On the roads

Now you know. You are freezing on the East Croydon platform, clutching this newspaper against the wind. You are squashed against the steamy window of a 30-year-old train out of London Bridge. You still don't know if you will get home before the wife is asleep, let alone the kids. Tomorrow it's the same again. But you know the plan. The Government wants you to drive. As of Tuesday the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, put in place the final piece of his new, anarchic, transport strategy. He is to give £2.5 billion to more motorways, on top of his recent boost to bypasses and A-roads. Last July the Government floated a new highfares policy, with next year's end of the post-privatisation "fares cap".

In January fares for London's half-million rail commuters will rise by an average of 2.5 per cent. The following January they are expected to soar, to "ease overcrowding".

Meanwhile, last month the Strategic Rail Authority abandoned its planned track "upgrades" and said it would concentrate on getting existing services back to normal. There will be no new East Coast line or commuter pathways or bigger carriages or longer platforms.

On the roads, however, all news is good. In the Budget there was no return to the fuel tax regulator. Using your car will now be cheaper per mile than when Labour came to office, as will using a plane.

Labour's transport policy 2002 can be expressed in a nutshell. It is to expand capacity and reduce costs for drivers and flyers, and limit capacity and raise costs for rail travellers. The Government wants to encourage you out of your train and into your car.

I am told this demented policy is strongly advocated by middle-class focus groups. They say trains are for nerds. New Labour goes by car. When fuel-tanker drivers go on strike, ministers panic.

When the SRA tears up John Prescott's 10-year transport strategy, as it did last month, nobody cares. It promised 50 per cent more passengers, better punctuality and less commuter overcrowding. Such ministerial targets have always been meaningless.

British train travel is expensive. The average cost of a standard 100-mile train ticket in Britain is £60. It is roughly £20 in France and Germany, £15 in the Netherlands and £10 in Spain and Italy. At the last count, the Government subsidy per trip in Britain was £1.42. In France it was £2.30 and in Germany £3.20.

Meanwhile, the Treasury is now spending just half the percentage of the gross national product (one per cent instead of two) on transport that it was in the mid-Eighties under Lady Thatcher. That is why today's roads are jammed.

Britain's railways once boasted themselves the best in the world. Not now. Like hospitals and prisons, they are among the most overcrowded and overworked in Europe. They were the best when run by private companies or by a single nation-alised corporation. Now they are run by four different tiers of government, combining the worst of all worlds.

For X-rated Whitehall horror I recommend the website of the Strategic Rail Authority, www.sra.gov.uk. It looks like the Clapham Junction points after a nasty accident. Your train may apparently be driven by Connex.

In fact, it is leased from a private rolling-stock company, franchised by the SRA, on Network Rail track, under the aegis of the Rail Regulator consulting with Ken Livingstone, bossed by the Transport Department, controlled by the Treasury, on the orders of Tony Blair.

Every single one of these bodies can throw a spanner in the wheel and bring the train to a halt.

As for profit, it has nothing to do with the price of your season ticket. It is determined by the Franchise Agreement, the Lease Payment, the Track Access Charge, the Network Rail Licence, the Operating Licence, the Performance Incentive Payment, the Short Formations Incentive Payment, the Timetable Change Incentive Payment and " average lateness".

If the company makes too much profit it is clobbered. If it makes too little, as yesterday with Connex, it does not go bankrupt but is bailed out with £58 million from the Government. This is absurd when, at the same time, it is being fined £4.5 million for poor performance.

Under the Treasury's Robson plan for privatisation, "risk" was supposedly transferred to the private sector. That was garbage. Both risk and leadership remain in Whitehall. That is the whole trouble.

The coming year, 2003, will be the last in which train commuting into and out of London will be relatively "cheap" - that is only three times more expensive than elsewhere in Europe. The gist of the SRA strategy, under Mr Darling's instructions, is to concentrate on getting existing performance back to that of 1990, before privatisation.

Poorer passengers will have to be forced out into cars or buses. The chaotic governance of the railways will have to be brought under the tight control of one person, presumably the SRA's chairman, Richard Bowker.

He will be de facto "chairman of British Rail" with absolute power over track and services. We might then be back to where we were 10 years ago, in every sense.

If this was Victorian Britain, the conduct of the railways in the 1990s would have led to a Dickens novel and a Royal Commission. If the railway timetable were an Official Secrets scandal or a foot-andmouth outrage or a Bloody Sunday massacre, Parliament would be in uproar and millions would be spent on "learning the lessons".

John Prescott, who has presided over most of this shambles, would be lashed to the up line at King's Cross. Millions of commuters would pack his autopsy in Brick Lane.

I know what would be found carved on his bleeding heart. It would be the emblem of a Jag.