Old Europe

In the UK briefly, where the political hot topic of the day is road pricing. The same confusion about the difference between ends and means of policy that bedevils other policy areas is rife in transport too. First, traffic congestion is seen as an urgent problem that needs to be solved, rather than a symptom of deeper problems. Second, there is no agreement on what would constitute a successful solution. Presumably, uncongested roads. But that could be achieved by halving the road network, and raising costs of motoring so that road travel were cut by 95 per cent. We'd then have fewer roads, sure, but they'd be traffic free.

Uncongested roads are not valid as a policy goal for government, because they do not necessarily generate increased social welfare. They may or may not be a means to other ends. The right response from a government is to work out what these other ends are, then to target them. It should let people in a properly regulated market decide on whether and how to travel.

Government, by subsidising road building in previous decades, has made too many people and interest groups too dependent on low cost road transport. It has subsidised the big and global at the expense of the small and local. So any sensible initiative, such as road pricing, is going to be aggressively opposed and the result will be too little, too late. A Social Policy Bond regime would make clear exactly where government funds are going: it would express policy goals in terms of outcomes that mean something to real people rather than paid lobbyists or entrenched interests.