Stephen Joseph is standing down from his position as CEO of the Campaign for Better Transport (CfBT) in the autumn [routeone/news/21 February].
He’s been in the job, initially as Executive Director of Transport 2000 before the organisation changed its name to the CfBT in 2007, for 30 years. I can’t think of anybody who has campaigned more passionately over such a long period of time for the public transport cause than Stephen Joseph.
Dedication and passion
I have not always agreed with him and the organisation’s campaigns, especially its opposition to road building, but I hugely admire his dedication and his passionate belief in what he campaigned for.
More than anything else, I admire the way in which he morphed Transport 2000 from a fringe organisation that the government barely acknowledged – let alone listened to – to a mainstream one commanding respect with the ear of government and whose opinions were actively sought.
Stephen’s tireless energy and enthusiasm are an example to us all. His successor, whoever he or she may be, will have a near impossible act to follow.
But here’s the rub. The CfBT has been so successful in ensuring that the public transport cause is now at the heart of transport policy, I wonder whether it has now served its purpose.
Rather like UKIP’s raison d’être evaporated once the EU referendum produced the result it did, so one has to ask whether the CfBT’s purpose in life has now been achieved.
And, dare I say it, the CfBT’s core message has become rather repetitive in recent years. There are only so many times you can say that public transport is a good thing. You could say the same thing about Greener Journeys.
There is little doubt that there was a time and place for the CfBT and Transport 2000.
By suggesting that its purpose may have been served, I’m not at all being critical. On the contrary, I think it is a huge testimony to its success that the question can even be asked: with Stephen Joseph standing down, has the time come to wind up the organisation?
I’m struggling to think what more can be done, at least at a national level, to promote the cause of public transport.
Fight the good fight
May be there will be an on-going need to fight the good fight at local level, to campaign to keep local bus services operational, or to fight some other local public transport cause.
But at a national level I can’t help feeling that the objectives and purpose of the CfBT have been secured. It’s no secret that membership has been declining, and that sends quite a powerful signal.
Most campaigning organisations such as CfBT have a time and place. Nobody has been more dedicated to the public transport cause, and devoted so much time and energy to it, than Stephen Joseph. Arguably Stephen Joseph was the CfBT; its heartbeat.
