Public awareness of mayoral transport policies is high, but metro mayors have limited powers to deliver. The Government should expand and deepen devolution to give London-style transport powers to mayors across England.
Ahead of the 2024 Mayoral Elections on 2 May, Centre for Cities polled people in nine of the mayoralties going to the ballot box to understand public awareness of the mayoral institution and policies. Most people were unable to name a specific mayoral policy in their area, but when they could it was most likely transport-related. This blog looks at what this tells us about the role of metro mayors, public expectations and why it tells us we should devolve more transport powers to mayors.
Transport-related policies were the most well-known policies in mayoralties across England (see Figure 1). Unsurprisingly, this trend was particularly strong in places with flagship transport policies. For example, 35 per cent of respondents in London referenced the ULEZ, 15 per cent of respondents in Tees Valley were able to identify taking control the airport as a mayoral policy, and the Bee Network was relatively well-known in Greater Manchester.
In Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, the £2 bus fare caps were also relatively well-known. Current awareness of these is harder to disentangle from the Government’s decision to extend the cap across England and until the end of 2024, but it was the mayors who spearheaded fare caps in the first place.
Figure 1: Transport-related policies were the most identifiable policies in mayoralties
This high awareness of transport as a mayoral policy makes sense because transport is a tangible, local issue – transport connects people to jobs, services and education, and is the second largest expense for urban households. But there is a mismatch between this high level of public awareness and the limited powers currently available to mayors.
The high level of public awareness of transport issues is recognised by both incumbents and mayoral candidates standing in this year’s mayoral elections: Mayor Sadiq Khan has frozen Transport for London fares until 2025, the word ‘transport’ appears 33 times in Mayor Andy Burnham’s 24 page manifesto, and four out of the six candidates running to be the first elected mayor of York and North Yorkshire are calling for the introduction of a London-style integrated ticketing system for the region.
However, London is the only city where the mayoralty actually has powers to implement a wide-ranging package of transport policies. Without these powers and the institutional framework (such as Transport for London) to work across the city rather than by local authority area, measures like the Oyster card and bus hopper fare which set London’s transport apart are difficult to implement.
Mayors in other places have less control over the transport network, and the powers they do have were negotiated on a case-by-case basis (see Figure 2).
Some progress has been made with the powers that are available to mayors outside of London. For example, the first progress report from the Bee Network, Greater Manchester’s vision for ‘an integrated London-style transport system’, shows franchised services outperforming non-franchised ones and displaying steady patronage growth. Liverpool City Region and South and West Yorkshire have also begun the bus franchising process.
Nevertheless, the reality is that there is a mismatch between public awareness, mayoral ambitions, and the powers available to metro mayors. What has been delivered to date with existing powers should encourage the Government to press on with its commitments in the Levelling Up White Paper to devolve further transport powers.
Figure 2: Devolution deals and transport powers by combined authority
At what geography powers should be held at depends on what level they operate over. Defence, for example is very much a national issue. Meanwhile, it makes sense to deliver neighbourhood-level services like libraries at the local authority level. Local transport powers should match the wider area in which people live, work and attend education, making combined authorities (which stretch over this geography) the most suitable institutions to hold such powers.
Centre for Cities polling found that people were more likely to think that mayors should control transport than any of the other policy areas they were asked about. In Greater London, a higher proportion than anywhere else said they preferred transport governance to sit with the mayor.
Polling shows that most people recognise transport policies, particularly where there are flagship policies such as ULEZ and Teesside Airport, and this is not lost on mayors and candidates who are making transport policies a priority.
Despite high levels of public awareness, and even if the public is broadly in favour of seeing transport decisions made at a more local level, mayors outside of Greater London are not currently empowered to make significant changes to transport in their places. It is therefore unsurprising that, although metro mayors are well-placed to deliver transport improvements, the public focuses more on local authorities.
The Government can realign this by further empowering mayors by deepening and expanding devolved transport powers across England. In turn, metro mayors continue should make full use of these powers – for example rolling out bus franchising in mayoralties that are yet to do so – to demonstrate why combined authorities are well-placed to deliver transport improvements.
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