Travel

FinanceTransportTravel

My new book published on 1 September is one in a series of short books on policy and economics topics described as ‘essays on big ideas by leading writers’. My contribution is a critique of the inconsistencies of transport policy in recent decades, which I attribute to the shortcomings of conventional transport economic appraisal in identifying the benefits that arise from investment. A column in The Spectator magazine of 26 September described my book as ‘excellent throughout’. My book, Travel Fast or Smart?, is available both in print and as an ebook from Amazon Books.

Yesterday the Government endorsed the proposal to build a third runway at Heathrow, as recommended by the Airports Commission in its final report of July 2015.

There has been much agonising, mainly on account of the environmental impact – noise and local air pollution – of adding capacity to an already large airport within the bounds of London. MPs representing affected constituencies are generally opposed, with Conservatives reportedly to be given some licence to speak their minds. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is also opposed, preferring expansion at Gatwick, well away from his domain.

But yesterday’s decision is less the beginning of the end, more the end of the beginning. The process for delivering planning consent for airport expansion will include an ‘Airports National Policy Statement’ (NPS), following which the scheme promoter would need to apply for a development consent order. Such National Policy Statements for infrastructure developments are a statutory requirement, involving a process of public consultation of a draft document and parliamentary scrutiny, before being finalised. They provide the framework within which Planning Inspectors make their recommendations on specific planning applications, and are intended to prevent national issues being reopened at planning inquiries.

Consultation on the Airports NPS would probably take around a year, given the range and contention of the issues involved, and would allow all parties to have their say. Concerns about local air pollution will be prominent. Unpublished (and disputed) research at Cambridge University is reported as arguing that the marginal increase in NO2 associated with airport expansion would be against the background of reduced NO2 from other traffic, because of Euro 6 engines and electrification of the traffic fleet.

There are also questions about the affordability of a third runway at Heathrow. Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, has questioned the costs of expansion and the impact on landing charges: “I honestly can’t see how you can spend that much money on an airport and not discourage people from flying there.

Gatwick Airport has been arguing vigorously that it should be allowed to add another runway, which would be built faster, be less costly and have less environmental impact than Heathrow. An issue for the Airports NPS is whether Gatwick should have the option of expanding, as well as Heathrow, to achieve more competition. However, the owners of Stansted say they would launch a legal challenge were both Gatwick and Heathrow to be given the go-ahead, on the grounds that they had not been given the opportunity to present their own case for expansion.

When the draft NPS comes to be scrutinised in Parliament, there will be probing questions, not least from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Heathrow, which has identified sixteen serious risks that could stop or delay expansion. There is bound to be a vote to ratify the NPS, which likely to be a free vote to allow dissenting Conservative MPs to register the unhappiness of their constituents – so no assured outcome.

Evidently, there is a long way to go before construction could start at Heathrow. The timeline includes publication of the draft Airports NPS, public consultation, the Government’s response, parliamentary scrutiny and endorsement (all of which could take a year), a public examination by a Planning Inspector of the detailed plans (which could take another year), the Inspectors report, and the Secretary of State’s decision. In the meantime the finances would need to be agreed, including the necessary increase in airport landing charges to recover the costs, and the financing of surface transport provision.

It is worth recalling that planning consent for the Hinkley C nuclear power station was originally given in 1990, following a year-long public inquiry, but agreement to begin construction was reached only in September 2016. The delay was mainly due to difficulties about financing a plant that generates high cost electricity – a salutary warning of the length of time it can take for large contentious infrastructure proposals even to get to the point of starting construction.

A version of this article was published in The Conversation

 

 

 

 

Car useEconomicsTransportTravel

I have a new book published on 1 September, one in a series of short books on policy and economics topics described as ‘essays on big ideas by leading writers’. My contribution is a critique of the inconsistencies of transport policy in recent decades, which I attribute to the shortcomings of conventional transport economic appraisal in identifying the benefits that arise from investment. A column in The Spectator magazine of 26 September described my book as ‘excellent throughout’.

The Office of Rail and Road has responsibility for monitoring Highways England’s delivery of the Government’s Road Investment Strategy. This involves investment in England’s Strategic Road Network of £15bn over five years, with more to follow. The ORR has been consulting on how to carry out this task. My response to this consultation is as follows.

The economic rationale for investment in the road network is to generate benefits for users, including in particular the saving of travel time. It would therefore be appropriate for the benefits to users of Highways England’s investment programme to be evaluated as part of ORR’s monitoring process.

In general, traffic congestion on the Strategic Road Network (SRN) arises in or near populated areas, where local traffic adds to long distance traffic; remote from such areas, the traffic generally flows freely. From the perspective of orthodox transport economics, a congested road is an opportunity to invest by adding capacity. But how do road users experience the benefit?

Highways England has evaluated the outcome of ‘major schemes’ five years after opening. It finds that average time savings are small, 3 minutes at peak periods.[1] The economic case for investment depends on multiplying such small time savings by a large number of vehicles (and by monetary values of time saved). Nevertheless, it is relevant to ask how road users experience such small time savings.

While a few minutes time saving would not be material for long distance users, it could be significant to local users on short trips, in particular by allowing more opportunities and choices when changing job or moving house. Indeed, it seems likely that the main benefit of investment in additional capacity on the SRN would accrue to car commuters.[2]

It would therefore be important to understand the nature and distribution of the benefits of the investment schemes of Highways England, as experienced by different classes and locations of road users.

Transport Focus commissioned an Independent Analytical Review for a Road User Satisfaction Survey in 2015. This recommended the development of a continuous online survey of satisfaction using a representative panel of road users. Repeated surveys of a panel would allow trends in satisfaction to be monitored over time. Transport Focus is currently piloting this approach.[3]

Such a survey technique could in principle be used to track the subjective user experience of improvements to the network as a whole. Moreover, relating user experience to specific investments would allow the benefits of these to be understood, as experienced by different classes of road user.

Another approach, also using a volunteer representative panel, would involve monitoring individual travel patterns, based on mobile phone GPS location. This would provide an objective measure of changed travel patterns as the result of investment, and would allow identification of which users benefit, both as regards location, journey purpose and socio-economic characteristics.

Average travel time has been measured for the past 40 years by means of the National Travel Survey. It is noteworthy that average travel time has remained unchanged at about an hour a day, despite many £billions of investment in the road network. This indicates that there are no time savings to users in the long run. There is a therefore a question about the nature of long run benefits, which are mainly to be seen as changes in land use and land value, as land is made more accessible for development that can contribute to economic growth. Travel time savings are therefore short run and their duration needs to be monitored.

Summary

Given the very large expenditures planned for the SRN, it is important to understand the nature and distribution of the benefits of investment. There is an opportunity for the ORR to improve value for money by taking an analytical approach – tracking the experience of road users as this is improved by investment in the road network. Both subjective and objective change should be monitored, to understand the nature and distribution of the benefits of investment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] http://assets.highways.gov.uk/our-road-network/pope/major-schemes/POPE___meta_2011___main_report___final.pdf

[2] http://peakcar.org/valuing-travel-time-savings-problems-with-the-paradigm/

[3]http://www.transportfocus.org.uk/research-publications/research/strategic-roads-user-survey/#_ftn1

 

 

 

EconomicsTransportTravel

I have a new book published on 1 September, one in a series of short books on policy and economics topics described as ‘essays on big ideas by leading writers’. My contribution is a critique of the inconsistencies of transport policy in recent decades, which I attribute to the shortcomings of conventional transport economic appraisal in identifying the benefits that arise from investment.

The major proposal to stimulate the economies of the cities comprising the Northern Powerhouse is to improve east-west transport connectivity, both rail and road. However, the evidence for the benefits of investment in inter-urban transport is less persuasive than for investment in intra-urban services.

Glasgow and Edinburgh are two cities with good transport links: as little as 48 minutes by rail, with over 200 trains a day in each direction. The economy of Glasgow has changed markedly over the years: whilst manufacturing has declined, there has been significant  growth of service industries, in particular financial and business services. Glasgow is now one of Europe’s sixteen largest financial centres, based on a new International Financial Services District, where operating costs are claimed to be 40% lower than in London.

Of the 20 named businesses located in this District, only one is a company headquarters. The others are back offices or subsidiaries, just two of which report to HQs in Edinburgh, the long established centre of financial services in Scotland. The large majority of these Glasgow operations report to London, other English cities or to overseas head offices, for which north-south and international connectivities are more important than east-west.

Assessment

The good transport connectivity between Glasgow and Edinburgh does not appear to have been an important factor in the development of the financial services sector in Glasgow.

 

 

EconomicsPublished papersTravel

I have a new book published on 1 September, one in a series of short books on policy and economics topics described as ‘essays on big ideas by leading writers’. My contribution is a critique of the inconsistencies of transport policy in recent decades, which I attribute to the shortcomings of conventional transport economic appraisal in identifying the benefits that arise from investment. Readers of this web-magazine will recognise many of the arguments, now brought together in a single volume at a modest price.

TransportTravel

It is difficult to build housing in many parts of Britain at a rate to meet the growth of demand. This leads to inflated prices, whether to buy or rent, with younger people finding it increasingly tough to acquire ownership of their own homes.

However, the rate of addition to the housing stock from new build is quite small, contributing only about 10% of the annual supply for rent or purchase, with the other 90% from turnover of the existing stock. So it is worth considering whether the use made of the existing stock could be more efficient. Danny Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford, has pointed out that Census data shows a steady increase in the number of rooms per person, currently almost 2.5 (‘rooms’ comprises bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens). This suggests that pressures in the housing market arise from maldistribution of available accommodation, whether arising from inequalities of income, from people holding on to houses larger than they need as an investment, or from geographical location.

One possible approach to achieving a more efficient and equitable use of the existing stock would be through investment in the transport system that would increase accessibility, particularly of housing to the location of employment. The supposition is that turnover of existing stock (‘churn’) would tend to increase the efficiency of use when those purchasing are constrained by income and those selling are downsizing, for instance following change of family circumstances such as death, divorce, or ‘empty nest’. Increased access as the result of transport investment would tend to increase opportunities for purchase by those seeking properties they can afford, and to increase the incentive to sell by those downsizing.

An example of such enhanced access impacting the housing market is London’s Overground railway, old track rejuvenated by investment in stations and rolling stock, and resulting in both a 5-fold increase in passenger numbers and some of the biggest house price increases (per cent) in London, as neighbourhoods with lower cost accommodation have become more accessible. Plans for future rail investment in London will also make more housing accessible to where people work, including Crossrail2, the extension of the Bakerloo Line, and plans for Transport for London to operate suburban rail routes as high frequency metro services.

Beyond London, the Cambridge guided busway (pictured above) includes three park-and-ride sites with a total of 2700 parking spaces for those wishing to avoid driving into the city. The busway serves Northstowe, a former airfield where there are proposals for a new town up to 10,000 new homes.

Rail and guided busways (known generally as Bus Rapid Transit) offer fast and reliable travel for work journeys, compared with the car on congested roads. Investments in these transport modes allow towns and cities to grow by making land accessible for housing development, without a corresponding increase in car use that would add to congestion – known in the US as Transit-Oriented Development. In contrast, adding capacity to inter-urban roads adjacent to populated areas would allow more car commuting and hence housing development, but would add to traffic congestion at urban destinations.

Assessment

Given the stresses in the housing market and the difficulties in Britain of increasing the rate of construction of new dwellings, there are attractions in a focus on improved public transport as a means of increasing access to more affordable housing.

 

 

 

EconomicsTransportTravel

I contributed to a recent meeting of the Transport Statistics Users Group to discuss Investment Appraisal.  My presentation: Metz TSUG 13-7-16    The main points I made are set out below.

The Department for Transport (DfT) recently commissioned new research to establish monetary values for the saving of travel time. This has served to highlight the problems of using Stated Preference experiments to estimated values of time saved by asking respondents hypothetical questions about the trade-off of time and money costs. Quite a lot of variation in the value of time is found, according to the experimental set up, depending on what other factors are invoked, for instance journey time variability, road congestion or rail crowding; and also whether, for work trips, the perspective is that of the employer or employee. Moreover, an attempt to establish Revealed Preference values, by ascertaining behaviour for rail trips where there was choice of alternative routes, did not succeed for technical reasons. The upshot was new values for time savings that differed substantially from previously established values using the same approach, for reasons that are not clear.

Altogether, the SP approach seems decidedly problematic in establishing sound values for travel time savings. But there is a bigger problem, in that the National Travel Survey shows that average travel time has hardly changed over the past 40 years that this has been measured, despite huge investment in infrastructure justified by supposed time savings benefits. The explanation for this apparent paradox is that the SP experiments use short term trade-offs whereas the NTS recognises the long term outcomes, whereby people take the benefit of investment by travelling further at higher speeds to gain additional access.

Land use change

This additional distance travelled gives rise to changes in land use, as for instance in London’s Docklands, which have been made accessible by public investment in the rail system, permitting private investment in high value accommodation. The economic case for Crossrail, due to open in 2018, was based largely on time savings (user benefits), divided three ways between business, commuting and leisure travellers. To this was added the economic benefits attributed to ‘wider impacts’ (mainly agglomeration effects) not included in the user benefits. What was not included, however, was the increased real estate values since this would be double counting user benefits. So real observable increases in land and property values are disregarded in the standard approach to appraisal, which prefers notional time savings and notional ‘wider impacts’.

Another rail investment appraisal is that for HS2, which is also  based mainly on user benefits. The problem in this case is the lack of any indication as to where, regionally, the benefits arise, a serious deficiency given that the intention of the new rail route is to boost the economies of the cities of the Midlands and the North.

Who benefits?

For road investment, the problem with the standard approach based on time savings is the failure to consider distribution of benefits across classes of road users. Congestion arises on the Strategic Road Network in or adjacent to populated parts of the country, where it is used by local users, particularly for commuting, as well as by long distance users. My own analysis suggests that it is local users who get the bulk of the benefit from investment to increase the capacity of the SRN, faster travel permitting more choice of jobs and homes, the extra traffic returning congestion to what it was, with long distance users no better off. If this is right, there is a question of the value of national investment in the SRN that fosters local car-based commuting. The failure to distinguish how the benefits of investment affect different classes of road user means that this question is not addressed. (In contrast, the distribution of benefits to different classes of rail users is possible, because we have data from ticket sales that allow this classes to be distinguished.)

In summary, the travel time savings methodology is problematic because:

  • SP values of time are sensitive to context.
  • There is only a very tenuous connection between short run SP values and the value of long run real estate development.
  • There is no indication of how benefits of investment are distributed regionally (for long distance rail) or by classes of users (for roads).
  • Observable changes in land and property values are disregarded, which means there is a disconnect between the economic case for an investment and the business case.

Reliability

A further benefit of transport investment can be improved reliability – improved traffic flow on roads, reduced lateness on public transport. The SP research investigated this and concluded that the ‘Reliability Ratio’ should be reduced from 0.8 to 0.4. (The RR is the value of travel time variability (SD) divided by the value of travel time savings: it enables changes in variability of journey time to be expressed in monetary terms.) This downgrading of the importance of reliability seems at odds with a previous study by DfT that surveyed road users about their preferences. One question asked about priorities if additional money were available: improving traffic flow ranked well above reducing journey times. While not a formal SP investigation, the survey findings suggest that reliability should be the main economic benefit from a user perspective, rather than time savings, which is the reverse of the WebTAG treatment.

Having appropriate monetary values for reliability is important for appraising investments focused on this aspect, for instance variable speed controls for managed motorways and predictive journey time information that mitigates the main detriment of traffic congestion. Such digital technologies are likely to be far more cost-effective that civil engineering technologies in improving the user experience.

WebTAG deficiencies

The DfT’s approach to transport investment appraisal, known as WebTAG (web-based transport analysis guidance):

  • Under-estimates benefits of urban rail investments, because the enhancement of real estate values is disregarded.
  • Over-estimates benefits of inter-urban road investments, which foster local car commuting.
  • Under-estimates benefits of digital technologies.

The Treasury provides central guidance on analytical methods used across government departments. The original Green Book advises on investment appraisal, where the WebTAG approach to cost-benefit analysis is seen as an example of good practice. It is, however, an outlier in the amount of detailed analysis required to be compliant, and hence in the effort required. Other departments are less demanding. For instance, there have been major programmes of school and hospital building in recent years, but there is no theory of how replacing an obsolescent building improves educational or health outcomes, which limits analysis to considerations of cost-effectiveness.

The most recent Treasury guidance is the Aqua Book, which deals with quality assurance in analytical models, and was prompted by DfT’s analytical shortcoming in connection with retendering the West Coast Main Line rail franchise in 2012. One requirement is that analysis should be ‘grounded’ in reality: connections must be made between the analysis and its real consequences. The WebTAG approach fails this test, for the reasons outlined above.

I am not alone in my criticism of the established approach to transport appraisal. The Transport Planning Society conducts an annual survey of its members: ‘Most TPS members consistently say that appraisal methods should be reformed. In the most recent survey, only 3.5% considered current methods did not need reform, with 60% having major issues with them. The top reason for this by some way was the need to appraise changes in land values, land-use or travel behaviour.’

Space not time

Recalling first principles:

  • Transport moves people and good through space (not time).
  • Investment that increases speed or capacity leads to more movement through space (not time).
  • We therefore need an economic framework that recognises spatial characteristics – Spatial Economics.

Spatial economics is a long-established sub-discipline of economics, going back almost two centuries to the seminal work of von Thunen who related the value of agricultural land, as measured by the rents that farmers could afford to pay to landowners, to the nature of the produce grown and the costs of transporting it to the market in the nearest city. This approach was subsequently extended to cities (urban economics) where the cost of housing falls as the costs of travel to employment in the city centre increase. The Spatial Economics Research Centre at the LSE is one source of expertise, although it appears not to have engaged in consideration of the kind of spatial economic analysis that would assist transport investment appraisal by mitigating the deficiences of the time savings approach.

 

 

 

 

 

Car useTravel

I was invited recently to speak at a research conference of investment analysts and asset managers concerned with the automotive industry. My presentation summarised my thoughts about the future of the car:

Car use in big cities will decline, as a share of all travel, as exemplified by London. Successful cities attract those wishing to share that success – businesses, people to work, study and live. Population grows, population density increases, which generates economic gains known as agglomeration benefits, with analogous cultural and social benefits. The city authorities recognise that the road system cannot cope with potential demand for car travel and so invest in public transport, particularly rail which provides speedy and reliable travel compared with the car on congested roads.

Beyond city centres, the car will remain popular where there is road space to move and to park. But per capita car use is unlikely to grow in the developed economies.

Income growth no longer drives the growth of average distance travelled. The main determinant of the growth of travel demand is population growth. Corresponding growth of car ownership and use will depend in where the additional inhabitants are housed: more car ownership for greenfield sites, less for urban locations.

The car has developed incrementally since the original mass-market Model T Ford that hit the road a century ago. Despite enormous improvement and refinement, we still employ nineteen-century-originated mechanical engineering in modern cars. Electric vehicles use twentieth-century-originated electric propulsion and storage, which is being improved and refined to increase market penetration. Only with driverless vehicles do we get to a twenty-first century technology.

Digital technologies are being adopted incrementally by the motor manufacturers to ease the task of driving – the advanced driver assistance systems. Ultimately, these could permit full hands-off mode. But the manufacturers who market cars based on performance would promote driverless travel only when driving was tedious, as on long motorway trips or in congested urban traffic. In contrast to these evolutionary developments, we have Google’s revolutionary attempt to take a giant leap forward to a car lacking controls for a human driver. This is essentially a taxi with a robot driver. Taxis are useful: we would make more use of them if they were cheaper, as they might be if robots replaced human drivers. But they would not constitute a fundamentally new form of road transport.

More generally, application of the fast developing, disruptive digital technologies to road travel is constrained by the slow-to-evolve nature of the mechanical engineering technologies that still define the car. Nevertheless, there are possibilities for disruptive innovations that would affect car ownership and use:

Mobility-as-a-Services (MaaS) is a concept that would allow us seamless travel via the most appropriate mode, all arranged via a smartphone app (not dissimilar in concept to the traditional travel agent’s offering for long-haul trips). Feasibility of MaaS depends on being able to integrate the availability of the most appropriate mode – whether taxi, train, tram, bike – under different ownerships, with paperless ticketing, including at times of peak demand. This could be challenging, but if successful, would lessen the attractions of the personal car.

While role-out of simple driverless taxis would not be a fundamental innovation for road transport, the addition of shared occupancy to share ownership (‘shared-squared driverless’) would permit the more efficient use of road space. UberPOOL already offers shared trips at lower cost to those heading in the same direction at the same time. Two additional measures would further increase the efficiency of the urban road network: demand managemen that would give priority to shared occupancy vehicles, following the precedents of the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on US commuter routes and zero charge for taxis in London’s congestion charging zone. Plus an urban road analogue of air traffic control that serves to avoid conflicts between aircraft and smooth flows, which would become possible as vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communications are developed. A shared-squared-driverless scenario with minimal congestion could offer door-to-door travel at time of choice with speeds comparable to urban rail, again lessening the attractions of personal car ownership.

The present state of battery technology constrains electric car sales, hence much effort is being expended to develop better batteries. Batteries based on the current Li-ion electrochemistry are being refined to improve performance, reduce costs and increase market penetration of electric vehicles. But it is possible that a new electrochemistry will be developed with superior performance – energy density, rate of charging, lifetime and cost. Much then depends on who owns this new battery: if a single battery manufacturer wishing to maximise sales, then all auto manufacturers could take advantage; but if an auto manufacturer had teamed with the battery manufacturer in developing the innovative product, that team could have a disruptive advantage.

Assessment

There are an increasing number of uncertainties that will affect the long-term development of the auto industry: changes in travel behaviour, attitudes to driving and personal car ownership, demographic developments, new technologies and new business models. It’s hard to take a view about investment outcomes. Given the greater risks involved in investing, larger returns will be sought. But then the question is what will motorists be willing to pay for driver assistance technologies that add significantly to the cost of cars, particular mass market models. The answer remains to be seen as these technologies percolate down the model price range.

 

 

 

TransportTravel

The Government Office for Science initiated a Foresight project on Future of Cities, which has now concluded after three years of effort. The exercise was relevant to the plans of the Government for devolving powers to city-regions.

Some three dozen reports and essays were commissioned from experts (including my contribution on Peak Car), and a number of workshop meetings held. Some of the authors have contributed to an issue of Prospect magazine.

There are four reports as final outputs of the project. These are high level summaries, of substantial and varied inputs, which are neither concise nor cogent. The problem is the complexity of cities and the difficulty this creates for thinking about their future.

Forecasting and Complexity

The real world is complex, which makes it hard to understand, and which in turn means that forecasting is problematic. Models of particular regions or sectors assume continuity between past and future, relying on historic relationships as a guide to the future, subject to assumed changes in exogenous variables such as GDP and population growth, oil prices, and technological developments. But if the future is different from the past then historic relationships may no longer apply and forecasts cannot be relied upon.

One approach to dealing with such uncertainty is by means of scenarios that allow for new possibilities. While these may help to indicate the range of possible outcomes, they tend to be somewhat arbitrary and so are rarely persuasive.

Another approach is two-pronged, addressing contrasting developments. We attempt to identify: (a) factors which show long-term stability; and (b) points of transition between one set of relationships and a successor set. For travel, a long term constant is average travel time, of about an hour a day. And a point of transition is the end of the twentieth century when the Peak Car phenomenon signalled a change in behaviour, travel demand no longer being driven mainly by growth of incomes but now by population growth.

Assessment

The Future of Cities project has generated much interesting evidence from experts but has been disappointing in that it has not yielded illuminating conclusions. Naturally, at the beginning of such a project, the outcome is uncertain even if hopes are high. In the event, the conclusions are worthy, but bland.

 

 

 

 

 

FinanceTransportTravelUncategorized

‘Transport modelling – fact, forecast or fiction?’ was the topic of a well-attended meeting of the Transport Planning Society at which I was a panelist. I argued that there was occurring quite a lot of change in travel behaviour as we moved into the twenty-first century – not least the Peak Car phenomenon – which made the task of the modeller more difficult. Modelling of any kind assumes continuity between past and future, that past relationships (estimated as elasticities) will apply in the future, subject to changes in parameters exogenous to the model, such as growth in GDP, population and oil prices. If behaviour is changing, the best approach is to widen the range of forecasts by adopting scenarios which allow the model to explore the impact of a wider range of travel behaviour. An example is the generation by Department for Transport modellers of road traffic forecasts based on five scenarios applied to the National Transport Model.

I also drew attention to the experience of the Actuarial profession, which after the failure of a life assurance company had prompted a government inquiry,  had put in place formal standards for actuarial analysis and a means for professional oversight of compliance. One standard deals with modelling, the language of which is quite general and would be relevant to other kinds of modelling, including transport modelling. So the actuaries’ arrangements show that it would be possible to put in place formal standards for transport modelling. However, for this to happen, there would probably need to be some kind of scandal, as happened to the actuaries.

One kind of scandal involving transport modelling has occurred in Australia, where a number of privately-funded toll roads have experienced usage far below the forecasts made when investors were approached to finance construction. This has resulted in litigation that in at least one case resulted in the transport consultant responsible for traffic forecasts paying out $200m. Were something similar to happen in Britain, I would expect a call to put in place standards for transport modelling.

My fellow panelists had their own concerns and solutions to achieve better transport modelling. My feeling from the meeting as a whole is that there is a needed to  review systematically the current state of the art and to identify ways to improve. I hope the Transport Planning Society might act as a thought-leader, given the centrality of modelling to planning.

Car useTransportTravel

I visited Bournemouth to participate in a day-long seminar on transport arranged by the Council for councillors and officials. My fellow speakers were my UCL colleague, Peter Jones, and Phil Jones, a consultant transport planner. My presentation Metz Bournemouth 14-4-16

We  see that big cities such as London attract people to work, study and live, which results in higher population density and prompts investment in rail-based public transport since growth of mobility  cannot be met by more cars on the road network. But for smaller cities and larger towns like Bournemouth, the route to more sustainable transport is less clear. Cars are popular and responsible for 67% of commuting trips in Bournemouth, substantially higher than the 44% for Brighton, another prosperous south coast resort, perhaps reflecting thre latter’s more youthful demographic profile and better co-operation between the local authority and the bus operators. There may be lessons to be learned from Brighton’s experience.

More generally, my sense is that smaller cities and larger towns need to decide what kind of a place they want to be, and then work towards that aim incrementally, using stick and carrots.  A traditional aim has been to accommodate the car with plenty of cheap parking, thus attracting the trade of visitors. But then the volume of urban traffic lessens the sense of place and attractiveness of the destination. Pushing back the cars, for instance through higher parking charges, may be unpopular in the short term, but may generate a source of revenue that would allow attractive improvements to be made to the urban realm. Fostering bus services and cycling by means of appropriate infrastructure investment is the carrot to balance the stick of parking constraints.

Breaking down the customary distinction between carriageway for vehicles and footway for pedestrians can be helpful in reducing conflicts and accommodating both, as the example of Poynton, Cheshire demonstrates.

In my presentation, I drew attention to evidence that travel in the twenty-first century is turning out to be different from travel in the twentieth, in particular that growing prosperity is no longer necessarily associated with increasing car use. This creates opportunities for policy initiatives in towns like Bournemouth that go with the grain of more sustainable trends.