Minister calls for ‘viable alternatives’

The UK’s biggest sustainable transport event explored the connections emerging between active travel and intelligent mobility solutions

The best way to encourage people to drive less is to develop “attractive and affordable” alternatives such as car sharing and car clubs, said transport minister Andrew Jones at Smarter Travel LIVE! last week.

“Certainly, we are a nation of car lovers, often owning two or more vehicles in one family,” said Jones. “Many local journeys are taken by car, often with just one occupant. Clearly, this isn’t a ‘smart’ use of precious road capacity. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

This over-dependence on the car was causing congestion, making it hard to find parking spaces in many towns and cities and contributing to poor air quality, said Jones.

But when challenged about the Government’s use of instruments to change travel behaviour the minister said he favoured carrots rather than sticks, stating that it wasn’t the Government’s job to make travel choices for people.

Discussing the framework that government should provide for the transport sector, Graham Pendlebury, the DfT’s director of local transport, said the policy was one of “light-touch regulation”, which was particularly appropriate at a time of rapid technological change and emerging new business models. 

Andrew Jones gave the keynote speech at the UK’s biggest sustainable transport event, hosted by Milton Keynes Council and organised by Landor LINKS, on 17-18 March. 

More than 700 people attended, including nearly 100 councils, with presentations from 150 sustainable transport practitioners. There was also an exhibition, with 60 organisations representing a diverse array of sustainable transport and intelligent mobility experts. 

Jones told delegates: “It’s not our job to tell people how to travel. But what we can do is give people real alternatives to car ownership.

“In fact, we’re already seeing a shift in attitudes, particularly among young people, with the growth of car clubs, and other services which give people the opportunity to share rides.”

Jones pointed out that many companies offer car share schemes to their employees while other projects combine vehicle sharing with more personalised and tailored options.

The DfT has invested £1.5m in a car clubs programme since 2014, funding 23 schemes, and is developing better links between shared transport and public transport, said Jones.

“We are sponsoring a feasibility study into a new initiative in Manchester called Simply Connect, which aims to help local people and businesses make smarter travel choices by improving data and information about different forms of transport. This is via the Transport Technology Research Innovation Grant.”

Meanwhile, the £560m Access Fund, which will become available for sustainable transport projects from 2017/18, represented a “huge investment going into cycling and walking”.

Transport planning was seeing a significant change, both at local and national levels, with partnerships “springing up” to take advantage of those opportunities, said the minister.

Emerging technologies were also playing a part in reducing congestion and improving journey times by smoothing traffic flow, such as ‘smart motorways’. 

By 2020 Highways England will have added more than 400 lane miles of smart motorways, the minister said. “There’s a huge array of technologies which will profoundly change the way we drive and manage traffic.”

He said that new innovations would benefit from the Government’s £100m Intelligent Mobility Fund. “Trials to test driverless cars on the streets are being carried out in several locations around the country,” the minister said. “And autonomous vehicles are also being used in Heathrow to move passengers before real world tests start in Greenwich this summer.”

Zero emission vehicles

Alongside this, the market for ultra low emission vehicles (ULEV) is “growing significantly”, said the minister.

“Plug-in vehicle registrations reached a record high in 2015, as 29,972 new ULEVs arrived on UK roads, more than the past four years’ totals rolled into one.

“And that’s why in the last Spending Review we increased our support for the British ULEV market to £600m over this Parliament.”

He added: “The UK is one of the largest markets for ULEVs in the EU and the fourth biggest in the world. And we now have the most comprehensive rapid chargepoint network in Europe.

“All this keeps us on track for all cars and vans on our roads to be effectively zero emission by 2050.”

Many of the developments touched on by the minister were debated during the two-day event, held at ArenaMK. Not surprisingly, there was great interest in the autonomous vehicle trials being carried out in Milton Keynes by Transport System Catapult. There was also much discussion about the economic viability of car and bike share, the use of ‘big data’ in passenger information, and developing business and marketing strategies to promote active travel.

Day one of the event included the popular Speed Learning session, where delegates selected five from 50 case studies. These 12-minute sessions looked at a range of inspiring projects across the UK covering active travel, behaviour change, shared transport and intelligent mobility. The event also hosted the Smarter Travel Awards ceremony (see right).

Geoff Snelson, director of strategy at Milton Keynes Council, said: “It was great to see so many people in attendance at Smarter Travel LIVE! It wasn’t just the high numbers but the quality of the attendees – it really did feel like the Intelligent Transport industry were there in force.

 “I think the conference reinforced our credentials as a place for developing leading edge mobility solutions. It will have given us a big boost as well as helping other places to develop their own plans.”

Snelson said the conference underlined that active travel, such as cycling and walking, were a vital part of the sustainable transport mix. “We should not get carried away with apps and digital solutions,” he said. “There is still a strong role for cycling and walking within integrated transport.”