Monday, October 09, 2023
Sunak's northern transport plans start to fall apart
If there is one thing anybody involved with transport knows, it is that upgrades and new projects take careful planning and years of preparation before ground is broken, and that if you're going to start making rash promises from notes on the back of an envelope, you'd better be ready to back them up with a business case that shows that they are affordable and achieveable. Why did nobody tell Rishi Sunak that?
The Guardian reports that documents detailing projects to be funded with savings from scrapping HS2 have been deleted from a government website, with one minister describing the announcements of new transport schemes as just giving “examples” of what the money could be spent on rather than the concrete pledge implied by the Prime Minister in his conference speech:
The documents detailed an extra £100m of funding for a mass transit “underground” project in Bristol. Mention of plans to invest £36bn in projects around the north and Midlands, including reopening Transport North East’s Leamside line, were also removed from the government’s website.
“We gave some examples to people about the sorts of things – and we know these things are priorities locally – the sorts of things that that money could be spent on, and to bring it to life for people,” the transport secretary, Mark Harper, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire on Sunday.
The deletions on Wednesday night included removing an entire page where the government pledged to “revolutionise mass transit in Bristol’. It appeared to have been replaced with a broader pledge to give the west of England combined authority £100m, which it could spend on various projects in the region.
Asked if Bristol was going to get a new mass transit system, Harper said: “My department published a document which set out very clearly what we are going to spend the £36bn on that we are saving from cancelling the second phase of HS2.
“The money that was promised for Bristol is for £100m extra for the elected mayor of the west of England combined authority and that is money that he will have available to spend on his projects including on a mass transit system... some of those things are already being delivered.”
In other words the government have no idea how they are going to spend the £36bn and are hoping others might step up and do it for them. What an embarrassment for Sunak.
The Guardian reports that documents detailing projects to be funded with savings from scrapping HS2 have been deleted from a government website, with one minister describing the announcements of new transport schemes as just giving “examples” of what the money could be spent on rather than the concrete pledge implied by the Prime Minister in his conference speech:
The documents detailed an extra £100m of funding for a mass transit “underground” project in Bristol. Mention of plans to invest £36bn in projects around the north and Midlands, including reopening Transport North East’s Leamside line, were also removed from the government’s website.
“We gave some examples to people about the sorts of things – and we know these things are priorities locally – the sorts of things that that money could be spent on, and to bring it to life for people,” the transport secretary, Mark Harper, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire on Sunday.
The deletions on Wednesday night included removing an entire page where the government pledged to “revolutionise mass transit in Bristol’. It appeared to have been replaced with a broader pledge to give the west of England combined authority £100m, which it could spend on various projects in the region.
Asked if Bristol was going to get a new mass transit system, Harper said: “My department published a document which set out very clearly what we are going to spend the £36bn on that we are saving from cancelling the second phase of HS2.
“The money that was promised for Bristol is for £100m extra for the elected mayor of the west of England combined authority and that is money that he will have available to spend on his projects including on a mass transit system... some of those things are already being delivered.”
In other words the government have no idea how they are going to spend the £36bn and are hoping others might step up and do it for them. What an embarrassment for Sunak.
