, A NAO report warned that there was a risk
that plans to save £425m in the current Spending Review period by spending
less on road maintenance could lead to deterioration in road quality. This
could cost more in the long term. (A point made to Transport Minister Norman
Baker last year). However DFT also lacks a full ‘strategic
overview’ of how much its spending is becoming more cost-effective. A ‘light
touch’ towards monitoring cost reductions by third parties such as Transport
for London has contributed to a failure to ‘fully integrate’ financial and
performance monitoring, the auditors said. The findings in the NAO report are
revealing: For local highways maintenance, DFT holds
very limited information on value for money because local authorities do not have to spend DFT’s funding on maintenance
or give an account to DFT for it.... The Highways Agency did not hold summary
information to compare the costs and benefits of national highways
maintenance, although it continues to develop a database of the costs of
specific maintenance activities. As part of its normal processes, the Agency
ranks and approves schemes on the basis that they enable the Secretary of State’s
obligations to ensure a safe and serviceable network to be met. DFT requested
evidence from the Highways Agency on the ratio of benefits to costs of maintenance and renewals work and
these estimates showed that benefits
were ten times greater than costs DFT and the Highways Agency recognised
that the overall impact would include slower repair of damage, uncollected
litter, fewer inspections of routes and structures and increases in claims on DFT for vehicle damage. So – your vehicle can get damaged because
the government is wasting money on things like aid to Argentina and a
‘happiness index’ – just ask Taxpayers’
Alliance! The Highways Agency’s advice to DFT also
contained the caveat that ‘there is a material risk in this rapid and
top-down assessment that we have simply been too optimistic in what can be
achieved and how soon’. DFT put forward these budget reductions in its
submission to the Treasury but confirmed that ‘reductions will lead to planned and managed, but nevertheless
obvious, deterioration in the network’. NAO ironically notes that, in the name of
‘efficiency savings’ [sic], DFT is now working with local authorities to
identify ‘sustainable’ budget reductions in road maintenance!!! And we thought ‘sustainability’ was about
making decisions that won’t stack up problems for our children’s
generation... |
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One of David Cameron’s boasts was that he
would preserve health spending.
However, a recent national policy announcement, councils will be allocated
more than £2 billion to look after public health - something that had not
fallen to local authorities since the 1970s. Councils can pick their own local
targets, such as cutting the number of road casualties based on the leaky
STATS19 measure. (Another example is tackling adult and childhood obesity,
which one government minister has irrationally linked with car use! Driving
actually consumes calories, it’s only excessive eating and drinking that piles on the pounds.). An interesting target is listed under
‘air pollution’ - specifically PM2.5 particulates – as pollutants can blow in
from quite a distance away. There is a danger that local authorities
will choose the easiest-to-achieve targets to win headlines and bonuses. For
example, where statistics can be 'managed' (e.g. through relying upon natural
regression to the mean for casualty reductions). So, plenty of other abuse of
taxpayers’ money is possible... |
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References for National Audit
Office http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/reducing_costs_in_the_dft.aspx
(p22) (p25) References for diversion of health
funds: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_132358 http://www.roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/1934.html http://www.20splentyforus.org.uk/press_releases.htm NHS Part Funds 20mph Limits for
Liverpool in Landmark Public Health Collaboration http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24029942-councils-get-pound-2bn-for-public-health.do |
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