No one in Britain today can need much convincing that there is something seriously wrong with our transport system. Making any journey long or short, for work or leisure is a nightmare four years after the election of a Labour government - and it’s getting worse.
Privatisation obviously has a lot to answer for - but the problems go back before that. To get a fully integrated, sustainable transport system that works there needs to be a huge injection of public money. No other European country, for example, tries to run its capital with as little subsidy as London has had since the 1970s. This must be reversed.
Railway privatisation has led loss of lives time and again over the last five years with disasters at Southall, Paddington and elsewhere. The Hatfield crash last year also caused the virtual collapse of the system for months - also demonstrating how fragile its ability to cope actually is. The broken rail which caused the crash was a result of management decisions motivated on the basis of profit. This made the train operating companies happy - instead of taking the blame for an ever-decreasing level of service they have been able to palm off all the blame onto Railtrack.
The response of new Labour to all this is breathtaking. A huge popular majority support renationalisation of the railways. But the government is more deeply committed to market madness than to listening to its working class supporters. Three years ago Prescott argued that we "could not afford" to renationalise the railways - the money was needed for hospitals and schools.
But instead new Labour have presided over ever increasing subsidies, far outstripping the potential cost of renationalisation. Instead of "City money" being invested through Railtrack in a new modern railway, we have been pouring money into shareholders’ pockets while the railways collapse.
Only now Railtrack is on the verge of bankruptcy - because of the cost of improvements needed after Hatfield - are discussions taking place about different forms of management. But Blair’s team still completely refuses to bring back the railways into public ownership.
At the same time, as they struggle to privatise London Underground, the government is in negotiation with the very maintenance companies responsible for the debacle on the main rail network. Negotiations between the government and the Kiley/Livingstone team have stalled after what seemed like an agreement was reached in early February. But that deal was based only on having a unified management structure rather than any willingness by New Labour to make any compromise on ownership, despite the clear signals from Livingstone’s election last May on what the electoral consequences of such stubbornness could be.
If all of this were not mad enough, the Blair team is putting even more lives at risk through its insistence that air traffic control will be sold off. This particular adventure will not even raise any significant revenue - its motivation is almost purely ideological.
In recent weeks we have seen the first announcements of yet another phase of new road building despite the huge protests that met many of the previous stages. Again the priorities are clear - pour public money into road building while the public transport system is left to rot even further.
What is needed is a comprehensive alternative to our current transport system, which has greed for profit at its centre.
We want to work towards a fully integrated public transport system in which travel to work and for other basic essentials would be free, while travel for leisure purposes should be charged for. We want to see freight taken off the roads and returned to rail where it would be much safer and cleaner.