For decades, the UK has talked a good game on climate change. We set ambitious targets and congratulate ourselves on decommissioning coal. Yet, one sector remains a stubborn, polluting stain on our record: transport.
Transport is now the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, accounting for over a quarter of our entire carbon footprint.
Why? Because for the last 30 years, a series of disastrous, ideologically-driven government policies have deliberately and effectively sabotaged the green alternative. We didn't just fail to build a good public transport system; we systematically broke the one we had, forcing millions of people into their cars.
The result isn't just a national "mess"; it's a 30-year environmental missed opportunity that has cost us dearly.
Making the Green Choice the Most Expensive Choice
The fundamental flaw in UK transport policy is this: it makes the sustainable choice the most difficult, unreliable, and outrageously expensive one.
It's a one-two punch of privatisation and deregulation that has been toxic for both the planet and the passenger.
1. The Great Rail Travesty
In the 1990s, British Rail was privatised. The promise was that private competition would bring efficiency and lower prices. The reality was a fragmented, high-cost nightmare.
The system was shattered, creating a convoluted structure where:
- Private companies run the trains (TOCs).
- Shadowy leasing companies (ROSCOs) own the trains and lease them at huge profits.
- A public body manages the tracks, often starved of funds.
The environmental impact? Instead of a unified, state-owned railway acting as a powerful tool for decarbonisation, we got a "rail fare lottery."
Prices became so high and complex that driving was, for many, the only rational financial choice. Every time a family of four chooses a 200-mile car journey over a train because the tickets cost £400, that is a direct environmental failure of privatisation. We've spent 30 years disincentivising the most efficient way to move large numbers of people.
2. The Bus Deregulation Disaster
Outside London, the bus network was deregulated, creating a "wild west" where private operators were allowed to chase profits, not serve the public.
This has been catastrophic for the environment:
- "Phantom Buses" & Service Cuts: Unprofitable (but socially and environmentally vital) routes were the first to go. Evening and rural services were decimated, isolating communities and making car ownership a necessity, not a choice.
- Congestion & Pollution: This policy forced more cars onto the road, which in turn created more traffic, slowing down the remaining buses. This created a transport "vicious cycle": more traffic makes buses less reliable, forcing more people to drive, which creates more traffic.
- The £3 Fare Cap Insult: The government's recent bus fare cap is the perfect example of this failure. It was meant to help. Instead, as many have found, operators have simply scrapped all their cheaper short-hop fares and set a new, high flat-rate of £3. A one-mile return journey to a city centre can now cost £6.
This isn't a subsidy for passengers; it's a subsidy for a failed model that punishes the very people—short-hop urban travellers—who are easiest to get out of their cars.
The True Environmental Cost: A 30-Year Tally
When you add up these failures, the environmental damage is staggering.
1. Stubborn Emissions & Stagnant Modal Shift
While other sectors have cut emissions, transport's have flatlined. This is because the "modal shift" from cars to public transport simply never happened. The policies of the last 30 years failed to take a single car off the road in any meaningful, long-term way.
2. Subsidising Pollution
The ultimate irony is that the government has been propping up this failed system while simultaneously subsidising the pollution it was supposed to fight. For over a decade, the Treasury has frozen fuel duty for cars, a policy that has reportedly added over 18 million tonnes of CO2 to our atmosphere.
Think about that. We have been actively subsidising car travel while running a public transport system so broken that it needs another set of subsidies just to stop it from collapsing.
3. A Legacy of Missed Opportunity
The real tragedy is the 30 years we've lost. That's 30 years we could have been building a unified, affordable, electric-powered network like those in Germany, France, or Switzerland. That's 30 years of carbon that didn't need to be emitted and cities that didn't need to be choked with toxic air.
Is There an End in Sight?
There is a glimmer of hope, but it's an admission of profound failure.
The government is now in the process of a complete U-turn. The creation of Great British Railways is a renationalisation of the rail network in all but name, an attempt to put the fragmented system back together. In major cities, mayors are finally winning the right to franchise their bus networks, creating London-style systems where public authorities, not private operators, set the fares and routes.
These are the right moves. But they are 30 years too late.
The next time you are stuck in traffic, or balk at the price of a last-minute train ticket, or pay £3 to travel one mile on a bus, know that it isn't just an inconvenience. It is the direct, physical result of a 30-year policy failure.
We haven't just been paying for it with our wallets; we've been paying for it with the health of our planet.