The power of transport planning recognised by Osborne: but is this a blessing or a curse?

Chancellor George Osborne has presented an image of a state that clears the way for investment, that stops, as the transport secretary put it, poor infrastructure acting as "a brake on growth". But otherwise which gets out the way of enterprise.

The transport profession, in so far as it can contribute to this vision, has a role to play. Osborne made this clear by providing £300m of development funding for the "next generation of transformative transport infrastructure". There is also £50m simply for Transport for the North to operate, developing plans. Not here talk of an unnecessary bureaucracy or a back-office needing hacking back; nor a land-use planning system that throttles growth. Nor, indeed, the operational DfT budget, cut back by 37%.

Transport planners, here, are seen as capable of being a powerful force for good. The good that Osborne, billed as the "hi-vis Chancellor" by commentators, and lover of the Victorian engineer ambition, is eyeing is big projects. 

"This is a big Spending Review by a government that does big things," he declared, and signalled a list of big projects he hoped will be backed by the National Infrastructure Commission - headed by another lover of big projects, Lord Adonis - topped by Crossrail 2 (already the recipient of £100m for development), but also including proposals from the Northern Transport Strategy. He reprised his "biggest road improvement plan since the 70s and largest programme of rail investment since the Victorian times," salivated at the "construction start" for HS2, and added another line: declaring: "We are the builders."

The drive to build means capital investment is increased. It means that capital funding is found for active travel, a recognition that this, too, can contribute to our running faster in the Chancellor's "global race".

The Local Sustainable Transport Fund, subsumed into the Local Growth Fund, still badged as the LSTF, but now in a list of "economic infrastructure" the DfT is responsible for. There was no mention of, say, "pollution" or "air quality" in the Spending Review documents or in the DfT's press release, or any link made between active travel and public health. Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, the Campaign for Better Transport had advocated the LSTF be replaced with a 'Transport into Work' fund to pay for better transport to employment and training. Meanwhile, outside the £300m for developing "next generation" projects, the revenue grant for local government's transport planners is hacked back, and, for TfL, removed altogether. They will need to prove their worth by developing 'economic infrastructure'.

Everyone has to pay their way now, and dead-weight needs to be jettisoned, non-contributors, or assets not sweating hard - with billions of TfL, Network Rail and local government assets sold off as revenue funding from Whitehall shrinks. Transport planners are key contributors to achieving our national purpose - and that purpose is economic above all else.