Urban Public Transport Today

Dr Barry John Simpson, B. Simpson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9781138473843
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135825386
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book is about how local public transport can be made a less unacceptable alternative to the private car than it is now. It is intended for officials, politicians and others interested in the land use/local transport conundrum. It is also valuable to town planners, those working for passenger transport authorities and anyone concerned with policy making and project appraisal for local public transport.

1
ISSUES FACING LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT

1.1 THE RISE OF THE PRIVATE CAR

The increase in the number of vehicles, particularly private cars, on the roads of Britain during recent decades is well known: in 1974 there were 13 399 000 licensed private cars, in 1983 15 543 000, and in 1991 19 737 000—an increase of 47% between 1974 and 1991. We might think that as the number of cars in relation to the population increases then usage per car will decrease: those acquiring cars may be those who give less priority to car ownership, some will be buying second cars. In fact the usage of private cars and taxis by passenger kilometer increased even faster than car ownership—by 87% between 1974 and 1989. The length of motorways in Great Britain increased from 1870 km in 1974 to 3070 km in 1990–64%—rather more than private car registrations. Meanwhile, the number of buses licensed has declined from 79 000 in 1974 to 69 000 in 1984 but rose following deregulation of local bus services under the Transport Act 1985 to 73 000 in 1990. The number of public transport passenger journeys declined from 6224 million in 1980 to 5085 million in 1990 (Department of Transport, 1991a).

As private cars have increased in numbers there have come to be fewer people dependent on public transport, but as land uses have become more orientated to the private car, the need to travel to shops, work or for leisure for example, has increased. Prior to the rise of the car, more of these were within walking distance. There was more likelihood of a good bus service to those too far away to walk than is the case nowadays, especially outside the large cities. Those dependent on public transport have become more dependent on it than were their predecessors in the 1950s and before.

One of the first effects of the rise of the private car to attract public attention was the inadequacy of roads to meet the spiralling demands to use them. Before the motorways were started in the late 1950s, British roads were predominantly from town centre to town centre. Anyone travelling the length of the country would very likely have to pass through the centres of dozens of towns and villages. The volume of traffic pouring through towns incurred the wrath of residents. The slowing down of traffic annoyed the motorist. By-passes were an early solution for through traffic. Together with the motorways they were a boon for the coach industry. Neither were much use for local journeys but they did remove some of the traffic from towns. The speed of local buses in larger towns and cities came to be influenced increasingly by traffic conditions as well as the nature of the road, the number of stops and vehicle technology (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The main effects of increase in car ownership on public transport.

Throughout the 1960s, more road construction was seen as the solution and the foundations of the motorway network were laid. By 1972, the M6 reached as far as Carlisle. The M62 stretched across the Pennines. At first, construction was mainly outside urban areas. When attention was turned to large-scale urban road construction, opposition assembled with formidable force. The elevated A40(M), Westway, was opened in west London in 1970 and had a significant influence in demonstrating the costs of urban motorway construction. In 1972 and 1973 in particular, public reaction to the environmental damage caused by ever increasing urban road construction and the threat of more and more demolition of properties reached such proportions that the UK urban motorway programme was all but abandoned. Highway authorities did U-turns on motorways. Chairmen of planning committees ‘rescued’ the people from the ravages of urban motorways proposed by consultants whom they had engaged to do just that a couple of years earlier. Birmingham had just completed its inner ring road, several other large cities were part way there.

As well as public reaction against the environment of the motor vehicle, it had come to be realized that the more roads being built, the more traffic that was being created by the temptation offered by better roads. Outside urban areas, motorway construction continued throughout the 1970s, increasing from 1075 kilometres in 1970 to 2290 kilometres in 1980. By the early 1980s trunk road construction was in decline. The M25 opened in 1986 and the M40 was completed in 1990 from London to Birmingham via Oxford after a long series of delays. This is probably the only example of a significant change in route of a motorway for environmental reasons.

From the mid-1960s there was a big decline in ridership on public transport. Car purchase had high priority amongst those with increasing disposable income. Whilst household expenditure on bus and rail fares rose from £1.89 per week in 1980 to £2.25 in 1989 (no account taken of inflation), expenditure on cars rose from £13–11 to £30.42 according to a Department of Employment Family Expenditure Survey (Department of Transport, 1991a, p. 51). This accounted for a large part of the increased demand for roadspace and road congestion and simultaneously took away many public transport passengers.

Private cars have increasingly become extensions of home: radio, stereo CD players, telephone and a whole range of other home comforts are not matched by local public transport. Cars have become easier and more comfortable to drive. One of the few advantages of public transport over the private car—ability to read a book, newspaper or do other minor jobs—really only happen on the longer train journeys. Asking the motorist to give up all these home comforts to return to the buses is asking a lot, even where services are reliable and convenient, particularly as the marginal cost of motoring is so low. Increasingly, public transport and particularly the buses have been left to the elderly, those at school, those not in employment and the less articulate—groups which are not able or inclined to press a case for public transport.

In some countries the increased demand for travel by car was addressed by a big increase in investment in public transport, partly to make it more competitive to the private car. Whereas in 1970 in France, investment in roads was around three times that in public transport, by 1980 these investments were practically the same. However, ridership and receipts did not increase to the same extent and by the 1980s deficits in public transport had become the prime issue.

1.2 EPHEMERAL INTEGRATION OF LAND USE/TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

Contemporaneously with the demise of the urban motorway was the rise of integrated transport planning supported by both successive Labour and Conservative governments. Passenger transport authorities for Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, Merseyside and Tyne & Wear took over council bus operations and became responsible for the planning and finance of other bus and local railway services. The metropolitan counties came into operation on 1st April 1974 and were responsible for land use planning, public transport and traffic management amongst other functions until their abolition in 1986. In 1970 the Ministry of Transport was incorporated into the Department of the Environment until it was separated six years later.

Soon after 1979, integrated transport planning was dismantled. Public transport was separated from land use planning. The powers of passenger transport executives were reduced. In 1989, a £12 billion road programme was announced at the height of a flood of light rail studies (for details see section 3.5).

1.3 CAR-ORIENTATED LAND USES

Even with the surge in road building, traffic congestion was not being relieved nor speed reduction reversed to the extents envisaged. More and longer journeys were being undertaken. People were travelling further to work. There is quite a lot of evidence to show that when the speed of transport increases, following the opening of a new road or a railway, many people travel further to work to get a wider range of job opportunities rather than just spend a shorter length of time on the same journeys. More and more houses have been built on the fringes of towns where life without private transport would be at least inconvenient. Bungaloid housing, suburban in style and density, has spread to many former villages and with it, a suburban life-style in terms of employment, car ownership and shopping habits.

Land use changes and site planning have been designed for the use of the private car. Particularly in urban areas, car users as a general rule have more money to spend than public transport users and certainly have more capacity to carry away the results. Shopping developers have come to assess site potential according to the capacity of the roads and the size of the car parks possible. More customers buy in quantities appropriate to the freezer and car boot rather than the shopping bag and bus. Shops are pleased to oblige with bigger and bigger car parks. Some even provide assistance to the customer staggering out with a mountain of grocery to the car.

Land use planning policies have often acquiesced with the demands of the car. Many planners have had misgivings about land use decisions and site planning for the private car but the demands from developers have been irresistable. Any town where they were refused would risk being abandoned by the commercial firms that the councils thought they needed. Refusing planning permission for a large commercial development will normally mean a loss of local authority revenue in the form of lost taxes.

With the decline of local shopping, more and more people have to use or even acquire a car whether they want to or not. In many rural areas, any household without a car would have to live bordering on self-sufficiency and the quality of life would be worse in some respects than it was up to the 1960s.

Some land uses, including shopping, at first became more concentrated into larger premises and into town centres. This increased the need to travel. Town centre supermarkets took the place of street corner grocers. Later, in the 1980s ever larger out-of-town hypermarkets began to replace the supermarkets involving even more travelling and even greater dependence on the private car. As for work journeys, when shoppers are able to travel further, they do.

In the late 1980s we had the rise of the business park, many of them on greenfield sites. Out-of-town urban development including both shopping and businesses has been motivated partly by better road access than is usual within urban areas, partly by the scope for more car parking. Typically, closeto-motorway-junctions business parks have been planned in such a way that even if it were possible to get a bus to the edge of the site, there would still be a long walk through a bleak, rainswept ‘park’, probably without even a continuous footpath. Design is solely for private transport. So too is their location. Like out-of-town shopping, many business parks are on radial routes rather than suburb to city centre. Many are isolated from other traffic generators. Whereas the occupier(s) of a private car often has a single destination, those of a bus usually have many destinations. Public transport thrives on routes with a succession of traffic-generating uses and activities, not a single destination.

1.4 INCREASING ROAD CONGESTION

Increasing road congestion affects buses even more than cars. Buses accelerate more slowly and are less able to take advantage of gaps in streams of traffic. Buses operate to pre-determined routes and so, unlike private cars and taxis for example, are limited in making detours to avoid congested sections of road. Decreased speed makes buses less attractive to passengers, increases fuel costs per mile and increases the number of buses needed for a given service time interval.

Perhaps even more objectionable to passengers than a slow journey is the unreliability of bus services resulting from traffic congestion. Passengers may be unsure whether a journey will take 10 minutes or 30, whether they will have to wait one minute or half an hour, the timetables having been rendered fictional.

Fast-accelerating buses have been tried but these are unattractive, if not dangerous, particularly for the elderly, frail, or those encumbered with shopping or small children. Together these make up a very important part of bus passengers. Unlike car passengers, all bus passengers have to stand for at least part of the journey, even if only when getting to and from their seats. On coaches, passengers are often warned of the dangers of leaving their seats before the coach stops. On buses they invariably have to and many have to stand for the whole journey.

Away from the larger cities, it is not so much road congestion but low demand which has been the problem for public transport. Low demand without high subsidy means high fares which in turn means even lower demand. Reductions in services and operating costs per bus mile have been the responses, by substitution of minibuses or even school buses or post buses for standard vehicles. Such unconventional means of public transport have increased since the mid-1980s (Robinson, 1992).

It may seem that increasing road traffic congestion, whilst contributing to the decline of bus services, should help the railways. Indeed it has, in London at least. The near impossibility of using a car for many journeys into central London has probably been the main reason for the survival of many rail services. But in smaller cities using the car is not nearly so difficult. The shorter journeys to work would not be so difficult even if there was the same level of congestion on the roads. In the London region, longer train journeys make worthwhile having to travel a considerable distance to a railway station. Elsewhere, lines and stations have been closed, many of them at about the same time as the increases in road construction and car ownership in the 1960s and early 1970s. This has made necessary even longer journeys to the stations which remain, hence the railway networks have entered a downward spiral of decline. To some degree, buses will have substituted for railways, but will also have lost some custom in bringing railway travellers to stations.

1.5 PUBLIC TRANSPORT FOR THE MOBILITY-IMPAIRED

Perhaps partly due to land use changes which have caused greater travel needs for almost everyone, the travel needs of the mobility-impaired have become increasingly recognized over the past decade or two. As well as the physically disabled, some recognition, perhaps not enough, has been given to the plight of the elderly and those encumbered with childrens’ push chairs or shopping, for example. The needs of these groups may be addressed either by providing special services such as dial-a-ride (although these services are usually limited to the physically handicapped or the frail and elderly) or by adapting the normal public transport vehicles available to anyone. Low-floor vehicles, at first for light rail such as in Grenoble (Figure 1.2), more recently buses as in Caen, usually together with raised platforms to give level access, have been installed fairly widely, but still account for only a tiny fraction of public transport journeys.

Figure 1.2 The Grenoble low-floor tram.

The French have made significant progress in access to public transport for the less mobile. Speaking in June 1992 at the Sixth International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons in Lyon, Michel Gillibert, Secretary of State for Disabled People, claimed that by 1995, all new buses in France will be low-floor (Armitage, 1992).

Access to stations by those in wheelchairs can be achieved by ramp or lift (for underground stations). Although the access needs of the mobility-impaired may have been largely catered for in many of the new light rail systems, there remains the problem, even in towns fortunate to have such a system, of access to the other means of transport needed to get to and from the station.

1.6 PUBLIC TRANSPORT FOR THE YOUNG

The transport needs of children and teenagers are often considered only in terms of transport to school, yet many live in housing estates with little to attract their interest during their spare time. Desolate, extensive grassy areas separate low-density housing, designed only for those with wheels as well as feet. Cycling is not without hazard and even more risky, threat of theft means that there is too high a chance that a cyclist will not have a complete bicycle for the return journey.

1.7 FINANCE OF LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT

It is often pointed out that levels of subsidy from the public purse are very low in the UK both for capital projects and operational costs. Many European cities have operational subsidies of over 40%, some over 60%, whereas UK cities mostly have less than 20%. Undoubtedly most UK cities compare very well in delivering value for money in local public transport services. However, there are a lot of factors which influence the level of subsidy needed, and high levels of subsidy abroad should not necessarily be used as a justification for increasing them in the UK. Some of the factors are as follows:

• land use patterns and densities of occupation (which affect the number of public transport users);
• policies towards the private car;
• levels of fares;
• frequency of public transport services;
• routes of public transport services—the number of socially necessary/los...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• 1: ISSUES FACING LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT
• 2: THE VARIETY OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT
• 3: URBAN RAIL
• 4: LOCAL BUS SERVICES
• 5: BUS AND RAILWAY STATIONS
• 6: LAND USE AND PUBLIC TRANSPORT PLANNING
• 7: CHOICE OF LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT TECHNOLOGY
• 8: CHOICE OF ROUTE FOR LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT
• 9: PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND ROAD TRAFFIC RESTRAINT
• 10: INTEGRATION OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT SERVICES
• 11: FINANCE FOR LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT
• 12: PUBLIC TRANSPORT PRICING
• 13: POLITICS OF LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT
• BIBLIOGRAPHY