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The Future - 50 years on....?
- Thread starter Masboroughlad
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Second thought: Who would want to travel to Cardiff from Paris
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Rational Plan
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50 years on?
Lets look at trends and the implications. Computing power will march ever onward as we near limit of atomic size the growth of quantom computing will see moores law continue.
Unless there is a break through in battery technology electric cars are dead. Hydrogen is just as useless , we might have luck with synthetic genetics and create cheaper biofuels. Either way I can't see cheap fuel for cars being very likely.
Teleconferencing has been around for 30 years and home working for over 10 and yet we are traveling more. According to data short trips have been declining while longer ones have been surging.
In recent years it has been major metropolitan cities that have attracted the most job growth while smaller towns have had a very mixed bag on their growth prospects. In the last few years from reading property magazines occupier after occupier wants to locate where there are lots of facilities, like shops and restaurants to attract staff, so some companies are shift back into town centres, while some business parks are looking at adding residential to support at least a few shops and leisure services.
All this adds up to massive pressure on long distance commuting into large city centres. The congestion in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is not ending anytime soon.
Even if travel per head does not increase much, there is the total population figures to look at. Under current trends the UK is expected to grow to 70 million in the 2040's. These things can change, but immigration shows no sign of slowing down. Most of this growth looks to based in the SE, SW and the Midlands.
TFL is projecting total travel in London to increase by 50% in the next 20 years. Just imagine the tubes and rail improvements needed for that.
According to the DFT in 2010 total rail (inc tube) just made up 3% of all trips. 42% were as a driver in a car/van and 22% as a passenger in car/van. Imagine what it would take to get that share up to 9%.
Near term trends: electrification of everything with a half hourly service, and as numbers rise more lines will get half hourly service. Severe crowding in all metropolitan areas and trunk routes. Solutions:
HS2 will be built at some point, expect more extensions of the line up both coasts to provide more capacity.
Mini crossrail schemes and tram train lines to remove trains from the main stations of our biggest cities.
No matter how many lines they build in London the other lines will still be rammed. The more capacity there is into London the more business can grow in the centre and therefore the more commuters. Part time home working will have some effect, but it's effects will be limited to the richest workers. This trend is already being noticed as people cash out of London and buy a lovely house more than 50/100 miles from London where there are good local schools. The fewer days you need to be at work then the longer the distance you can live for London, until you get to the stage where you trade off with a studio in London for 3/4 nights a week and your family is in Devon or Lincolnshire.
Automation carrys on. What do we need people for on the railways? I can't see there being any ticket staff in 20 years, no need for printed tickets, your phone, bank device or national travel card will handle all that. Will there be ticket barriers? A train might have sensors that matches every passenger to their ticket as they enter the door, any ticketless travel could be handled by alerting revenue protection. How about the seat on the train vibrating as you approach your stop to remind you to get off, a great way to deal with drunks.
Will a train in effect drive itself? The only human presence being a guard/refreshments/ emergency relief person.
Self driving cars are looking increasingly likely, but how big an impact will it have, other than no road deaths. The taxi industry could be devastated, no drink driving anymore, but taxis could be much cheaper with no wages to pay, so some people give up car ownership and use a mix of transit and taxis depending on price and availability.
Older people would be less reliant on public transport is they can afford to run a car or at least hire an auto taxi.
If cars can be automated, can buses? From a passenger security perspective maybe no, but if the bus could read passenger behavoir and everyone who got on a bus had to be indentifiable maybe it could work. It would transform the economics of bus travel.
If a lot more people had to travel by public transport because of fuel prices, then buses would be a very profitable business. With fewer vehicles on the road congestion would be much less and buses could compete with rail services. In an automated future networked mini buses could provide all local transport. Everyone would enter their destination into the their phone as they left home and what ever min bus was heading in the general direction would pull over and pick them up. Such buses could shuttle all over town carrying picking and dropping off, longer journeys may have people dropped off at a railway station for part of the way. In such a scenario local station in cities disappear as the lines are needed for mainline services and the roads have plenty of space for free flowing mini buses as only the rich own their own auto cars. You may never really notice how you get somewhere in the future your phone will guide you, only trains have a time table and a route but the transit system will always time it's planned journeys to meet these trains with minimal waiting time.
Lets look at trends and the implications. Computing power will march ever onward as we near limit of atomic size the growth of quantom computing will see moores law continue.
Unless there is a break through in battery technology electric cars are dead. Hydrogen is just as useless , we might have luck with synthetic genetics and create cheaper biofuels. Either way I can't see cheap fuel for cars being very likely.
Teleconferencing has been around for 30 years and home working for over 10 and yet we are traveling more. According to data short trips have been declining while longer ones have been surging.
In recent years it has been major metropolitan cities that have attracted the most job growth while smaller towns have had a very mixed bag on their growth prospects. In the last few years from reading property magazines occupier after occupier wants to locate where there are lots of facilities, like shops and restaurants to attract staff, so some companies are shift back into town centres, while some business parks are looking at adding residential to support at least a few shops and leisure services.
All this adds up to massive pressure on long distance commuting into large city centres. The congestion in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is not ending anytime soon.
Even if travel per head does not increase much, there is the total population figures to look at. Under current trends the UK is expected to grow to 70 million in the 2040's. These things can change, but immigration shows no sign of slowing down. Most of this growth looks to based in the SE, SW and the Midlands.
TFL is projecting total travel in London to increase by 50% in the next 20 years. Just imagine the tubes and rail improvements needed for that.
According to the DFT in 2010 total rail (inc tube) just made up 3% of all trips. 42% were as a driver in a car/van and 22% as a passenger in car/van. Imagine what it would take to get that share up to 9%.
Near term trends: electrification of everything with a half hourly service, and as numbers rise more lines will get half hourly service. Severe crowding in all metropolitan areas and trunk routes. Solutions:
HS2 will be built at some point, expect more extensions of the line up both coasts to provide more capacity.
Mini crossrail schemes and tram train lines to remove trains from the main stations of our biggest cities.
No matter how many lines they build in London the other lines will still be rammed. The more capacity there is into London the more business can grow in the centre and therefore the more commuters. Part time home working will have some effect, but it's effects will be limited to the richest workers. This trend is already being noticed as people cash out of London and buy a lovely house more than 50/100 miles from London where there are good local schools. The fewer days you need to be at work then the longer the distance you can live for London, until you get to the stage where you trade off with a studio in London for 3/4 nights a week and your family is in Devon or Lincolnshire.
Automation carrys on. What do we need people for on the railways? I can't see there being any ticket staff in 20 years, no need for printed tickets, your phone, bank device or national travel card will handle all that. Will there be ticket barriers? A train might have sensors that matches every passenger to their ticket as they enter the door, any ticketless travel could be handled by alerting revenue protection. How about the seat on the train vibrating as you approach your stop to remind you to get off, a great way to deal with drunks.
Will a train in effect drive itself? The only human presence being a guard/refreshments/ emergency relief person.
Self driving cars are looking increasingly likely, but how big an impact will it have, other than no road deaths. The taxi industry could be devastated, no drink driving anymore, but taxis could be much cheaper with no wages to pay, so some people give up car ownership and use a mix of transit and taxis depending on price and availability.
Older people would be less reliant on public transport is they can afford to run a car or at least hire an auto taxi.
If cars can be automated, can buses? From a passenger security perspective maybe no, but if the bus could read passenger behavoir and everyone who got on a bus had to be indentifiable maybe it could work. It would transform the economics of bus travel.
If a lot more people had to travel by public transport because of fuel prices, then buses would be a very profitable business. With fewer vehicles on the road congestion would be much less and buses could compete with rail services. In an automated future networked mini buses could provide all local transport. Everyone would enter their destination into the their phone as they left home and what ever min bus was heading in the general direction would pull over and pick them up. Such buses could shuttle all over town carrying picking and dropping off, longer journeys may have people dropped off at a railway station for part of the way. In such a scenario local station in cities disappear as the lines are needed for mainline services and the roads have plenty of space for free flowing mini buses as only the rich own their own auto cars. You may never really notice how you get somewhere in the future your phone will guide you, only trains have a time table and a route but the transit system will always time it's planned journeys to meet these trains with minimal waiting time.
Badger
Member
My hope is that buses, like D.O.O trains, will be automated, with the driver instead becoming a conductor/guard. Deals with both problems.
NY Yankee
Member
I think we'll see the proliferation of alternative forms of transportation (light rails/trams, monorails, gondolas). It is less expensive to build those forms of transportation than more Tube tunnels.
Tiny Tim
Member
Predicting the future of the railways is impossible, none of us know what technological developments will occur that effect them. One thing we know right now is that people want their own, independent means of transport - that's what led to the Beeching cuts. If it's at all possible for the private car to thrive, it will. Alternative fuels don't just power public transport. As for the road network, once again we know that drivers will suffer all manner of congestion to stay in their cars, will this really change? I fear that the present boom in public transport usage is entirely reliant on high fuel costs. If and when that changes, anything could happen.
Is that really the case these days though? Ten years ago on one of my local bus routes there only ever used to be a handful of people on it but now it's busy most of the day. There have been no changes in frequency in the last ten years and the fares are more expensive so you'd think that the number of people using the bus would have declined even more but no, a lot more people are using the bus now.
Sapphire Blue
Member
- Joined
- 17 May 2010
- Messages
- 440
Seventy-year-olds will be telling twenty-year-olds how good things were 50 years ago.
They (you?) will be just as wrong as today's seventy-year-olds(you?)
They (you?) will be just as wrong as today's seventy-year-olds(you?)
This one won't be, it can't get much worse now (barring a total collapse of all capitalist economies).
Badger
Member
"Back in my day, pacers were only 30 years old, of course back then we had other trains too..."
As trams become more popular I can see them extending into a joined up network in a lot of places. North-West Wolverhampton, to Birmingham, to Coventry, to Leicester, to Derby and Nottingham, will all be connected by tram systems that interlink. There will be a greater emphasis on connected tram lines - there will be more interchange stations rather than just terminus to terminus. They will use a standardised track, tram, platform configuration, etc, and will probably be driverless.
Derby to Nottingham, and Birmingham to Coventry, are pretty much dead certs.
As trams become more popular I can see them extending into a joined up network in a lot of places. North-West Wolverhampton, to Birmingham, to Coventry, to Leicester, to Derby and Nottingham, will all be connected by tram systems that interlink. There will be a greater emphasis on connected tram lines - there will be more interchange stations rather than just terminus to terminus. They will use a standardised track, tram, platform configuration, etc, and will probably be driverless.
Derby to Nottingham, and Birmingham to Coventry, are pretty much dead certs.
As it has been said, it is almost impossible to predict what things will be like in 50 years, because it depends on unforeseen technological breakthroughs etc.
There are a number of scenarios, which can range from the hugely optimistic, to pessimistic.
One big question is whether we can the overcome environmental, resource and fuel concerns of the day? Although, it should be noted these were concerns in 1962, and almost 'fashionable' in 1972!
Another question, is the role of technology. How much automation and the need to travel? Again, these were concerns in 1962.
As for the railways, one thing is for certain they have to get costs under control. The future viability of all projects will depend on breakthroughs and cutting cost, else other solutions such as BRT, demand control, and so on will be favored.
More urbanization will generate more need for high-capacity transport systems, like rail, so there will definitely be railways in cities, perhaps more of them. Rural railways will have to cut costs, and at that time may need to compete with automatic taxis and buses. So perhaps their future may still be open to question. It however depends on how the freight market pans out, will there be viable tech solutions for replacing diesel trucks will another propulsion systems? It might be that railways become more important for freight, and need to have more reach to local distribution centres, where ongoing freight transit is by light battery powered trucks.
What's more certain is I think automation will probably be the biggest change in transport in the next 50 years. We are already seeing the first self-drive cars. In 50 years time, they could will be the norm - much depends on public acceptance. We already have fully automatic metro systems, and airliners essentially fly themselves. Rio Tinto freight trains and being converted to driverless.
As there is a capacity squeeze on urban railways, some will be converted to ATO to add more trains per hour. With ATO there are still drivers at the front but the computer does most the the operation.
The next step up is DTO or Driverless Train Operation, where the person on board can be anywhere, say doing customer service duties. London underground want all lines to move to this system in the near future.
For mainline systems, because of level crossings and mixed traffic operation it is somewhat more complex and less cost effective. Nevertheless, in order to save cost, I could see branch lines operating with tramway style centenary/or batteries will just one person on board.
Unattended train operation (UTO) has been used since the 1980s and is used on many metro lines, so there may be a case where some lines have nobody on board at all and all stations are unmanned. The railway policed by at team of security guards and eventually, perhaps beyond our lifetimes, security robots. Computers already control everything already on the Copenhagen network.
In 2050, I would guess the underground will be entirely automatic. On the main line, many branch lines will be the same. Secondary routes and main lines have trains driven by computers and only on intercity services would there be someone at the front. All operations will be controlled from a handful (certainly less than 15) control centres.
Tickets will have long gone, and maybe cash itself. Stations would be mainly retail establishments with shops and offices manned by non-railway people. The railway employing no staff at most locations and only skelton staff at main line stations.
Guards would have long gone, and in the majority of cases the role integrated with drivers. Customer service staff will still exist on the intercity network, but these may be retail staff employed by an outside company.
There are a number of scenarios, which can range from the hugely optimistic, to pessimistic.
One big question is whether we can the overcome environmental, resource and fuel concerns of the day? Although, it should be noted these were concerns in 1962, and almost 'fashionable' in 1972!
Another question, is the role of technology. How much automation and the need to travel? Again, these were concerns in 1962.
As for the railways, one thing is for certain they have to get costs under control. The future viability of all projects will depend on breakthroughs and cutting cost, else other solutions such as BRT, demand control, and so on will be favored.
More urbanization will generate more need for high-capacity transport systems, like rail, so there will definitely be railways in cities, perhaps more of them. Rural railways will have to cut costs, and at that time may need to compete with automatic taxis and buses. So perhaps their future may still be open to question. It however depends on how the freight market pans out, will there be viable tech solutions for replacing diesel trucks will another propulsion systems? It might be that railways become more important for freight, and need to have more reach to local distribution centres, where ongoing freight transit is by light battery powered trucks.
What's more certain is I think automation will probably be the biggest change in transport in the next 50 years. We are already seeing the first self-drive cars. In 50 years time, they could will be the norm - much depends on public acceptance. We already have fully automatic metro systems, and airliners essentially fly themselves. Rio Tinto freight trains and being converted to driverless.
As there is a capacity squeeze on urban railways, some will be converted to ATO to add more trains per hour. With ATO there are still drivers at the front but the computer does most the the operation.
The next step up is DTO or Driverless Train Operation, where the person on board can be anywhere, say doing customer service duties. London underground want all lines to move to this system in the near future.
For mainline systems, because of level crossings and mixed traffic operation it is somewhat more complex and less cost effective. Nevertheless, in order to save cost, I could see branch lines operating with tramway style centenary/or batteries will just one person on board.
Unattended train operation (UTO) has been used since the 1980s and is used on many metro lines, so there may be a case where some lines have nobody on board at all and all stations are unmanned. The railway policed by at team of security guards and eventually, perhaps beyond our lifetimes, security robots. Computers already control everything already on the Copenhagen network.
In 2050, I would guess the underground will be entirely automatic. On the main line, many branch lines will be the same. Secondary routes and main lines have trains driven by computers and only on intercity services would there be someone at the front. All operations will be controlled from a handful (certainly less than 15) control centres.
Tickets will have long gone, and maybe cash itself. Stations would be mainly retail establishments with shops and offices manned by non-railway people. The railway employing no staff at most locations and only skelton staff at main line stations.
Guards would have long gone, and in the majority of cases the role integrated with drivers. Customer service staff will still exist on the intercity network, but these may be retail staff employed by an outside company.
Quite! My only prediction is that I can't predict anything!
It may be that this desire for independent transport will fall, due to cost, and I'm not just talking fuel costs, but also insurance and parking, to name but two!
As you say, anything could happen, cars might even become extinct!
Has bus travel increased everywhere though? In this area there are fewer buses than even three years ago, and you hardly ever see anyone who is not on a free pass on some routes.
Well I can't argue with that!
Things will be much the same I suspect - they haven't changed very much over the last 50 on the railways.
The immediate future for energy looks to be electricity generated from coal using carbon storage/capture which suggests we should see an extension of electrification, or perhaps hydrogen powered trains where the capital cost of electrification couldn't be justified.
The immediate future for energy looks to be electricity generated from coal using carbon storage/capture which suggests we should see an extension of electrification, or perhaps hydrogen powered trains where the capital cost of electrification couldn't be justified.
Or have they?
In 1962, the railways had only been nationalised for fourteen years, much of the network was still worked by steam (we had only stopped building steam locos two years previously), multiple units were a very new thing in many places, pick-up goods still ran, Freightliner was a very new concept, line closures were happening all over the place, the Channel Tunnel idea was a dead duck, boat trains ran in many places (but airport links were rare), the WCML was in the process of being electrified, with the ECML possibly going to be next, there were boat trains everywhere, the National Traction Plan was not due out for a few years, diesel-hydraulics looked like an alternative to diesel-electrics and a wonderful new project called the Advanced Passenger Train was just being thought through.
I think it might have changed a bit since then. :?
Manchester77
Established Member
I agree with those franchises but will Scotland still be part of the uk rail network or will it be an independent nation with its own railway?
Scotland will not become independent, so it's not a worry.
telstarbox
Established Member
Whether it does or doesn't there will still be cross-border rail services, as in Ireland.
If it stays in the UK, then nothing changes.
ex-railwayman
Member
But, they do now........
I can forsee, there will be more tram networks in our cities, and monorail systems for other areas, driverless, of course, you can travel from all towns/cities directly via an airport, or, seaport. There will be more tunnels, even a couple of bridges, across to the European mainland, ferries will become obsolete, what, no more Duty Free, bah......
I agree with the technology, there won't be any more paper tickets, we will all have a built in microchip to enable the dictators (sorry, Government) to tax us heavily to encompass payment for whatever public transport we use, we will possibly be working more at night time for our employers, jet packs, or, Personal Rocket Belts will be available for everyone as trains will be solar powered and not work in the dark....
Of course, we could have had Armageddon by then, so, as half the planet is Chernobyl-ified, there won't be anybody left to catch a train.
Cheerz. ex-railwayman.
brompton rail
Member
And it will still take nearly 8 hours from Doncaster to Penzance, despite HS2 etc. The fare will be even more unaffordable than it is now.
Oh, and I will be dead!
Oh, and I will be dead!
The 375 King
Member
- Joined
- 31 May 2012
- Messages
- 49
Still will not be able to get a seat on the 07:33 to London Bridge.
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