On Cambridge and congestion

I have been asked a couple of times recently why I oppose the City Deal plans to close roads during peak hours, and I'm only too happy to respond.

Actually, I think the road closures are better than nothing for clearing congestion, and may do some good, but it is very complex and the proposals have been handled in a disastrous way.

Good is the enemy of great. Putting a half-baked solution to congestion in place could obstruct the potential to put in a really satisfactory and lasting solution. This is what the City Deal should have started by looking at, instead of working backwards from the adulation of Stagecoach.

I'm afraid that the road closures have been decided long, conceived as a self-congratulatory expansion on the city Core Traffic Scheme, and will not be allowed to fail. Success will be defined by the City Deal in whatever way necessary to validate their results

The Cambridge Green Party have been trying for years to build political will for a fair congestion charge to allow traffic to flow and to tackle air quality. We're very pleased that the Lib Dems have jumped on board with the idea now, but actually the peak hour road closures may be the most effective means yet of persuading people that a congestion charge is needed. When drivers and cylists have to face down the chaos which will attend Autumn 2017, and incur severe penalty fees for journeys that they have to make, they will see the softer approach as preferable.

The peak hour road closures could in fact be understood as a sneaky plan for implementing a congestion charge in the long-run, although this may be giving the planners too much credit. One would think that the existing CCTV infrastructure provided by this scheme could be used to switch over to a congestion charge later on (as well as fining people who stop on box junctions!) but there seems to be such a political resistance to congestion charging that they will refuse to even put a contingency plan in place. I asked Tanya Sheridan, the City Deal Programme Coordinator at the West Central Area Committee meeting what Plan B was for congestion, and she declined to answer.

However the conversation about congestion charging has been basic, so far. The Lib Dems have issued an upsetting call to "End the road closure madness" and the leaflets they have distributed seem to be more about raising Nicola Harrison's profile than providing information. It strikes me that such an exercise in spotlighting is often a sign that someone plans to (re)run for office, and the County Council elections are coming up next year.

A plan to cut congestion in Cambridge must must take into account the fact that everybody's journey is different. Consider some possibilities:

• A diesel HGV driver, delivering goods to a supermarket on a busy road
• A local plumber, trying to get all of his or her tools to a house with a flooded bathroom
• A commuter, with an electric vehicle getting from a village into a city centre workplace
• A parent, dropping off children at a local school before going to work
• A commercially run bus, trying to carry paying passengers to maximise shareholder profit
• A blue badge holder, taking their car to carry heavy shopping
• A graduate, renting a car from a car club, to visit a relative for the day
• A sports car owner, simply out for the pleasure of driving
• A motorcyclist, delivering a package for a client
• A trainee teacher, commuting out of the city to a work placement
• A fire engine, needing to travel at high speed to reach an emergency
• A taxi, bringing a commuter from the railway to the science park

The point of this list isn't to say that anyone is good or bad - everyone is trying to get on with their life, look after their family, make a living and be happy and well. Very few people have enough resources to change their lifestyle overnight. The point is that road closures with a fixed fine treat everyone as if they deserve to be in Cambridge or don't deserve to be in Cambridge.

County Councillor have been adamant that they will not allow a congestion charge to be implemented which charges people more for living outside the city. This seems reasonable, some people do live outside the city but still their lives revolve around it. A congestion charge does not need to work that way.

The most helpful conversation the city could be having at the moment is how to apply exemptions and levies gradually, in a way that steers people toward a modal shift in a fair way. Ideally it would be means-tested, but the fine used by the peak hour road closures will not be means-tested so that horse has already bolted.

What a congestion charge could do, and the London congestion charge has in some cases already done is:

• Provide a discount for regular visitors, through a "season ticket"
• Provide a discount for ultra low emissions vehicles (ULEV)
• Provide a discount for pensioners
• Provide a discount for repeat visitors within a single day (if it is charged hourly)
• Provide a discount for blue badge holders
• Provide a discount for car club members
• Provide a discount for parents of children at local schools
• Provide a discount (rather than free travel) for commercially operated buses
• Provide a discount for motorbikes and other smaller vehicles with smaller engines
• Provide a discount for large delivery vehicles, as suggested by the Lib Dem candidate for London Mayor in 2008
• Provide a discount for key workers
• Provide a discount for licensed taxis
• Provide a discount for all users as long as the roads are clear and air quality is good, ensuring that the charge isn't levied "for the sake of it"

I have some views about which of these discounts would be appropriate, and to what extent, as I'm sure everybody else does. It would require consultation and discussion. And it could be phased in, so that the charges aren't levied for the first two years, giving time for the highways authority to get the infrastructure in place and the people to work out how they want to respond.

It is completely appropriate for people to think about how they can make shorter and fewer journeys, with less reliance on petrol, because we will run out of crude oil derivatives one day. It was made by dinosaurs, they are not making more. And if we decide to rely on petrol for another 10 years, which we may have enough for, we must leave fossil fuels alone in order to prevent the worst case scenarios of climate change and extreme weather. 

NASA scientist James Hansen warns that sea levels will rise several meters within a century on our current trajectory. Cambridge is six meters above sea level in places, so the City Deal will look like one of the great planning follies of the modern era when our £1 billion investment is underwater.

We should be planning for resilience and local community, not for fragile and whimsical commercial interests. We should be providing infrastructure for electric vehicles and car clubs, to allow people to maintain their independence while creating the kind of future that preserves some of the good bits of today.

I simply don't trust the City Deal to do this though. As an organisation, I have completely lost confidence in it, and I think it is evil. I really think it represents the sacking of Cambridge by the agents of the free market. The only good thing about it, apart from the modest improvements to cycling infrastructure, is the way that it has motivated and organised residents to fight it.

Just look at the way the process has swept aside the concerns and research of the Save the West Fields campaign, and consigned the beautiful cherry trees on Milton Road to removal. These kinds of decisions don't get made when local people have a say, local democracy tends to revere nature not just for its beauty but for its health benefits. These kinds of decision can only be made when the reins are handed over to machines, to markets, and to unaccountable bodge artists.

The political resistance to the City Deal has been tempered by the fact that the two parties with the most representation in the city are both playing a busted flush. Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems can now object to the City Deal without egg on their own faces because of the roles they have played in it.

The Lib Dems, as well as being the original sponsors of the City Deal project during their love affair with the Conservatives, also promoted the City Deal to the city council in 2014. They should not be surprised that a top-down Tory project for turbo-charged economic growth, urban sprawl, and civic exploitation has turned out to be toxic, false and undemocratic.

Labour, as well as unanimously approving the City Deal in 2014 have ended up precariously in one of the three driving seats of the process by taking control of the city council soon afterwards. Councillor Herbert, leader of the Labour group, must be feeling something like Keanu Reeves in the 1994 film Speed as he tries to steer the vehicle in a sensible direction with no ability to apply the brakes and a malevolent voice from the central government in his ear. Labour are compromised by their role in the City Deal and now forced to make astonishingly strange arguments about the benefits it will bring.

Perhaps the situation will be saved yet by residents organising in greater numbers, protesting and preventing the continuing corruption of the city by the City Deal. The question is whether they will be deterred by the idea that "progress must go on", "more roads must be built" and "there's no other way". Or whether they will say "enough is enough" and stand by their convictions this time.

More clarity will emerge from an event in a week organised by Smarter Cambridge Transport, called Rebooting the City Deal. I'm extremely grateful that there is enough grassroots passion and knowledge to organise this, free from political spin and corporate obfuscation. Do come.

http://www.smartertransport.uk/event/rebooting-city-deal/