About the courage of Spanish politicians (and the timidity of Welsh ones)

I previously wrote nice things about the tram network in Valencia and I had the opportunity to visit the southern part of the region a couple of weeks ago. Alicante is a sea side town with a lovely old city centre and sprawling modern outskirts. If Spain is in a recession, the more touristic cities along the coast  do not show it, which does not mean that the people there don't hurt.

However, coming from Wales, it was interesting to me how the region solved its public transport problem. The coast line has long been connected via an old diesel train all the way to Valencia. The track was narrow gauge and single file. In a sense this was all that is needed and the region decided in 2003 to update the network. What they did was smart and on the cheaper side of the usually grandiose transport investments in Spain that contributed so much to ruining the Spanish regions' finances.

In effect, they kept the single file tracks, electrified the network and replaced the rolling stock with trams. No guessing where those trams come from: only the finest from Bombardier (Canada). The result is a reliable regional transport network that connects Alicante with Benidorm, and two underground city stops in Alicante itself which allow future lines to be built.

A product of political courage - Alicante tram

Now for the politics of it. The investment in public transport in Spain was made mainly by the regions and it crippled many of them. Some even had to mothball their rolling stock or lease it to other countries. Yet, some regions have maintained their new transport networks and the improvements will give them an additional advantage once Spain's economy recovers. In a sense, it took guts to make those investment decisions, and you may say that it ruined a few political careers of regional politicians along the way.

Yet, then again, look at the dithering of the Welsh politicians when it comes to the modernisation of the valley lines. There is nothing they could not do what Spanish regional politicians did. But Carwin Jones and his bumbling cabinet will always lack the guts to spend political capital on large transport infrastructure projects. Instead, they look to London whilst accusing London at the same time for meddling in Welsh affairs.

I guess a country gets the politicians it deserves. And sometimes it takes a politician to put his political career on the line for a project he believes in. We know political courage is not Carwin Jones' strength. But if not for improving the lives of the people in Wales, what was his political life for?

Why Wales is so far behind

I am in Spain at the moment, in Valencia, to be precise. Spain consists of largely autonomous regions and Valencia is the capital of one of those. This makes Valencia roughly comparable to Cardiff in Wales. It has a regional government with a parliament, and decides most of its own affairs, from health to local government.

Taking the train here in Valencia to a nearby city however reminded me once again what's wrong with Wales. Leaving the main central station here in Valencia, the train quickly gathered speed, and arrived at the next stop without any hitch. You think this would be how it is in Wales as well, but far from it. Regional trains in Spain are electrified, whilst Welsh trains run on diesel engines, most of them built in the 1980s. Take the train from Cardiff to Holyhead and you know why most Welsh politicians (who can afford it since they claim it on their expenses) prefer to take the plane if they want to get from South Wales to North Wales.

But it gets worse. Arriva Wales Trains which won the contract for Wales also runs the regional connections to the valleys. I am not sure if you have ever experienced any of the valley trains but if you have you know what I am talking about. The trains are filthy, slow and break down frequently. Not that Arriva Trains would care about the dire service. Their investment in the rolling stock and train stations (in an abysmal state, up and down the country) has been practically zero since they won the franchise in 2003.

Arriva Wales Train in the Welsh valleys

This contrasts starkly with Spain. There are some gaps in the high speed railway network yet overall the trains here are fast, reliable and clean.

This is what you would get if you took a train in Valencia

So why is Wales so far behind? People cite usually two reasons. First, transport policy is not a prerogative of the Welsh Government but decided in London. Second, the geographical terrain in Wales makes fast trains difficult.

Both reasons border on feeble excuses. Transport policy does not differ in Spain from the UK. Most decisions are taken by the centre, that is in London or Madrid respectively. Yet, nothing prevents Carwin Jones and his Welsh Government to build a strong regional alliance of local councils to make a case in London for electrification and investment in Welsh trains. So far, his only response to the dire state of the Welsh railways has been: silence.

The second reason is even more spurious. It seems to me Swiss engineers may face even more difficult challenges in terms of terrain yet the Swiss railways are electrified at 100%. Yes, all of the Swiss railways are electrified which makes them one of the most reliable train networks in the world.

You may say this is all about to change since the Welsh Government has just announced that it will take a more robust stance in transport policy. But not so fast. After almost 15 years of silence on the issue, what did Carwin Jones decide to focus on? Cardiff Airport.

He wants to spend more than £20 million of the Welsh budget to buy (yes you are reading right: 'buy') the moribund Cardiff Airport. This is just the purchase price for an Airport that is practically dead in the water. Why? Since many of the ministers in his government have a constituency in the north of Wales it is essential that they can fly from Holyhead to Cardiff Airport. If Cardiff Airport would shut (which it is about to do) they would have to take the train. God forbid!

So, there we go again. The Welsh Government will spend £20 million on a dead airport with no transport links while we can hop on and off filthy trains in the valleys. That's transport priorities of Labour for you.

First Group extends its poor service to the Westcoast line

The government has awarded First Group the contract for the Westcoast line, which is currently run by Virgin. I have little experience of Virgin trains but I do have plenty of first hand experience of the line FirstGreatWestern runs from London to Bristol and on to South Wales.

To put it nicely, that experience is anything but 'first' class. The trains are usually hideously filthy and the main line from London to the West of England is operating with carriages from the 1980s. Doors are still manually opened and closed, and windows in the doors often do not shut while the train is moving.

As modern as you get with FIRST Group trains! 

First Group also seems to have pulled the wool over the government's eyes (once again) by backloading the franchise payments over the next 14 years. Since it is only in the last three years that they will pay the main bulk of the franchise money (about £2 billion) they will do what they have done before: pay average returns on the franchise in the first 11 years and then return the franchise to the government three years early which will incur a contractual fee which is far smaller than the £2 billion which they are projected to pay in the last three years.

If you think this is pure conjecture look at the markets today. First Group plc dropped by about 7% at the stock exchange and experts are unanimous that they have overbid and wont be able to deliver the sums they promise. The loser of this is of course the treasury whose officials seemed to have been swayed by the enormous franchise payments First promised to make when they awarded the contract but will probably go empty handed when First hits the buffers.

It seems that 'maximisation of returns' is not a good policy when making decisions, whether in investment or government franchising.

What shall we do about the Rhondda?

South Wales today is dominated by the services in and around Cardiff and Newport. But that wasn’t always the case. What are large de-industrialised areas now used to be economically vibrant communities up to the 1950s: the valleys. You can detect the signs of former glory everywhere you go. It is not just the industrial landscape that hints at past prosperity, it is above all the sheer number of non-conformist church halls everywhere you look. The valley communities prospered up to the 1950s but suffered enormously as the mining industries declined. 

There is much debate about who should get the blame for the decline of coal mining in the South Wales valleys but the fact is that a whole region depended on a single industry which is never a key to sustainability and long term growth. 

The decline of mining however also brought with it the decline of communities and the statistics bear this out. The Rhondda valley is a region which offers low pay, higher than average unemployment and negative migration patterns, according to the 2006 report of the Welsh Assembly Government. 

Is this decline irreversible? Are the Rhondda bound to be a region of low economic growth where young people struggle to find a future for themselves? 

While Rhondda certainly suffered from a lack of industrial policy in the UK over the last 30 years, perhaps its decline was inevitable given that its ascent was based exclusively on a single product? Yet, paradoxically, the Rhondda is not the only region in Europe (or elsewhere) which suffered the fate of social and economic decline where industrial monocultures collapsed. The Ruhr in Germany experienced a similar period of decay in the 1980s, yet is now a region of stable growth and prosperity. 

So what went wrong in the Rhondda? I recently went up the Rhondda Valley and took the train back to Cardiff. Two things really surprised me: first how steep the hills and mountains are that frame the valley. The potential for tourism is substantial but there is practically no tourism infrastructure. The second aspect that astonished me was how close and yet how far Rhondda is from Cardiff. Close in terms of distance (as the crow flies) which makes it entirely reasonable to commute to Cardiff and back for work (as many people do). 

Yet, it surprised me how far away Rhondda is from the bustling Capital City. This impression of distance is exacerbated by extremely poor public transport. As I was sitting in a delapidated train carriage of the local railways, I struggled to think of trains that are similarly run down and slow even as far away as Bulgaria or Romania which I last visited in the 1980s. True, the railways cut through steep hills and bridge deep gorges at times, which only adds to the picturesque nature of the ride. Yet, the speed of the transport link between the valley heads and Cardiff must be on a par with steam trains of the 19th century. 

So what does this all mean for the Rhondda? There is a broad consensus amongst political parties in the Assembly that the South Wales valleys urgently need development. Yet, equally the billions of pounds that have been poured into the valleys in European aid since 1999 have had little positive effect. In fact, the figures demonstrate that the region is today poorer than before the European payments started. The money was largely used as funding for local authorities to alleviate poverty and engage in so-called development projects; but there is little to show for it. 

In addition, even among the political elite there are few concrete policy proposals. Recently the newly elected leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood, when asked what she would do about the valley economies, pulled a blank. She stammered something about a new economy and people joining Plaid Cymru to revitalise communities. This sort of vacuous rhetoric doesn’t help. 

What may help however is to build effective and 21st century transport links between the valleys and Cardiff. The tracks are already there, and although transport policy is a prerogative of the Westminster government, the Welsh Assembly could, if it was serious about it, finance the electrification of the South Wales valleys railways. This would reduce transport costs and produce significant benefits to the people in the Rhondda. Let’s not wait for Westminster to act. The people in the Rhondda deserve it. 

HS2 and double speak

The government has finally made a decision on HS2. After some amendments to the original proposal the Transport Secretary Justine Greening has committed the government to build a highspeed line to Birmingham in the first phase, with a possible extension to Manchester, Leeds, and, eventually Glasgow and Edinburgh. 

I should say at the outset that I am broadly in favour of investing in a high speed train network in the UK, as long as the new lines remain affordable. The ICE in Germany is a good example. You can get a ticket from Cologne to Berlin for about 30 Euros if you book early. On top of that, the ICE runs to Paris, into Austrian and Switzerland and therefore creates important links with other national rail networks. 

What I deplore however is the double speak that comes with some arguments we hear from politicians. On Question Time, Justine Greening tried to make the case that the money for the new HS2 does not represent additional tax payers money since, wait for it, ‘the budget line will simply be transferred from CrossRail in 2015’. Paddy Ashdown then peddled the same nonsense shortly afterwards, saying HS2 will be financed by transferring the CrossRail budget once it is completed. 

I am not sure how many people understand the phrase ‘transferring the budget line’ but I have to say I initially struggled with it. Once I thought about it, however, the sheer magnitude of verbal obfuscation dawned on me. 

So, let’s look at this in detail. There is a capital budget at the Department for Transport which is currently used for CrossRail, say for the sake of argument, 4 billion annually (this is not the real figure). Once CrossRail is completed, the following year, another 4 billion which may have been spent on CrossRail, will now be spent on HS2. 

Sounds clear? Not to me! Who says that there is a natural right by which these moneys belong to the Department for Transport? If I am not mistaken, these are tax moneys and once a capital project has been completed there is no reason why the department for transport should simply cast around for another big project to spend the money on again. What about saving it for a change? What about returning it to the tax payer through cutting income tax for some at the bottom of society? 

Greening and Ashdown’s remarks reveal a remarkable arrogance of government. Once budgets have been set for a government department, not a penny will ever be returned, nor will a department voluntarily reduce its own budget line. For government spending, the only way is up! 

I deplore this politician’s speak. Why not say that following CrossRail, another big capital investment is needed and the Department of Transport will hence continue to have similar capital spending as before? Why not be straightforward with the British public about it? 

To be clear, I am generally in favour of HS2. I just wish our politicians would not try to hide behind Orwellian double speak when they have to defend difficult decisions.