The eco hustings from hell
The eco hustings from hell
An event titled "The Future of London Transport" was more of a meeting of people who dislike cars
Yesterday what I can only describe as the “hustings from hell” took place in central London.
Officially titled The Future of London Transport, the event was organised by Clean Cities and Possible, and supported by: “20's Plenty for Us, Action Vision Zero, Asthma & Lung UK, British Vehicle Rental Leasing Association, Campaign for Better Transport, Centre for London, Choked Up, Clean Cities Campaign, CoMo UK, CPRE London, Electric Vehicle Association England, Friends of the Earth, Future Transport London, Global Action Plan, Green Alliance, Healthy Air Coalition, Impact on Urban Health, London Living Streets, Mums for Lungs, Possible, Solve the School Run, Sustrans, Transport & Environment”.
It really should have been titled The Future of London… without cars or The Future of London… run by green zealots - because almost all of these groups are obsessed with forcing vehicles out of the capital, so that we can live in a perfect eco utopia.
To see how partisan this “transport” event was look at the organisers:
First up is Clean Cities. Here’s a page from its website, which makes clear its hostility towards cars.
While the wording suggests Clean Cities only wants to tackle “polluting” vehicles, and move to “electric mobility” to clean up the planet, ultimately you’ll find it wants to remove cars full stop.
Its 2022 Impact Report, for instance, shows Clean Cities calling Belgian council leaders to introduce LTNs, which stop cars entering roads, making it pointless to buy an electric or any of the other “environmentally-friendly” options drivers are nudged towards (often by the same people who want to force all cars off the roads).
Then there’s Possible, a charity that also doesn’t like cars. Possible has a Car Free Cities campaign which “aims to help local communities reimagine their own neighbourhoods where car dependency is a thing of the past”:
Money, money, money
The interesting thing about these organisations is they keep telling us that “active travel” - middle-class code for “no cars” - will make life cheaper and better for the muggles.
But getting people to cycle seems to be an incredibly expensive business. Just look at the income of Sustrans, which supported yesterday’s event and describes itself as “the charity making it easier for everyone to walk, wheel and cycle”. It is also the charity that knows how to get government funding…
Last year it was given £7.54m in government contracts and £92.96m in government grants - extraordinary sums!
What has it delivered in that time? Well, here’s one example. In 2023 the London Borough of Lambeth commissioned Sustrans to create “five temporary low traffic neighbourhoods into permanent, beautiful public spaces”, and it was, err, a great success
According to Sustrans, 47% of Londoners support Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 16% oppose them, which is surprising stuff when you look at the fines handed out.
But back to the event…
Even more ghastly than the companies at yesterday’s London “transport” event were some of the panel members, the most odious being Mete Coban, the Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Environment & Transport.
He stepped in for Sadiq Khan, who, alongside Susan Hall (Conservative) and Rob Blake (Liberal Democrats) chose not to attend.
Coban - who I wrote about for The Telegraph last year - is the eco warrior who clocked up around 40,000 air miles on multiple long-haul trips - despite lecturing Hackney residents about LTNs and being the poster boy for the area’s £60 million contribution to climate change.
Here are some snapshots of my thread then, which you can find here.
Coban was defended at the time by Hirra Khan Adeogun, who works for Possible (one of yesterday’s event organisers).
Here she is, also being an eco hypocrite:
“TRAVELLING IS GOOD”
The chair
Chairing The Future of London Transport was Ross Lydall, City Hall Editor & Transport Editor of The Evening Standard.
Again, it is not obvious that he is a neutral adjudicator as opposed to being chosen because he likes cycling. Here’s one of his recent posts from X:
Notably, Lydall was quick to defend Coban when he cocked up yesterday and told attendees that Khan had only ruled out pay-per-mile “for now”.
Naturally everyone had questions about what that meant.
But Lydall reassured people afterwards that it was “more of a slip of the tongue” from Coban.
Was it? And was it Lydall’s place to tell us what to think, any more than it was a good idea for him to chair an event that is so ideological about travel.
Most of us know the answer. But it’s just another day in Khan’s “democracy”.