In this final Transport Commentary, it seems appropriate to look at the source of the 'inspiration' for much of this material since the mid 'noughties'. Newspaper articles, in print and online, have provided the jumping off point for many of these reflections on transport.
In particular, climate change has exercised the media more than most and has been a constant theme here over the past five years. Even when it is not explicitly stated, as in the coverage of topics like electric vehicles, climate change is a driving force. And when newspapers write about the UK's railway system, the need to take oil out of transport is the hidden agenda.
Unfortunately, media coverage of transport rarely puts the news into context. There is nothing unique about this; media coverage of anything is just as narrowly focused. Part of the problem is that journalists work in silos.
On newspapers and in broadcasting, the environment - the fiefdom that covers climate change - and transport rarely come together in one writer. Magazines may be less blinkered, because they don't have enough people to allow excessive demarcation, but they rarely set the agenda or create the sort of headline that provokes broadcasters to alight on a story. The result of this narrow approach to writing about transport is that politicians never receive coherent messages.
Another problem with the inability of the media to see the bigger picture is the corresponding inability to delve further into the implications of stories. For example, every week or so someone comes up with a variation on the theme of biofuels. The latest batch included such headlines as "Whisky waste refined into fuel". Interesting as this story may be in itself, what does it tell us about the future of car fuels?
One article quotes a Scottish Minister – of politics rather than religion – as saying that this innovation adds to the sustainability of the biofuel industry. How would this work, though? The article has already told us that even the academics behind the work expressed reservations about the economics of the notion.
Sustainability could come from the fact that this is yet another possible feedstock for biofuels. Add whisky dregs to all the other stories about biofuels made from odd sources and you can see how a new industry could arise. It will be very different from today's oil business. There may still be service stations with pumps, but they will not receive fuel from a gigantic refinery that is fed by an endless stream of supertankers travelling from gigantic oil fields. The gas station of the future may welcome tankers from thousands of different 'microrefineries', each of which receives feedstocks from hundreds of suppliers.
It wouldn't make sense for writers to say this every time a newspaper alights on an entertaining new input for a biofuel plant, but at some stage they really do need to draw attention to this possible consequence of the news event that they are covering. If not, it will come as a nasty shock when hundreds of businesses apply for permission to put up new processing plants all over the country. Then, of course, the planning writers will have their day.
This probably isn't the place to dive into party politics, beyond observing that incumbent administrations over the past five years rival one another in their failure to see the bigger picture. In any case it is a pretty fair bet that no government would have taken an intelligent approach to the inevitable slashing of public spending.
With the media finding it so hard to contextualise its coverage of issues, is it any surprise that politicians have done such a dreadful job of what was once known as "joined up government", before that phrase fell out of favour?
Regardless of the colour of the government, there would have been the same turf wars in Whitehall, with transport left fighting off attacks from education, health and other 'untouchables', all of which depend on an effective transport system. When we do know where the axe will fall, it is a safe bet that the journalists who write about it will stick to their narrow domains and we will have the usual one-dimensional headlines. It will be years before the penny drops and we see that we needed a more thoughtful approach to setting priorities.
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