One Project, Seven Vetoes: What the Northern Line Extension Really Teaches Us
Key Takeaways
- The blame for failing to get transport projects off the ground is often that there are too many people who can veto the project.
- The Northern Line Extension in London succeeded despite the system, not because of it, surviving 7 separate veto points that could each have killed it.
- The more decision-makers with power to block a project, the less likely it is to survive, however strong the case for it.
- Devolution only reduces the vetocracy if it actually removes veto points.
What Next?
Does your transport system have a vetocracy problem?
Introduction
Ask most people why a transport project didn’t get up, and they'll point to not enough funding, a business case that didn't stack up, or a government that lost its nerve.
These are all real, but we often miss a crucial factor of governance: how many people have the power to say no?
This is the vetocracy problem. The more decision-makers with the power to block a project, the less likely that project is ever to get built, however good the case for it is. This single factor, largely absent from public debate about transport, does a lot to explain what actually gets delivered.
To show what I mean, I want to compare two UK transport solutions. One succeeded, against long odds. The other is still, decades later, on the drawing board. Both tell the same story about how many hands are on the veto lever in UK transport.
The Exception to the Rule
Let's start with the project that beat the odds.
In the early 2010s, I was a Councillor in an Inner London Council with responsibility for Strategic Planning and Transport.
Within the Council's area, we had been working on the regeneration of the Nine Elms precinct. This area includes the world-famous Battersea Power Station and runs along the south bank of the River Thames up to the Palace of Westminster, covering two local authority areas.
At the time, the transport options within the regeneration area were poor, which meant density was being restricted because of the expected impact on the road network. To unlock more density, predominantly housing, a better transport solution was required.
The owners of the Battersea Power Station came to the Council with a suggestion that we get a tube (metro) line extension in the precinct to provide the required mass transit solution to unlock higher densities, and that it would be paid for through value capture mechanisms, mostly on developers.
The concept was that the developers would benefit from the tube line through both higher land values and higher densities, and that they would benefit from the extension, providing them with higher profits that could be used to help offset the costs of the extension substantially.
It might sound like a straightforward concept, but the barriers to seeing it come to reality were substantial.
The first hurdle was that you needed a Council that would buy into the vision and not think that it was a fanciful idea that would never happen. Fortunately, we were a Council that was open to new ideas. Indeed, I recall the discussion around the Council cabinet table when we were discussing the idea. Some of us were aware of value capture mechanisms to fund transport and were supportive of studying the options in more detail, which the Council duly did, employing a consultancy to look at the concept in more detail.
The report came back with a big tick for the feasibility, overcoming another hurdle.
The next hurdle was that the Nine Elms area covered two Councils and a joint governance model had been set up to coordinate the regeneration. However, the two Councils were opposites when it came to their political affiliations and reputations.
If the Councils could not agree, then the project would not go anywhere. Fortunately, there had been joint working on the regeneration area for a substantial period of time, and these relationships at political and Council officer level helped to align both parties. Another hurdle was overcome.
Despite both Councils being supportive, neither Council was responsible for building and operating tube lines. Those powers were with Transport for London (TfL), which reported to the Mayor of London. The Mayor’s support was critical to getting the project over the line. Fortunately, the Mayor’s recently appointed Chief of Staff was the former leader of my Council. He understood the problem well and was able to explain the challenge to the Mayor and how it could help meet the Mayor’s objectives.
The report into the project has clearly shown that there was a need for the project to be financed upfront before the developers' contributions would come in. This meant that TfL would need to borrow the money. However, TfL could not make this decision on its own; it needed to have the approval of the national government and the Department for Transport and, in particular, the Treasury, which is notoriously difficult to navigate, especially when the UK was in a position of trying to tackle its large budget deficit post-GFC.
However, this project had two advantages.
The first was that the Secretary of State for Transport at the time was a local MP, her constituency falling within our Council area. This meant that the minister would be across the project and would make it easier to get the support of the Department for Transport.
The second was that the local MP was also supportive of the project and had very good relationships with both the Secretary of State for Transport and the Chancellor of the Exchequer (The UK Treasurer) and was able to advocate successfully for the project in what was a marginal seat.
The other advantage that this project had was that it was in London. The UK Treasury’s guidance on infrastructure projects was heavily structured towards favouring projects in already high-productivity areas at the expense of lower-productivity ones, a self-fulfilling prophecy that has been highlighted in recent reviews and is now being amended. One basic issue was the reliance on travel time savings for transport projects. Travel times in more productive areas are worth more than they are in less productive but high potential areas.
In short, all the stars aligned for this project.
The Northern Line Extension was announced by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in July 2012, and construction began in November 2015 and was opened on 20 September 2021 at a final cost of £1.1bn.
The Lessons from the Success
Reading that story, you might conclude the UK has a strong governance model for delivering transport projects. It got built and even came in under budget.
I'd argue the opposite. The Northern Line Extension didn't succeed because of the system. It succeeded despite it.
New transport projects of this scale are innovations, and one thing we know about innovations is that they get structurally strangled when lots of people have the power to veto a project. In the case of the Northern Line extension, there were so many veto points that it is actually a miracle it ever happened.
A veto on the project could have come from any of the following:
- Either local Council leader.
- The Mayor of London.
- The local MP.
- The Minister for Transport.
- The Chancellor.
- The Prime Minister.
That is 7 veto points. Far too many to allow innovation to thrive.
To show you what I mean, let's take an example of a project where the vetocracy is well and truly in control.
Leeds Mass Transit
Now for the other side of the story.
Leeds is regarded as the largest city in western Europe without a mass transit system. It isn't for lack of trying. It's for lack of anyone with the power to see a plan through. Here is a good summary from the BBC on the Leeds public transport debacle.
Like many cities, Leeds lost its expansive tram network in the late 1950s. In the 1940s, Leeds had been considering an underground light rail system, but in the post-war era, other projects got priority from the national government. In the 1970s, Leeds got an underground road network which became heavily congested.
In the late 1980s, a scheme was hatched to put light rail back. Unfortunately, Leeds City Council was only lukewarm on the project, and so the national government backed a Manchester project instead (a project that today is considered a significant success).
A new, more ambitious elevated railway scheme was developed in the early 1990s. It was considered too ambitious, and the funding was moved to a transport scheme in Sheffield instead.
In the early 2000s, a 3-line light rail network was approved by the national government. There were even spades in the ground. But then costs began to escalate, and a new transport minister pulled the plug, telling the city to use buses instead.
Leeds then proposed trolley buses, but this idea died when a planning inspector condemned the scheme.
There is now another scheme, and the West Yorkshire Mayor has pledged to begin construction in 2028.
Five schemes. Five vetoes. Decades lost. And in every case, the decision sat with someone outside Leeds, answerable to a different electorate, weighing different priorities.
To a large extent, Leeds has never been in control of its own destiny. It has always been reliant on the national government for funding, and that reliance has been its undoing.
It is the example of Leeds and many others that has led the former Mayor of Manchester and now the UK's new Prime Minister to put forward a vision for greater devolution of powers from London.
Devolution As The Solution?
If too many vetoes are the problem, devolution looks like the obvious fix. Take power away from Westminster, and you take away the veto points that killed five Leeds schemes.
The UK's track record here is mixed.
Substantial devolution, at least by UK standards, has already been given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The results don't inspire much confidence. In Scotland's case, the separatist Scottish National Party has been in power since 2007. This has created a strong incentive to blame the national government in Westminster for local problems, even as devolved public services, such as health and education, have deteriorated, encouraging Scots to support breaking away from the rest of the United Kingdom.
Wales, on the other hand, has been an innovator in transport, pushing to improve road safety through slower speeds and reduce car dependency, backed by significant targets for mode shift away from cars in favour of public and active transport.
It's not yet clear what the new Prime Minister's plans for devolution are. It hasn't got off to a great start. One new cabinet member has already said devolution wouldn't allow local authorities to implement certain policies the national government disagreed with. In other words: we'll devolve power to you, but veto any decisions we don't like.
That single comment gives away the risk. Devolution only reduces the vetocracy if it actually removes veto points.
Done properly, devolution gets rid of the national vetoes on transport projects. No Department for Transport sign-off. No Treasury involvement. No approval needed from the Prime Minister. Local governments develop and fund their own transport projects, and answer directly to the people who fund and use them.
That does mean building local capacity and capability to take on that role. But the direction of travel should be clear: fewer veto points.
Conclusion
The Northern Line Extension could be held up as proof that Britain can successfully build transport infrastructure. Look closer, and it proves the opposite. Seven separate veto points had to align, by luck as much as design, for one project to survive. Leeds shows what happens when they don't.
This is a real governance problem in UK transport. It isn't a shortage of money, ideas, or political will at the local level. It's a system where any one of many actors can quietly kill a project.
To succeed, devolution needs to be a vetocracy fix. Strip out the national veto points, and local authorities become directly answerable for the transport outcomes in their area, for better or worse.
None of this guarantees better decisions. Local authorities can be just as short-sighted as national governments, and building their capacity and capability to plan, deliver and fund major transport projects will take time. But a system with fewer veto points is at least one where good projects have a fighting chance, and where the public knows who to hold responsible for progress.