The Transport Planning Society recently held a meeting on the topic of whether appraisal methods for new transport investments are fit for purpose. I have been critical of the conventional methodology since it disregards changes in land use that result from the increased accessibility made possible by improved transport. I was a speaker at this meeting, see the video.
The discussion was lively, and I look forward to continuing the debate in other venues.
Transport for London has issued an interesting report on the factors driving changes in travel behaviour in London, in particular the substantial shift from private to public transport in recent years. Aspects discussed include supply influences (eg investment in public transport), demand influences such as changes in income, and structural changes in London’s economy and society.
The report is comprehensive in its approach, which is valuable, but it doesn’t attempt to rank factors in importance. My own view is that the key decisions were not to increase London’s road capacity to meet the growth in car ownership nationally, to invest instead in London’s rail system, and to control parking in central areas to keep essential traffic flowing.
Jim Steer is a distinguished UK transport consultant, founder of Steer Davies Gleave. He was President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, 2013-14, and gave a very interesting Presidential Lecture last March, now available in print and well worth reading.
An important theme is the relation between land use and transport investment. A key reason for the success of London in recent years is the requirement on the Mayor to prepare a spatial plan for the development of the city that provides a sound basis for planning transport investment. In contrast, what’s missing is a national spatial plan, and hence we lack an adequate basis for planning national investment in transport infrastructure.
The Mayor of London has published a plan for consultation concerning the capital’s requirements for infrastructure investment to 2050. A supporting document has more detail for transport investment.
What drives this investment is the expectation that London’s population will grow to 11.3 million by 2050, compared with 8.3m currently. The Mayor is required to develop a Plan for London to accommodate population growth and support economic growth. Transport investment is needed to link new homes to new jobs. A range of possibilities is considered for the location of employment and residence, together with the transport investment needed for each scenario.
These plans will repay careful study. My initial reaction is that the approach, in which planned land use change determines transport investment, is well conceived.
The City Growth Commission has published a report on Connected Cities – how their economic growth depends on transport and digital connections. This includes criticism (p 32) of the usual approach to cost-benefit analysis (CBA), which does not take into account the full range of economic benefits resulting from infrastructure investment in cities, including land value uplift. The Commission argues: ‘The importance of thinking beyond a simple reliance on current CBA models cannot be stressed enough.’ This is a very sensible conclusion, in my view.
David Begg has prepared a useful report on the prospects for driverless vehicles, particularly in London. Driverless trains are already with us and could be more generally deployed as rail routes are upgraded, with useful cost savings. Driverless cars are on the way, but the impact in urban settings is less clear, particularly the effect on congestion. Driverless cars could make safer and more efficient use of road space through reduced headways and less need for parking spaces, but could also boost car use through increasing the attractiveness of the car for urban trips, in the way rail travel has become more attractive as a place to work while on the move.
I’m a bit sceptical about the likely uptake of driverless cars, which I see as effectively taxis with robot drivers – useful but essentially an incremental improvement, not a game-changer. We shall see.
A roundtable meeting was held recently in London at the instigation of the New Zealand Ministry of Transport to consider the prospects for car travel – growth, peak or plateau. The report prepared by Glen Lyons and Phil Goodwin is a useful summary of the present state of understanding.
The Guardian reports the latest version of Google’s driverless car, a two-seater city car without a steering wheel. Taxi drivers are concerned that they might be displaced. That is possible since a driverless car is essentially a taxi with a robot driver. We would make more use of taxis if they were cheaper. But road transport would be be little changed, I suspect, with traffic congestion the main problem.
Online shopping can reduce car trips if the goods are delivered to our homes. But this can be inconvenient if you have to stay in to receive the delivery. So there is growing interest in ‘click and collect’, where you order online but collect at your convenience from the store or another collection point.
An article in the Financial Times discusses an experiment conducted by the supermarket Asda (owned by Walmart) whereby customers can collect their pre-ordered shopping from temperature-controlled storage lockers. The UK is much more advanced than the US in grocery shopping online – 5% of sales compared with less than 1% in the US. Click and collect is forecast to grow much faster than home delivery in Britain. For the retailers, the last mile of fulfilling delivery has always been the challenging part of online shopping, particularly for food. Click and collect solves this for the store, but at the expense of more car trips for customers.
An illuminating article in the Financial Times reports the inadequacies of Europe’s current fuel economy and emissions test procedure, developed almost 45 years ago and which bears little relationship to real world driving conditions and technologies. Half the apparent improvement in efficiency since 2007 has only been achieved in tests, not on the road.. Cars produce as much as 30% more CO2 emissions per km on the road compared with manufacturers promises.
The EU is keen to introduce a new World Light Vehicle Test Procedure by 2017, but the car manufacturers are pressing for delay to 2020. The German industry which builds thirsty saloons and SUVs is particularly resistant. However, it usually turns out that meeting new technical standards is lest costing than the industry predicts.