The State and its role - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 145

benefits. However this would still leave the impacts on non-users - positive or negative -
unaccounted for. Ideally (in the case of adverse environmental effects) their estimated
monetary value would be incorporated in user charging also - the so-called 'polluter
pays' principle (Pearce et al. 1989 p. 156). If the mechanisms to levy such charges
do not exist then there may be a case for the State to intervene using other kinds of
(regulatory) measure which impact on travel to produce outcomes different from those
which would result solely from the interplay of producers and consumers of particular
transport modes. The aim would be to deliver outcomes which reflect more nearly the
situation which would arise if the various external effects (so-called 'externalities')
were included in market transactions - i.e. as if people had to compensate all those
whom they disbenefited and were rewarded by all those they benefited.
Impacts on other travellers or on environmental conditions are not the full extent
of possible externalities. Two other categories are particularly important. The first is
the impact of transport on the economy as a whole (whether at local, regional or
national levels). The second is the effect of transport on the pattern of development.
Since the State is not indifferent to the social, economic and environmental outcomes
in either of these it follows that the public interests involved need to be reflected in
regulatory regimes governing both transport operations and investment.
Interactions between the different categories of transport users and between
transport and local environments now form part of standard procedures for the
assessment of individual transport proposals (Chapter 21). Recognition of broader
interactions between transport, the economy and spatial development accounts for the
increasing emphasis being placed on the strategic planning of all three (Chapter 18).
2) Imperfect information
Even if mechanisms existed which made it possible for transport suppliers and
consumers to pay and receive sums equivalent to the external costs and benefits they
generated there would be great difficulties in them knowing what the full extent of
these were. (Knowledge of all such factors is another of the key conditions for markets
to produce economically efficient outcomes.) The direct provision of adequate,
socially responsible information, or the regulation of operators so that they supply it, is
therefore another case for State intervention.
Two examples can be given. The first is real-time information about traffic
conditions on the highway network. The second is information about the availability
of public transport services in an area. In both cases there is a distinction between
the private and public interests involved. A commercial supplier of route information
may have no scruples about its traffic and environmental effects and how these marry
with the management strategies of public highway authorities. In a similar vein an
individual public transport operator may be more concerned with attracting users on to
his particular services than with providing co-ordinated information that fulfils public
objectives of maximising use of publicly available networks as a whole. In both cases
therefore there may be a public interest in over-riding the particular private interests.
The issue of imperfect information also arises in connection with safety regulation
as far as users of particular transport modes are concerned. (Impacts on the safety of
non-users is a straightforward externality of the kind discussed earlier.) In an ideal
world prospective users of transport services would have full knowledge of the safety
features they possessed and what the practical consequences of these were for the risk
being taken on any one journey. In a free market levels of safety would then be one