A Transport of Delight

The attention span of both the British public and the news media that serve them is a short one. When there are no new developments in a story it quickly slips from the front pages, whatever its real importance, and for the public out of sight is often out of mind.

In the weeks immediately following the September 11 attacks the question of the terrorist threat, and later of the military action in Afghanistan, were naturally uppermost among the public's concerns. In our monthly measure of "the most important issues facing Britain", the "defence/foreign affairs" category, mentioned only by a few of the public in normal circumstances, jumped straight to the top of the list as the most named concern in September, and remained at the top in October. But by the end of November, it had already slipped behind the NHS into second place.

This trend is liable to continue, especially if there are no further terrorist casualties and the British military presence in Afghanistan does not lead to great numbers of deaths. Furthermore, because - inverting the familiar proverb - good news is no news, it is often the case that governments receive too little public credit for the problems they successfully solve. The economy is a classic example of this, a far more prominent issue in elections when things are going badly than when they are going well. In a similar way, incidents like the Afghanistan War, especially if events trail off rather than coming to a clear conclusion (as in the Falklands), can turn from being a political necessity with overwhelming public support to a political liability as the public loses interest before the government is able to finish the job.

Consequently, Mr Blair's current globetrotting will probably at best have no domestic impact, and risks the public drawing the conclusions that the government has the wrong priorities. As MORI's poll for the News of the World in December found, [Crimes Against Children Poll] the NHS and education are the two concerns on which the perception of the government's priorities falls shortest of the public's own preference - in each case the gap between the number who say it should be one of the government's priorities and the number that think it is represents one in five of the public (19%). On the other hand, a considerable proportion of the public identified the foreign situation as one of the government's priorities yet did not name it as one of their own. These gaps have probably widened in the weeks since that poll was taken.

With fears of terrorism receding, public services will again become the most pressing issue. Over the last few days the service which has received much the most negative coverage has been public transport, and specifically the railways. Yet the NHS and education are persistently cited by far more of the public as being of concern to them. In the last five years, "transport/public transport" has never been mentioned in one of our monthly polls as one of the most important issues facing Britain by more than 14% of the public, not even at the height of the rail chaos that followed the Hatfield crash; "NHS/hospitals" over the same period has never been named by fewer than 33%.

However, if concern about transport is not wider, perhaps it cuts deeper. Private polling for the Labour Party leaked over the Christmas period suggests the government has been warned by its pollster, Philip Gould, of the political danger in increasing public disillusionment with public transport; reportedly it found dissatisfaction with standards in public transport higher than for any other public service.

The political importance of transport is magnified because it is one of those issues that the public sees as a specific local problem affecting them, as well as a national problem. A MORI survey for the Commission for Integrated Transport in June-July 2001 [People Willing To Pay To Improve Transport, Says Major CfIT Survey] asked respondents to name the main problems facing the area they lived in. The question was unprompted (we didn't give respondents a list of possibilities, nor did we ask other questions about transport problems first, so that transport would spring to mind.)

Q What do you see as the main problems facing the area you live in?

(Others below 6% nationally omitted) Source: MORI/Commission for Integrated Transport Base: 2,202 British adults 16+, 9 June-5 July 2001

As can be seen, transport issues were prominent across the country, and even more so in London.

Our recent research for the Hansard Society [Use of the Internet in the UK Election & None Of The Above: Non-Voters And The 2001 Election] into causes of the low turnout at last year's general election strongly suggests that feelings of local involvement and personal relevance of the political issues being decided are among the strongest motivators of electoral turnout. Transport may, therefore, have a political significance over and above its apparent prominence in the list of issues facing the country. That risk will surely not have been lessened over the past few days by an escalating campaign of rail strikes and the press campaign over Stephen Byers' foreign holiday. Press reports this morning suggest Mr Byers is staking the government's reputation on its ability to solve Britain's transport problems in the next few years. He should be aware the public may take him at his word.

But solving these problems will be by no means straightforward, not least because they encompass two different though related questions, which affect different parts of the public and may need diametrically opposed solutions: improving public transport may involve measures directly or indirectly damaging to private motorists, whether merely from the diversion of funds from road-building the public transport infrastructure or more direct obstacles such as bus lanes. Of course, it is a central part of the strategy in many cases that public transport improvement is aimed at enticing motorists out of their cars; yet many of public transport's problems arise from the fact that, at least at peak periods around London and other major cities, it is already operating at or indeed beyond full capacity.

The conflict is clear in the "local problems" question already cited. Traffic congestion and lack of parking space concerns some of the public, more than think to name public transport shortages. A MORI survey for the County Surveyors' Society in September also [In Touch With People About Transport] illustrates some of these tensions. Offered the prospect of extra government investment in transport over the next few years, there is no clear consensus on how it should be spent. Even more intriguing is the comparison with the corresponding survey in 2000. In both cases, "reducing the cost of public transport" was the single most popular option. However, support for this fell sharply when an extra option, "improving facilities for pedestrians and cyclists", was offered in the later survey.

Q If the government were to invest extra money on transport, in which two or three of the following areas would you most like to see greater investment made?

Source: MORI/County Surveyors' Society

It is interesting, too, to note that when we asked the public about the deterioration of transport standards over the past few years, it was not - by a long way - worsening rail services that led the list. (It is true that when this survey was conducted, in September, the railways were less in the news than they are at the moment, but even so the results are striking.)

Q Which of these aspects of transport do you think has improved in your local area over the last five years? Q And which do you think has got worse in your local area over the past five years?

Source: MORI/County Surveyors' Society

Again, it is the motorists rather than the public transport users who predominate. Furthermore, the most frequently desired improvement in public transport, reduced costs, cannot be a solution in themselves even if possible since in many cases cost is acting as a necessary rationing mechanism in a service that already has as many rush-hour passengers as it can take. Add to this the uncertain consequences of Ken Livingstone's controversial road-pricing scheme, due to be introduced in a couple of years time, and the prospects look rockier still.

Good luck, Mr Byers, you are probably going to need it.

Roger Mortimore 11 January 2002