National Transport Strategy

[basingstoke123]

White House directive to Federal employees:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... on-future/

• Prioritizing electric vehicle use when traveling: Federal employees will rent an EV on official travel when the cost of the EV is less than or equal to the most affordable comparable vehicle available. Employees will also opt for cost-competitive EV options, where available, when using taxis and ride share platforms. This will save taxpayer money and reduce pollution that jeopardizes people’s health and fuels the climate crisis.
• Expanding rail travel: Federal employees will use rail for trips less than 250 miles when cost-effective and available, instead of taking an airplane or vehicle.
• Increasing public transit use: Federal employees will use public transit (e.g., subway, bus, light rail) when conducting local travel or upon arrival at the official travel location.

Jonathan

(bolding mine)

Wow!

In other words, continue to use petrol and diesel (gas) cars unless a comparable sized electric car is cheaper or the same cost.

Does this mean that US Federal employees and official business could previously use more expensive travel options, when there was a choice? And we wonder why government organisatins are expensive.

[basingstoke123]

In my many years of cycling I remember a whole series of plans, strategies, studies and whatever, none of which have come to very much. So I am afraid that I do not expect much to come from them in future.

So it's not just my local authority.

Cynically I sometimes think a strategy is where you describe things that you are 'supposed' to do, but have no intention of doing. Then when someone complains 'why isn't the council doing xxxx?', they can be given the reply 'But we are. We take xxxx very seriously. Here is the agreed strategy'.

I must try this in my next work appraisal.

When strategies are periodically revised or updated, there is rarely any review of the previous strategy. No acknowledgement of its ineffectiveness, let alone any analysis as to why.

But the quality of presentation has definitely improved.

[rareposter]

Cynically I sometimes think a strategy is where you describe things that you are 'supposed' to do, but have no intention of doing. Then when someone complains 'why isn't the council doing xxxx?', they can be given the reply 'But we are. We take xxxx very seriously. Here is the agreed strategy'.

I must try this in my next work appraisal.

When strategies are periodically revised or updated, there is rarely any review of the previous strategy. No acknowledgement of its ineffectiveness, let alone any analysis as to why.

But the quality of presentation has definitely improved.

I don't disagree with that ^^ but councils and authorities are jumping to the Government's tune - they'll demand all this stuff in order to allocate funding, perform cost-benefit analyses and so on but the problem is that the Government will change it's tune every so often or play it very out of key.

In order for a local authority to get grant funding to build a new bit of transport infrastructure, they have to prove there is a need for it, consult endlessly with all manner of stakeholders, residents etc, put the case to Government that if they can build (eg) a new bus station, it'll bring in £x million in benefits to the region (connectivity, jobs, regeneration and so on).
So they put forward a proposal asking for (eg) £25m. Government considers that and then allocates them £15m. So there's a shortfall which means either the council has to go begging to private equity or it needs to fund it through its own reserves or it needs to scale back its plans. Usually a combination ends up happening where it'll get together a total of £20m and build a scaled back version which, because it is scaled back doesn't come close to meeting the originally specified targets. You've built a £20m thing that sort of works rather than a £25m thing which would work and that means the next 20 years are going to be spent making do, mending, patching, trying to expand and so on.

Strategies are incredibly important to show that you know what it takes to deliver [thing], you have the resources to deliver it and you've done (or will be doing) the relevant consultations. Without a strategy the whole thing falls to bits, a key example being this recent announcement:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... s-31769715

A few years back the useless Grant Shapps announced £500m to develop key rail infrastructure and it's delivered... 11 miles of track in 4 years. That's like asking a student for a dissertation and at the end of their year of reserach they give you a page printed off Wikipedia, it's that sort of level of fail. And it failed because there was no strategy whatsoever. It was a pie-in-the-sky announcement designed to sound good (cos £500m sounds GREAT!) but with no plans as to what to deliver, where or how.

As usual though, you can write the world's greatest strategy document but if Government isn't going to fund it properly, you'll get nothing done. And this Government is absolutely expert at promising the world, then delivering a small toy globe, slightly damaged... And then cutting it in half and taking the rest back anyway.

[Jdsk]

Well said. Strategies are particularly important when decisions are made by multiple actors, when they are complex, and when there are multiple timescales.

And the peculiar relationship between national and local government in England has all of those.

Jonathan

[Pinhead]

I assume no one here has watched

Yes Minister



https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b ... d-of-nails

[rareposter]

Article in the Guardian (and there's been various linked stuff on Twitter too) about the disgraceful way that the Tories have weaponised conspiracy theory nonsense to change transport policy on the fly away from Active Travel and in favour of driving.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... y-theories

[Jdsk]

Article in the Guardian (and there's been various linked stuff on Twitter too) about the disgraceful way that the Tories have weaponised conspiracy theory nonsense to change transport policy on the fly away from Active Travel and in favour of driving.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... y-theories

Yes. Just awful.

Jonathan

[mattheus]

Article in the Guardian (and there's been various linked stuff on Twitter too) about the disgraceful way that the Tories have weaponised conspiracy theory nonsense to change transport policy on the fly away from Active Travel and in favour of driving.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... y-theories

Certain tories need to be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Read this (if you're sitting down):

In his speech to the Conservative conference in October, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, described 15-minutes cities as schemes in which “local councils can decide how often you go to the shops”, which was incorrect and is something that has never been proposed in the UK.

The actual TRANSPORT SECRETARY said this. Not some fringe populist MP. The 'king Transport Secretary.

[Cugel]

Read this (if you're sitting down):

In his speech to the Conservative conference in October, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, described 15-minutes cities as schemes in which “local councils can decide how often you go to the shops”, which was incorrect and is something that has never been proposed in the UK.

The actual TRANSPORT SECRETARY said this. Not some fringe populist MP. The 'king Transport Secretary.

But but but ..... Toryspiv have been telling enormous porkies - and many far worse than this one - for decades and perhaps centuries! Have ye just noticed?

Mind, they aren't the only ones. Its just that, having all the power and influence, their filthy lies have far more deleterious effects than the lies of most others. The source of many of their lies is often the mad conspiracy theory of some aristocrat or chinless academic making up philosophy, history and other queer stories in which facts are as alternative as you can find anywhere, often generated out of a complete solipsism. These days, mad conspiracy theories can be got for nowt from a million mad barstewards on that interweb.

But there are many here among us who enjoy lies, of many kinds but especially those vilifying the "others". Why bother with real reality when made-up-stuff is so much more satisfying, like coke or lotsa grog in a pole dancing klub? And if you haven't got the stones for being the footba' hooligan you'd love to be, you can be a policy hooligan with no risk of some bigger hooligan giving you a kicking when you have all the steel-capped boots of lawmaking.

[Jdsk]

"Oxford becomes UK’s electric bus capital as 159 vehicles join fleet":
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... join-fleet

NB connection to LTNs, traffic prioritisation, and *electrical supplies.

Jonathan

* viewtopic.php?p=1686345#p1686345

[MikeF]

In my many years of cycling I remember a whole series of plans, strategies, studies and whatever, none of which have come to very much. So I am afraid that I do not expect much to come from them in future.

So it's not just my local authority.

Cynically I sometimes think a strategy is where you describe things that you are 'supposed' to do, but have no intention of doing. Then when someone complains 'why isn't the council doing xxxx?', they can be given the reply 'But we are. We take xxxx very seriously. Here is the agreed strategy'.

I must try this in my next work appraisal.

When strategies are periodically revised or updated, there is rarely any review of the previous strategy. No acknowledgement of its ineffectiveness, let alone any analysis as to why.

But the quality of presentation has definitely improved.

You're not being cycnical at all
When a strategy (or plan) is completed the task is finished. It's as simple as that. The task is actually writing the strategy (or plan) to cover 5/10 or whatever years. When that time has elapsed a new one will be written.
That's what councils/ governments do - nothing more.
Implementing what the strategy/plan states is a completely different task and will depend on a whole range of factors, mainly resulting in complete inaction or at the most a token effect.

[Cugel]

A working life in and about various government "strategies" taught me the hard way that the whole notion of planning, along with its associate "budgeting", are fragile and perhaps an example of one of those vast hubristic human intents that often produced the opposite of the stated intent; or, at best, a series of outcomes best characterised as "unintended".

Even when the intent of writing a strategy is honest, this can hide the fact that the strategy is often a piece of dogma or pipedream in disguise. Even if the pipedream is aglow with "nice things" it often has a hidden number of nasty consequences.

The worst aspect of strategies and their plans can be that they become ossified, often with a momentum of their own that makes them become very difficult to slow or steer. The strategist becomes obsessed with the detail of their strategy via a need to see their creation made concrete, no matter how injurious the various effects of the various tactics and stages of the strategy turn out to be.

A strategy can act as a sort of gravitational maw for all the enterprise and effort of an organisation, sucking in vast amounts of work and money but producing nothing but more problems (those unintended consequences) sucking in even more effort and money.

My experience of the often wallowing confusion in a bog of unintended consequences resulting from strategies and plans made me conservative (with a little "c") in a way best described by an olde fashioned English historian of political thinking, Michael Oakeshott. Here are some quotes from his writings to illustrate:

"In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel."

"To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."

"To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise."

"Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us."

"Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes."

"A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys."

I would rather see politicians without strategies, especially those derived from back-of-a-fag-packet ideologies but having, rather, a full regard and respect for those traditions of seeing and dealing with issues as they arise, not with a grand plan but with a small and careful series of changes and amendments to what they know has been successful and is in accordance with the social, economic and cultural preferences and needs of those they represent (all of them, not just the party members or funders).

Some chance in today's bearpit of power-mad loons with a head full of grand plans dreamt up by the dark forces of sociopaths infected with a vast greed and the consequent wealth to buy their politician puppets.

[Jdsk]

New colours and new names.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press ... rt-network

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

Having worked in the realm of strategies, in the public transport sector, for roughly the final five years of my full-time working life, and contributed to them for a lot longer than that, I share some of Cugel’s concerns/scepticism.

It’s difficult stuff though, because without at least having very clear strategic objectives, and an ever-evolving plan to achieve them, anything, from a government to tiny department, is directionless. Add to which that in transport possibly more so than many things, delivering even apparently modest outcomes from plans, let alone high level strategic objectives, can take a very long time, simply because it often involves infrastructure changes, or new/different fleets, and neither of those can be picked off a tree come spring.

Budgeting is also absolutely essential, after all its really no more than the financial (as opposed to time or results) dimension of a plan, but it’s a process that is very, very frequently misunderstood by those on the outside looking in.

If you are bored enough to go back to the beginning of this thread, I kept banging on about the need to define the objectives of a transport strategy, but that must have been a bit boring, or badly expressed, because nobody much picked-up on it, seemingly preferring to dive straight into planning (never do that!), or even direct into delivery of particulars (never, never do that!).

Personally, I wouldn’t let elected representatives (aka politicians) get involved in anything deeper than setting strategic objectives, and ratifying plans at an appropriate (discuss) level of detail in terms of costs (budget), outcomes, and time. The rest should be the business of professionals with an accountability (aka “ar$e on the line”) to draft and deliver the plans. But, in reality some elected representatives have a large appetite for using the process for self aggrandisement, for dabbling in the “how” of delivery, surrounding themselves with non-accountable advisers who throw all sorts of spanner’s in the works, flopping around like weathercocks in the wind, etc.

PS: note that I don’t mention “strategies”, only “strategic objectives”, which is because I really do have my doubts about devoting much time or effort to writing strategies, except possibly as statements of opportunities, constraints, threats etc that planning has to take account of.

[Jdsk]

Petition: Ban domestic flights on routes that can be travelled by train in under 4.5 hours
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/649992

Jonathan