Better railways, safer roads, cleaner fuels: in another decade, they would be the kind of transport issues commanding a pragmatic consensus in British politics.
But this election lands with transport wildly politicised, with clean air, speed limits and high-speed rail all dragged into the wider culture wars.
Meanwhile, transport has become emblematic of decline and the fraying public realm, from failing rail services to the potholes that pockmark Britain’s tarmac.
So what might the election resolve – and what are the transport policies deemed too difficult to sell?
The culture war battleground: drivers, Ulez and HS2
One of Keir Starmer’s less convincing recent repositionings may have been declaring Labour “the only party on the side of drivers” – a response to the long Conservative campaign to hammer home its backing for “people’s freedom to use their cars”.
The Tory plan for motorists was first outlined by the transport secretary, Mark Harper, in 2023 in a conference speech that appeared to echo online conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities, and signalled a clear move away from some of the urban planning measures the government had backed during Covid.
Now the party’s manifesto highlights its “backing drivers bill” in a chapter dedicated to “strengthening our communities”, pledging to curb low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and 20mph zones and reverse the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) – an unpopular move pinned firmly on Labour via the mayor, Sadiq Khan, despite the government’s own part in setting it up.
The rhetoric of ending a “war on motorists” is shared in Reform UK’s manifesto, which would scrap 20mph speed limits, LTNs and the Ulez, along with net zero commitments to transition from fossil fuel to electric vehicles.
Campaigners are concerned by the inflammatory language. Silviya Barrett, policy and research director of the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT), says: “We’re all more than just a driver, just a cyclist – we all need a range of means by which to move. Many drivers use buses and trains too, many walk their kids to school, and most drivers are keen to have more options.”
Another headline Conservative promise is to “stop road pricing”, implicitly accusing Labour of planning a pay-per-mile scheme. Starmer’s party has not backed any such policy, even though transport experts – including motoring organisations – believe some such scheme eventually must come.
Beyond roads, HS2 has perhaps been the only other transport issue as divisive. Scrapping the entire route, including that already half-built from London to Birmingham, is Reform’s headline transport policy, whose back-of-an-envelope calculations claim to save another £25bn.
Any mention of HS2 is conspicuously absent from Labour’s manifesto, while the Conservatives’ reiterates the derided “Network North” mixture of schemes funded by a putative £36bn saving from axing HS2’s northern leg. Only a lonely Liberal Democrat paragraph proposes finding a way to rekindle the high-speed railway to Manchester and beyond.
The post-election action areas: rail reform – and potholes
Despite the fate of the UK’s biggest engineering project, both big parties are pledging to speed up infrastructure delivery, with a Labour review under the ex-Siemens boss Jürgen Maier claiming both time and money could be saved.
But the humble pothole is perhaps focusing more minds: as Labour’s manifesto puts it, “the potholes cratering our roads are a visible sign of the decline after 14 years of Conservative rule”. The Tories have already earmarked £8bn to fill roads instead of building HS2. And even in a Labour manifesto where additional spending is all but forbidden, an extra £65m a year for potholes will be found by putting off a road-building scheme, the planned A27 bypass in West Sussex.
A bigger Labour pledge, but one that it argues is cost-free, is immediate rail reform, with the shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, promising “the biggest overhaul to our railways in a generation”.
Labour can afford to go large on reform plans that in many ways align with the Conservatives’ own belated attempts to force through change. Even what might once have been regarded as an ideological red line between the parties – partial renationalisation of rail – has been reluctantly enacted under the current government, as franchising collapsed and more train operators were taken into public hands.
Whoever wins, a new Great British Railways with a shake-up of the railway’s structure and fares is promised. The “guiding mind” will have plenty to work at: latest annual figures from the rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, show that only 85% of trains were officially on time (ie within five or 10 minutes of schedule) in 2023-24 – the worst performance in 19 years.
A critical task will be to end the disruption from rail’s long-running industrial relations standoff. While the Conservatives recommit to the ill-fated minimum service levels legislation, Labour makes no direct mention of the strikes, but a manifesto laced with references to working in partnership with unions to “end chaos” suggests a possible reset.
Off limits: road pricing and curbing flying
The vast majority of taxation from motoring comes from fuel duty paid via the petrol pump: about £27bn in annual Treasury revenue destined to dwindle and vanish as cars turn electric. For many transport experts, some form of road pricing appears inevitable and the fairest system. Politics, however, is likely to rule it out.
“Road pricing is toxic because it is very complicated,” says Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, who was once tasked as a civil servant with drawing up a plan that produced enormous public backlash. “People think – ‘I’m not driving in the rush hour because I like it, but because my employer wants me to turn up’.”
Barrett and the CBT have proposed a 2p per km charge for electric cars to make sure all drivers contribute to the exchequer. Gooding counsels that any scheme should be as simple as possible, citing the kind of pay-per-mile schemes being introduced in Iceland and New Zealand. He adds: “The dilemma is the government wants you to buy an electric car – but how do you do that if you charge people to drive it?”
But, he says: “I would be flabbergasted if someone in the Treasury building isn’t already doing that calculation. We all think this charge is coming. The sooner you are honest about it, the sooner people can factor it into their decisions.”
However, parties appear to be shying away from even the lip service paid to future net zero commitments. A Greenpeace/Friends of the Earth manifesto analysis scores the Conservatives on 1.5 out of 10 on transport, compared with 4.5 for Labour and 8.5 and 9 for the Lib Dems and Greens respectively.
Tackling aviation emissions is a harder, and could be even less electorally popular to fix than the transition for cars. The Lib Dems and Greens espouse some kind of frequent flyer levy, a ban on short domestic flights where a rail alternative exists, and increased taxation, on private jets in particular. Both main parties affirm support for the sector and its dubious solution of sustainable aviation fuels.
