What Price London Transport?

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Workers in London, reeling under the blow of the 25% increase in bus and tube fares at the beginning of the month may well be trying to remember why they voted Labour into the GLC with a large majority two years ago.

They, together with a large section of the middle class voted Labour if for no other reason, to prevent London becoming one vast motorway. This was the theme of the Tory inspired Greater London Development Plan which was to all intents and purposes a road building plan and little else.

The GLC's own statisticians estimated that even by 1991, 23% of households in the GLC area and over 30% in the Inner London area would be without cars.

With the prospect of further increases in petrol prices the figures may be much higher than this. The Tory plan therefore was a piece of blatant middle class planning in favour of the middle class motorist and the road haulage companies.

Meanwhile the working class families, many without cars or unable to use them due to soaring petrol prices would be left with a deteriorating public transport system. Added to which the social cost of massive road building in terms of pollution, the diversion to roadbuilding of land vital for working class housing and amenities, was totally ignored by the plan.

Many of these criticisms were made by the Layfield Committee which was set up to inquire into _1:. .-. ALA NIND Tha example that the rapid deterioration taking place in London's public transport system was leading to a vicious circle in which increased car use led to peak hou road congestion, a Slowing down of bus speeds, a reduction in bus usage and a further shift to private cars.

The London Traffic Survey of 550 miles of bus route found that only on 20% of the route were buses travelling at over 12 mph. Bus passenger mileage fell by 45% over the period 1955-69 though actual usage fell one and a half times as fast as the fall in services reflecting congestion and the fact that the response to falling revenue from fares is to increase fares, driving more (poorer) people off the buses on to their feet.

This is the classic strategy pioneered by British Rail during the Beeching era in which services were cut, as a result of which passengers sought other, usually more expensive forms of transport, coved shall, that the oute hing could "uneconamic' and should be closed.

Several times in the last ten years the vital cross-city North London Line of British Rail has been threatened with the axe by such nethods.

The conclusion from this is that a rational public transport system to meet the needs of working class people - and the majority of the middle class cannot be constructed alongside but must take the place of a road system devoted to the private car and the haulage capitalists. Transport planning in other words raises the anaction of nauser ly recommended a reduction in road building in the GLDP and an improved public transport system, pointing to London Transport figures showing that the average peak hour bus load is 12 times the passenger loadiof the three private cars that occupy the same road space, and that a peak hour tube train load carries the same number of passengers as five miles of (single lane) traffic consisting of private cars. To ease the effect of road congestion on public transport the committee recommended the bus lane system and the reduction of parking facilities in central London.

Labour restricted itself to improvement of stretches of existing roads, the extension of bus lanes and the reduction of parking spaces in central London.

This piece of reformist tinkering has needless to say led nowhere. The abandonment of the orbital roads scheme without an increase in public transport has simply increased traffic pile-up at the periphery in the outer suburbs where peak hour traffic speeds have been consistently falling.

Likewise banning heavy lorries in central London only serves to increase congestion as the same volume of freight is brought in in fleets of smaller vehicles.

The need is for a massive planned shift in freight transport to rail and the use of the latest developments in freight handling such as the "Small Container Inter Modal Distribution System" which makes road/rail interchange more flexible. There must be no loss of employment from such planning GLC has taken up no fight along these lines and has refused to fight the government on the question of finance. The near bankruptcy of the GLC last March which prompted the resignation of the right-wing Labour chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Haseler, who demanded further swingeing cuts, resulted in the proposal . for an 80% increase in fares over the following year and a quarter. Londoners have just taken the 25% rise and they are going to get another 50% increase next year.

This will lead to further decreases in the usage of public transport and a further deterioration in conditions. As central government finance is reduced through Healey's cuts and Crosland's recent ultimatum to local authorities the prospect is opened up of more fare rises and the final destruction, at the hands of capitalism in crisis and its agents in the Labour government and the Labour GLC, of London's public transport system.

The conflict between the social need for public transport and the demands of the capitalist crisis for its reduction as part of the cut in state spending is clearly shown in the attempts in other areas of the country to hold down fares.

Such developments would require massive injections of finance, protected against inflation by a sliding scale of spending, to increase public spending facilities through a massive increase of bus/ tube/rail interchange facilities, the extension of routes, and increased frequency of services and the bringing about of substantial

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'PRESS, Wedne: ay 12th Novembe -1975 Aige 7