New transport model needed to address ‘market failure’

The wrong balance between public and private transport use is costing society greatly, 2020 delegates heard.

The development of transport services in the UK and across much of the world is a “market failure”, that has caused huge costs to the economy, health and the environment according to TRL’s new director of sustainable transport, Heather Allen.

Allen, formerly sustainable transport manager at UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, told the Travel 2020 conference that in contrast to other public services such as health and education, the quality of transport across the world had deteriorated because systems had not evolved in a way that could meet new challenges.  “We are living in the 21st Century with a 20th Century transport model,” she said.

The impact had contributed to a fivefold increase in the consumption of fossil fuel since 1950. In some countries perpetuation of the same transport system for the past half century, with different transport modes operating in silos, has created external costs of up to 10% of GDP.  “Is that acceptable?” she asked. In the UK, these include congestion costs of £10-20bn/year. Other impacts related to the transport model are a £10bn cost to the NHS in treating obesity and physical inactivity and 10,000 premature deaths/year from particulate emissions.

Allen illustrated a lack of political will to deliver significant change in transport provision throughout much of the world with research carried out by consultant Systra. It shows an inexorable rise in private car use in line with increases in GDP per capita before falling slightly in the most wealthy cities. However, a number of notable exceptions, with Amsterdam and Tokyo among the most prominent, illustrated that similar very low levels of car use to those in developing countries can be associated with cities with average to high GDP, if necessary political interventions and investment are made. In these cases quality of life, as measured on an index created by management consultancy Mercer, is significantly higher than in car dominated cities such as Rome and Houston.

Further examples of cities which Allen said were adopting approaches which could serve as models for the development of new intermodal transport policies  included Stockholm. All public transport in the city is operated with alternative energy sources, congestion charging has been introduced, and  personal carbon budgets have been set.  She also highlighted Nice where a new system is being developed which integrates bus rapid transit with bike sharing and electric car sharing and Vienna where 90% of the population now live within 500 metres of a public transport stop. Mass bike sharing schemes, meanwhile, are being led by Asian cities such as Tehran and Hangzhou, where the world’s largest scheme has 60,000 cycles. In Seoul, a six lane motorway through the middle of the city has been replaced with a public park, and citizens have been engaged in sustainable transport through voluntary no drive days.

Taxis must be fully integrated into local transport planning, urged Kris Beuret, Chair of the newly-formed National Association of Taxi Users (NATU). She called for the simplification of “complex and contradictory legislation” – some dating back to 1848; elimination of the dual system of hackney carriage and private hire “which, given ITS development, is unsustainable”; and encouragement for taxibuses, which local transport authorities could use to address withdrawel of bus services. 

Taxi use, she said, “is growing; taxis are used by all sections of society and essential to some, and can fill gaps in public transport trips”. But research for Transport Direct had shown that reluctance to use taxis is often the “missing link”, deterring wider public transport use.