On the evening of Tuesday 30^th September, the annual Labour Party Conference LFIG Fringe meeting was held at the Marsham Court Hotel in Bournemouth. The theme was: `A Modern Transport System – the Key to Industrial Success?’

The meeting was welcomed by LFIG Chair, Sir Peter Heap, who explained the purpose of the event and the objectives of the LFIG organisation. He them handed over to the Chair for the evening, LFIG’s political sponsor Geraint Davies, MP. It was announced that Geraint is now Chair of the Backbench Transport Group, a role which was germane to the evening’s discussion.

The first speaker was Colin Stanbridge, Chief Executive of the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI). Colin said that transport difficulties were the number one concern of his members as expressed in countless membership surveys. They said that, for Londoners, transport problems were `visible and intense’ and that the costs to business amounted to 3bn pounds sterling each year. He further commented that businesses accepted the need for to pay for improvements and looked forward to an early debate on this. He also felt that there should be a reduction in London’s annual 20bn pounds subsidy to the rest of the country, thereby releasing funds for increased investment in the capital’s infrastructure – a message similar to that heard from Ken Livingston on occasions.

The next speaker, Professor David Begg, Chair of the Commission for Integrated Transport, said that 40 per cent of all traffic congestion in Britain occurred in London, a city which was a victim of its own success. He said that peak hour traffic in London is about the same as it had been 20 years ago, despite large-scale capital investment in the transport system. He went on to say that there is no infrastructure solution to congestion and that simply penalising the general taxpayer to pay for road improvements was no longer a just solution – the costs would have to be levied more directly on  actual users. He saw congestion charges as the way forward, levied not simply on the journeys people made but also the times when they made them. If we can spread use patterns over longer hours in the day, then congestion levels would be eased. To this end, he discussed the merits of actually reducing fuel taxes and shifting the burden to direct user levies, linked to journey patterns and time zones.

Transport Minister, Tony McNulty, said that much of the expenditure on utilities and transport was not immediately evident to users. He sang the praises of visible local traffic improvement schemes improving layout and signalling which often cost little, were visually attractive and immediately noticeable. He talked of the Traffic Management Bill and improvements in planning and managing disruptions to road traffic resulting from endless work crews digging up the same stretches of road.

The Minister said that the idea of `betterment levies’, involving local residents and businesses paying windfall taxes on benefits and property price rises resulting from local improvements, was often heralded as new and innovative but had apparently been discussed by Richard Crossman back in the 1960s in his days as Housing Minister.

Both the Minister and Professor Begg agreed that the financing of future road developments and improvements would involve both public and private money (PFI and PPP initiatives) and would involve more direct payments by users. Professor Begg said that negative incentives appeared to work better than their positive equivalents. That is, penalties on car use were more likely to yield results than halving bus fares.