“It is not just about feeding people to the centre of Cardiff, it is about feeding people into Caerphilly and Pontypridd where there are local employment markets. More like France, where rail planning across the Paris region is about connecting nodes in the suburbs, rather than just sending everyone into the centre.”
Rail Freight Group Chairman Tony Berkeley says: “There is a big challenge around smaller packages delivered to homes. Parcels is an area where rail has to change dramatically. It is not showing too many signs of that at the moment - the big freight operators are still recovering from the loss of coal.
“In London, the number of small white vans running around is indicative of too much freight being moved in very small unit loads. We need more consolidation centres to bring things by rail and then distribute in a more effective way. We have to reduce the impact, not just to control pollution but also the volume of traffic. We need a long-term plan, and we have to get away from ministers and civil servants micro-managing it.
“Rail keeps on saying it is less polluting than road travel, but electric cars will catch up. We need freight trains to travel at similar speeds to passenger trains, so they don’t eat up so much capacity. Electric-hauled they do that, on the whole. Quite a bit of freight goes over Shap, diesel-hauled and pretty slow near the top of the hill. Either they need electric power or they need passing loops. Everyone knows there are problems like this, but it is difficult to get changes agreed and implemented.”
Professor Powrie, from the University of Southampton, adds: “Rail has not been sufficiently adaptable. That is not rail’s fault - it’s a fault of the planning system, which has tried to chase existing demand.”
He believes the five-year funding cycles lead to a lack of vision for transport infrastructure. He says we do not take long-term decisions because it is politically expedient to patch up and keep going in the present direction.
“There are some lines that are busy all of the time, and some which are busy only at peak time. We should be looking at deliberate interventions that even out that demand both spatially and temporally.
“In fares, rail is simply doing this by pricing people off at peak times. If I go from Southampton to Nottingham, it costs £250 whether I go via London or Birmingham. We can hire a car for £40 and put in £30 of diesel, and take four people. There has been little boldness to avoid the constraints of the planning system or the fragmented nature of the railway.”
Niblett agrees: “Planning in five-year terms is obviously better than doing it annually. But it can restrict the vision - it doesn’t allow enough space for discussion at regional level. We would like more consultation and engagement with a wider range of people.”
“We really do need to move away from ‘predict and provide’,” adds Powrie. “HS2 is being built to cover existing patterns. Should we not have done Birmingham to Manchester first, and then done Manchester via Bristol to the South Coast? As a society would that not be more useful than just playing into the black hole that is London, gradually extending the capital’s horizon?
“Parts of the country are, in effect, full. There have been some attempts to deal with that - for example, moving parts of the BBC to Salford - but they have been piecemeal token gestures.
“By far the most investment in infrastructure goes to London. There is a case for changing that, deliberately planned over a long term. In terms of geography there is a case for deliberately not meeting London demand, promoting the creation of regional centres of employment in a more serious way than we have done.
“We cannot build more and more roads because of the severe damage in terms of pollution. A doubling of rail journeys would only dent car use by a few per cent. We cannot just keep increasing capacity.”
The ITC suggests that for younger people in particular, transport is increasingly seen as a service, rather than something that requires ownership of assets. Young people increasingly regard cars not as aspirations, but as appliances.
“The higher cost of living burden means learning to drive is no longer the priority it once was. I think younger people also see car ownership as less of a goal than they did a generation ago,” says Niblett.
“Uber is challenging local taxis,” says Brown. “Uber Pool is going to challenge buses. If you ask anybody under 20, they just use Uber all the time. If they get three or four mates to travel together, it’s cheaper than the bus or the train, and more convenient. That is the big disrupter - you don’t need to own any of the assets, you just pay for them on a daily or hourly or distance basis. We need to think now about how all this hangs together.”
Says Niblett: “The effect of autonomous vehicles will be to move from a system of private travel based on ownership to one based on utility. Being able to dial up an autonomous vehicle when you want it, for which you may not need a driving licence - that could change the entire premise of the way we travel.”
Dawson adds: “The real barriers are institutional, not technical. Like rail, it is essential to take roads out of a pure public sector environment. The Highways England brief will be extended to A-class roads over the next ten to 15 years. Road user fees will come.
“You will pay for roads as you pay for your mobile phone - a series of tariffs. Remember when we all used to pay the same road tax? That changed - it’s now based on the car you drive. You pay by direct debit. Mobility is becoming a personal monthly payment.
“That evolution will continue to the major roads. A pay-per-use model that is increasingly like rail travel. There is no reason why it cannot combine: you use your Ringo parking app already at the station, you use your phone app to book your rail ticket, and your bank card on the Underground. Motor insurance could come in as well. You will pay per road use, or use by mixed modes.”
Brown comments: “We are a long way from road user charging, because politically it is difficult. But what people want is a personal account they can use to travel, whether that is on a bus, a train or on a specific road. They want the cost to be debited automatically, and they want to trust that the price is reasonable for their particular journey.”
“Autonomous vehicles represent a disrupter,” argues Powrie. “They will be quite a long time coming, perhaps decades. The crisis - yes it is a crisis - of air quality in cities could force change earlier. There may be a collective awakening of society to recognise that we are making our cities unhealthy places in which to live.
“The railway should be a bit worried about this. A benefit of being on a train is that you can use the time to do something else. But once you’re in an autonomous road pod, it becomes an alternative place to work or relax. It could be a game changer. It will be electric, and that erodes rail’s environmental advantage.
“Most of our cars do nothing most of the time. A huge amount of capital is tied up in that. If you have on-demand pods with the same utilisation as rail vehicles, you won’t need anything like as many road vehicles. Autonomous pods will jolt us out of our current track.”
“These social and cultural changes are coming,” says Dawson. “Way over half of new car purchases are done by monthly payments, with people never actually owning their car. This is not alien to people.
“People park their car outside their house. It represents freedom and mobility. But nearly all a car’s life is spent parked. If you can change that mindset towards an Uber-style alternative, people will not need so many cars, at least in the big centres.”
Brown adds: “Ten years from now we will have one single infrastructure plan for the whole of northern England, driving economic growth. Our plan is out in June. We are rolling out the first phase of our smartcard ticket later this year, and we’ll have the case for HS3 next year.
“We think there will be massive growth in transport. The new TransPennine services between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester Airport went from having no market at all to appearing in the list of the top ten most overcrowded trains in the UK. But public transport organisations will have to change the way they think. They must all include the ability to work or communicate during the journey. They need to see what car designers are already working on. Poking the public sector with the knowledge of what the private sector is already planning is a good thing.”
Niblett concludes: “The air quality problem in our cities is acute. It will only be solved by very punitive measures on driving in city centres, and that will put pressure on public transport.
“In southern England, the housing problem will become greater, assuming our population continues to increase along existing trends, and assuming that the Government does not impose very restrictive immigration policies, or generates an economic crisis that results from Brexit which causes immigration to fall.
“If the trends continue, then the pressure on housing will also become acute. The solution will be led by high-density urban development, which will require more public transport, and particularly rail - both in new centres of development and on existing commuter lines.”
