THE NEED FOR MASS TRANSIT
The dynamics around public transport are very different to the private autonomous vehicles and personalised transport. While the latter may be the way forward at an individual customer level, for mass transit public transport is growing - for environmental, population growth, sustainability and economic reasons. The needs of a growing urban population cannot be met exclusively by individual transport modes, regardless of technology. Shared public transport will continue to be required wherever significant capacity requirements exist.
But does the public transport system need to be an isolated and standalone network?
The first assumption must be no. Autonomous vehicles ought to allow for more flexible ‘on or off-route’ movement. But we have that now with buses and bus systems on the roads - if we divert everything back onto the road system (albeit with enhanced traffic management) we will rapidly run out of space and capacity.
The fact is that public mass transit systems are able to provide the capacity that individual road vehicles cannot. Trains of any type and description have the advantage of housing a significant concentration of people onto a smaller number of moving parts. It is also very easy to conclude that even with new technology systems, public transport systems work best - with most capacity, most reliability and most safety - if operated as an isolated system (a railway).
Given that DLR and the Canada Line are automated and driverless trains, they already display many of the characteristics that the new technologies are striving for - but in a mass transit context rather than private transport. But there is one fundamental bit of ‘old thinking’ still required, and that is ‘rails’. Why tie yourself down with rails?
Here, the same arguments apply - capacity, speed and efficiency. If you are going to shift a lot of people quickly and frequently over a specified route (which sounds suspiciously like the definition of mass transit), then use rails. It is more energy-efficient and requires a lot less traction effort.
It is why the guys trying to get coal out of the pits and down to the docks put their wagons on rails to start with - it was a lot easier than putting it into individual wagons pulled by horses. The basic rules of physics still apply, never mind how good the IT is.
What is missing from this analysis is the key and fundamental decision-making ingredient… people. People will ultimately choose what works for them. Interestingly, after more than 100 years of parallel running, we still have cars AND trains, because they serve different purposes - people choose what they want, when they want it.
So what does all that tell us? Well, generally: that cities will not be messed with; that rail systems still have value; that aesthetics and property values in cities mean that buildings and people come first; and that transport infrastructure is a necessary evil that has to fit in somehow - like sewers.
But like sewers, transport systems for both private and public use are essential to economic growth. Transport therefore has to fit with the existing spaces and has to adapt. The ‘new technologies’ are fantastically adaptable and flexible, so that is what they will do - the cities came first, and they will shape transport development rather than vice-versa. People will be happy with that.
INTERCHANGE AT STATIONS
But away from the city centre, out in the suburbs, it may be a different story.
One can very easily see that the design of railway stations taking people to the city centres may need to be re-thought in terms of the new way of ‘individualised’ travel demand.
Why have large car parks at stations if everyone is going to turn up in an automated vehicle that drives itself home again? The technology already exists whereby your car (if you have one) could drive you to your local station, drop you off, drive itself away either to your own garage or back into ‘the pool’, and then turn up again to collect you when you return. Your phone app will know exactly where you are, so you will not need to let your car know when to leave to collect you.
So does that mean a different road system or a different rail system? No. But a different interchange? Potentially, yes.
HYPERLOOP AND MAGLEV
However, this all pre-supposes that there is not a huge and fundamental shift in the technology. We have been describing transport using ‘wheels on the ground’, but we have other options such as Hyperloop and Maglev (Magnetic Levitation).
If we were to develop transport systems based on suction through tubes, as per the Hyperloop system envisaged by Elon Musk, this would create a very different infrastructure. There are already inter-urban and intra-urban feasibility and development studies being undertaken in Dubai and in Slovakia.
It is a truly exciting development, but it would not be the first much-heralded technology that took a long time to make real progress. For example, in the 1980s British Rail opened a magnetic levitation train link in Birmingham. It was a great exercise, but the Maglev was plagued by reliability problems for all its life before being converted into a much lower-tech option about 15 years later.
Maglevs also exist in other locations, and a number of long-distance high-speed versions are planned and being constructed in Japan with operation due in ten years. But the trouble with revolutionary technology is that it takes a very long period of ‘real operation’ to actually learn the true reliability and the true costs of the operation.
It is unclear how long it will be before the reliability needed for public transit becomes an economic achievement for Hyperloop or for high-speed Maglev. History tells us to expect a long period of parallel development, just like cars and trains (and horses), and there is likely to be several years of building, development and then operation to really understand the dynamics, economics and reliability - and their true potential.
Therefore, it looks as if we can keep building railways safely for at least the next 40 or 50 years without thinking we are wasting our time. High volume, peak capacity movement of people in urban settings is still very much the railway’s USP. City planners responsible for planning public transport for cities need not change step at the moment.
