Not motoring
Balancing act
Gavin Stamp
As luck would have it, 'Motoring' rather than 'Not motoring' coincided with The Spec- tator's 170th anniversary issue. A pity, per- haps, for while there were no motorists in 1828 and only the rich kept their own stable and carriage it was a most important time for the development of public transport.
When The Spectator first appeared, the Stockton & Darlington Railway had been open for three years and George Stephen- son was planning the Liverpool & Manch- ester Railway, whose opening in 1830 really inaugurated the Railway Age. Stephenson's creation was the first public railway with a regular timetable in the world; other lines rapidly followed, and the era of cheap uni- versal and quick transport began. The steam railway was one of the greatest boons to mankind and it — and not the motorcar — was the invention which brought popular mobility. Some 9 million people visited the Great Exhibition of 1851 thanks to the railway, and if millions are moved to see the Millennium Dome next year it will be because of the Jubilee Line — unless Greenwich is to be converted into a giant car-park.
But in surveying 170 years of 'Not motor- ing', your columnist cannot be sanguine. If 1828 was auspicious, 1998 still sees the apparent inability of the nation which gave railways to the world to build the vital new high-speed line from the Channel Tunnel to London — the sort of project the French seem to find no difficulty with.
In his anniversary column, my 'Motoring' counterpart complained of decades of gov- ernment hostility to the car. I might com- plain, with rather more justice, of continuing official neglect of our railways. As the new book Railways, Politics and Money: Great Age of Railways in Britain (John Murray, £25) makes clear, for the last century the railways — both private and nationalised were severely constrained by government, crippling them in their attempts to face the competition offered by the internal combus- tion engine. This remains true: railways must maintain their tracks and other systems to sustain an efficient service while a coach operator uses roads built and maintained at public expense. The Daily Telegraph has mounted a campaign against the poor con- dition of Britain's roads, but the railway traveller has suffered from the (deliberate?) neglect of the system for decades.
Mrs Thatcher, notoriously, never trav- elled by rail. I might have more respect for Mr Blair, if he announced that he would not travel by car unless necessary, for he seems to be abandoning his party's com- mitment to better public transport and is pandering to the car-obsessed, car-owning, middle-aged, middle class of England.
My 'Motoring' colleague complains of the New Puritans who would prevent indi- viduals from motoring. I am not one of those: I merely wish for fairness, for the freedom of choice. For in insisting that most people wish to drive, wish to use cars and that this is an economic imperative, the road lobby would deprive many of us of choice. For it cannot be stated too often that many of us either cannot or do not want to drive, and that a society which per- mits public transport to wither is not truly free. I do not want the bother of owning a car, and I do not care to be compelled to drive. More to the point, there are many the old, the young, the disabled, the incom- petent, the inebriate — who cannot, ought not to drive. Are these citizens to be deprived of mobility?
So most voters wish to drive their cars where they will, regardless of others who happen to be in the way, regardless of any wider social good. Is that a transcendent imperative? A majority wishes to bring back hanging; a majority would like free lunches, after all. But there are wider con- siderations which matter, and the sad fact is that it is now more difficult to move about Britain — without a car — than it was a century ago.
Fortunately, I think your 'Motoring' and `Not motoring' correspondents are not, in fact, poles apart. We seem to agree that, as regards pollution, the principal villain today is air travel, a form of extravagant and over-subscribed mobility which ought to be curbed. And I think we agree that we should be offered a choice between attrac- tive alternatives rather than be victims of coercion in how we choose to travel. Of course the private car is often now a neces- sity, but so is good, cheap, clean public transport if cities are to remain desirable and civilised places in which to live, if rural life is not to continue to wither. Yes, the right balance must be struck.
I find grounds for optimism in — of all places — Birmingham: the city which was connected with the railway a decade after the foundation of The Spectator, and which, in the 1960s, succeeded in making itself into the Detroit of England. Enraptured by the American vision of the motor car, the councillors promoted the destruction of much of the city centre by building an inner ring-road of motorways.
Today it is recognised that that ring has not so much promoted mobility and free- dom as contributed to the decline of the city centre by constricting commercial development and blighting potentially use- ful land. So the city's planners are now being really bold. Accepting the truth that traffic simply expands to fill the roads built to accommodate it, they are turning the principle on its head by removing the roads to make the traffic go away.
Last week I visited Birmingham and found that one of the big roundabouts with a sunken centre for pedestrians had been filled in. No longer did I have to negotiate dank and threatening underpasses to get across a busy road in the very centre of the city; now, the traffic is controlled by lights, and I could cross the road. This is a victory for civilisation and common sense: the car should not reign supreme in cities, forcing mere pedestrians to grovel underground, as second-class citizens. Now, in Birmingham, the motorist and the non-motorist are to be on the same level. That is as it should be.
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