TRANSPORT
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
With this issue we start a new series about the socialist alternative on basic problems affecting the everyday lives of working people. PAUL CLARKE argues that there is no more suitable case for socialist treatment than transport.
IF YOU think that the economic laws of the market lead to efficiency, you obviously haven't travelled on London Underground during the rush hour, or tried getting into London on Network South East.
And if you think that state investment and control leads to inefficiency, try travelling on the Paris or Moscow metro systems, where trains come two or three times more often than on the London Underground.
Millions of hours are wasted each year in Britain though inefficient transport, generally the hours of hard-pressed workers. Travelling time and hassle means a reduction in leisure time and significantly higher stress levels for millions.
Public transport costs too much; in Britain it is up to 100 per cent more costly than in other advanced countries. Ten Paris metro tickets cost £3.40; 34p for any journey compared with the 80p minimum on London Underground.
While millions of people pay a fortune in road tax to sit in traffic jams, train travel is becoming a luxury. Travelling by train between Scotland and London is not significantly cheaper than going by air.
While buses are disappearing from the countryside altogether through privatisation and de-regulation, visiting relatives or getting to hospital for poorer people can be an expensive nightmare.
The 'great car economy' is in part based upon the fact that for many people in rural areas there is just no alternative. Urban commuters prefer London traffic jams to the filth and crowding of public transport. Meanwhile the daily toll of carbon monoxide emissions go unchecked.
There is probably no area in which the case for socialist planning is so clear-cut, and no area in which the insanity of capitalism is so obvious. How would a socialist government seek to solve the problem?
The first interim task would be to cut the number of cars on the road, but that could only happen by rapidly improving public transport. If cars were banned from city centres, unimpeded buses would immediately deliver a more efficient service.
More and faster trains are needed; the rail network would need a huge investment programme. But banning the private car is not an immediate option. Reorganising the transport system would take years and vast investment. Any attempt to ban cars would lead to chaos on a still-inadequate public system.
Diminishing demand
Once public transport became efficient and comfortable the pressure to use cars for simple journeys to work and back would diminish.
Car owners use cars for long distance journeys because they can go directly to their destination, and again because it is often more comfortable and cheaper.
But would they choose to spend hours driving on a motorway if they could go on a comfortable and cheap train? And if they could be certain of getting to their final destination without discovering that the local station had been closed down, or that there were no buses at the end of their journey?
Part of the car economy is the drastic reduction in the amount of freight carried on railways, to be replaced by thousands of trucks clogging the motorways, and in the process wrecking them –trucks cause a good part of the damage which means that road works on motorways are permanent.
If cars will not immediately disappear, drastic environmental restrictions have to be imposed. Development of electric cars has been restricted by manufacturers and the pressure of the oil companies. Compulsory catalytic converters should be fitted to all cars still running on petrol.
Within big city centres there is no reason why communally-owned bikes and electric cars or carts could not be freely available. People should be able to go from one big city to another by train, and pick up a community-owned car for the final part of their journey, if no direct bus if available to their final destination.
Operating a primarily public transport system requires a greatly expanded rail network, new investment in buses and an end to deregulation, and the building of substantial new networks, like expanding the London tube south of the river and to places like Hackney.
All this means many more jobs, and much more money. To attract new staff to the transport system pay and conditions would have to be radically improved. Where is the cash to come from? For a start there could be a huge cutback in the billions spent on building new motorways and repairing the existing ones.
But most of the money would come from the reorganisation of state spending away from defense and from taxing the rich.
Britain's transport system is way behind international technology advances. We should be looking at trains at least as fast as the French TGV, and new systems like monorails, at the increased use of modern trams and electric cars. Why don't we?
In fact many British capitalists recognise that transport in hopelessly organised and grossly inefficient, damaging their profits. But the scale of the problem, and the public spending programme which would be needed to solve it, is way beyond what British capitalism can currently 'afford' – given the Tories' spending priorities.
Efficient and comfortable transport is a basic index of the level of civilisation and progress in any society. By such criteria Britain is a backward dump. And you just have to look at the tens of thousands of cars queuing to get into Los Angeles and New York at 5 miles an hour to realise that it will get worse.
Transport won't be transformed without state spending, state planning and social ownership. And that means we need socialism.