The fares increases for 2026-2028 will be up to Sadiq Khan but I wouldn't be surprised if 2029 increases ends up being in the hand of his successor since there is a chance he won't stand again.
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Labour Spending Review
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On the flip side it was an extremely handy railhead during the Nottingham blockade, and the former power station site is earmarked for a significant amount of residential and commercial development.
In the future we may look back upon it as an extremely unusual modern example of building a station before it's needed, rather than years after!
Broughton and Penwortham in the Preston area - both also seeing some of the bypassed road space reallocated for active travel - rather than simply inducing demand and resulting in the same issues 25 years down the line!
Preston has also finally seen the construction of a part of its Western bypass which was originally identified as being needed by the 1980s, although a significant justification was to support new housebuilding in the expanding city.
And probably more importantly dedicated space that's not shared with taxis - £3 and takes 24-26 minutes or £5 and takes 15 - 90 minutes is a whole different kettle of fish. Undoubtedly there will also be a shortage of vehicles at peak times, or significantly higher fares to cover the costs of vehicles sitting idle most of the time.
It’s going to be a significant pressure, and could end the need for rural bus services. But in cities, road congestion should mean rail corridors and bus lanes become more important than ever.
If anything rural buses will be protected in the medium term, since robotaxi companies will roll out in urban areas only. The issue is many bus lanes are currently open to taxis and that will have to change very quickly.
However robotaxi service will be an absolute game-changer for local journeys in rural areas if they eventually roll out. They'll substantially reduce SEN and elderly transport costs for councils, enable on demand affordable transport and aren't as bound by the possibility of traffic chaos as in urban areas.
And probably have a more predictable demand level. Still wondering what will happen at points of high demand (the end of an event for example). Do these things have to be booked in advance (in which case how do you find which of the 800 or so vehicles that have turned up is the one you’ve ordered) or is it a general free for all without the presence of a taxi driver or bus driver to discourage actual violence?
Probably similar to Uber, pre-booked. Then possibly the doors only open following authentication using your phone.
... once you've worked out which one is yours! Will work fine out on the street outside your house - but will be fun when you're one of 100 people who's booked one from an event 15 minutes after it ends (assuming you know when it's going to end!). And as for what happens after the Cup Final....? Equally, lots of stations (for example) are in fairly constricted areas - so where does your car wait when the 20 that have been booked by the people on a now late-running train haven't left? Doesn't take long to see the advantages of multi person vehicles running to a known timetable along fixed routes. I'm sure that technology can cope with steering autonomous vehicles through a streetscape designed for horse-and-cart (even on a Friday night) - but coping with the vagaries of life as it is actually lived at scale is going to be a different matter. I'm sure that some of the proponents of the technology will argue that all the above points apply today to taxis - which is probably true, but taxis are at present with very few exceptions a very niche market.
Exactly, and stadiums/events are usually in urban areas where rail and buses will still have a huge advantage. 70,000 people leaving Wembley stadium won’t be getting into 70,000 robotaxis.
They'll have exactly the same issues that cars do. Look at a stadium in the US, the amount of parking surrounding it and the queues to get out afterwards.
The best way of moving masses of people is er - mass transit.
Indeed, people are more than happy to use a lift (which carries lots of people and is fairly easy to define as a massive transit system) however when it comes to horizontal travel there appears to be an aversion to providing it.
If we tried using personal lifts (even if they could all use the same shaft) there just wouldn't be the capacity to move that number of people.
Falcon1200
Established Member
As long as they are all going to the same place, or at least in the same direction (as per lifts, also)......
That's the handy thing with stadiums. They are a single destination.
You don't even need that many.
1 bus takes up the road space of 2 cars, but even with just 8 people on board it's getting the number of people from 5 cars.
And of course a good transit network is very efficient at quickly dispersing crowds to more remote locales where minicabs/autonomous cars/bike hire/walking can take over for the "last mile" with lower numbers of people at each final rail station at any one time.
Falcon1200
Established Member
But the origin of attendees pre-event is not, and neither are their destinations post-event!
There are these clever things called "junctions" which allow trains to go to different places. For example the Millennium Stadium has 80k seats. Trains run from Cardiff, to London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and many more destinations, dispersing thousands of people very quickly.
You can even swap from one train to another. If you come out of Twickenham, passengers not heading to London might go to Reading and change there for destinations west.
HSTEd
Veteran Member
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If the best case you can get for sustaining current spending on public transport is for a handful of large events, we might be in serious trouble.
It would likely be far cheaper to just move city centre stadiums and similar venues to better road connected locations than sustain a railway or similar network to support them!
In any case, driverless cars have a potential for enormous impact, but they have not yet arrived.
I might suggest any new towns are built along the lines of Milton Keynes, but other posters might brain me!
If they arrive in quantity, it will be a major challenge to the position of the railway, especially as road electrification advances.
The railway needs to be ready for an environment where huge subsidies are no longer available.
It would likely be far cheaper to just move city centre stadiums and similar venues to better road connected locations than sustain a railway or similar network to support them!
In any case, driverless cars have a potential for enormous impact, but they have not yet arrived.
I might suggest any new towns are built along the lines of Milton Keynes, but other posters might brain me!
If they arrive in quantity, it will be a major challenge to the position of the railway, especially as road electrification advances.
The railway needs to be ready for an environment where huge subsidies are no longer available.
I’m sure you realise this, but my original comment about stadiums and the like was in the light of comments here and elsewhere about autonomous vehicles sounding the death knell for bus services. If they render the bus service unviable on normal days (and I very much doubt it will), then the buses won’t be there to do the “mass transit m” bit on days when it’s really needed.
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Anywhere where there is a concentration of people leaving at one time is going to cause logistical problems if autonomous individual vehicles become the norm.
Nottingham59
Established Member
My guess is that the future is going to be a mixture of autonomous taxis and autonomous buses. At night, when the roads are quiet, your 2-seat AV taxi will take you where you want to go. As the roads get busier during the day, taxis will only take you to the appropriate bus stop, where a 20-seat autonomous minibus will take you into town on roads with dedicated bus lanes. At peak times, I imagine larger 200-seat autonomous Bus Rapid Transit services to handle the loads required on trunk routes. And these BRT double-bendy-buses would be available to shift large numbers of people to and from stadiums before and after games.
I'm guessing now, but would a fleet of 10,000 AV taxis; 1000 AV minibuses and 100 BRT bendy busses be able to serve a city of amilliion people? Dunno - the numbers look in that ball park. Certainly more than a hundred thousand population.
Will it happen? We shall have to wait and see.
778
Member
The railways that support City Centre Stadiums will not be closed because of driverless cars. The railways that will be in serious trouble will be rural routes and branch lines. No really major events take place in rural areas in this country apart from music festivals (Glastonbury etc).
I'm not so sure, at least in the short term after implementation in rural areas it is likely that the charges for use would be higher than rail.
Initially they are likely to be on taxi charges, even if they get to half that (and you've got to remember that in rural areas there's a good chance that such vehicles aren't used as much as urban areas) the cost is still going to be quite high. In today's prices £5.60 is likely to be a 3 mile journey, trains would easily be able to better that even at peak times using turn up and go prices.
In comparison Woking to West Byfleet (3.5 miles) is £4.20. Even an open return is £6.60 (vs £11.20 for the automated vehicle going each way)
£1.40 more for a one off trip and people would probably pay it for the convenience.
If you go further then the taxi rates per mile don't reduce, whilst trains tend to.
However for regular travel, return journeys, longer distance travel and the like and trains would still be used.
That's assuming that prices are half that of taxis currently. Yes, in theory you could see the per mile rate fall below £1.50/mile (current taxi rate is £3/mile for mile 2 onwards), however I'm urban areas prices would likely need to balance so capacity doesn't run out but didn't mean that the vehicles are under used. In rural locations the price needs to reflect that they may not be used as much (at least you might need to have more empty movements to get to the next passenger and/or longer gaps between passengers).
The 189 and 186 round my way have always been well used, although that hasn't stopped them being slashed over the past five years or so.
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I'm not convinced that the rural road network is much better designed to cope with hundreds of driverless cars hurtling around the place than driven ones.
Arguably, driverless buses (fixed route carrying more than 5 people at a time) would become the norm over booked point to point driverless cars (carrying 1 or 2 people).
First off as the route is fixed it's easier to map, so could be delivered earlier in the roll out of automated vehicles.
Next off, as there would be larger numbers using each vehicle the cost would be shared, so rather than the charger being £1.50 per mile (sole use) it could be 50p per mile or less. In rural areas where travel distances are likely to be longer even small reductions in costs cost be noticeable.
Add to that the fact the number of rural travel requirements that would start and/or end “off map”.
The other issue in terms of either cost or convenience is the trade-off between the number of vehicles (and size/location of storage and maintenance facilities) required to maintain a truly on-demand service (“your next vehicle is available at 02.00 on Tuesday morning” is not much good when the baby’s on the way) and the size /number of locations which are economically viable. As for what happens after the initial rush when the whole lot is in the hands of 1 company (Amazon, probably)?
Annetts key
Established Member
So, in a rural area, what happens when a driver-less autonomous car meets a farm tractor on a single track narrow country lane? Or meets a farmer with their cattle on a country road?
duffield
Established Member
In the tractor case, I guess the farmer just pushes it into the nearest ditch.
Seriously though, if it's going to work you'll have to make them ultra polite so they always defer and back up to the last passing point. It's not just a rural problem though, lots of narrow urban streets have cars parked on both sides with only room for a single line of traffic between.
There's quite a lot of aspects of autonomous vehicles that only work well if all vehicles are autonomous, and communicating and negotiating with each other.
stevieinselby
Member
After being on a bus yesterday where the driver had to reverse about 200m through a village to a gap in the parked cars in order to let traffic coming the other way through (several vehicles including motortrikes towing trailers), I dread to think how an autonomous vehicle would have handled that situation...In the tractor case, I guess the farmer just pushes it into the nearest ditch.
Seriously though, if it's going to work you'll have to make them ultra polite so they always defer and back up to the last passing point. It's not just a rural problem though, lots of narrow urban streets have cars parked on both sides with only room for a single line of traffic between.
There's quite a lot of aspects of autonomous vehicles that only work well if all vehicles are autonomous, and communicating and negotiating with each other.
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Exactly. I am not knocking the technology, but clearly we should be quite a bite off mass deployment of the technology in remoter places such as villages etc,.
The idea is that a human can take over for these problematic bits - it is exactly like how Waymo works. But instead of 1000 drivers for a 24/7 fleet of 300 cars you need a handful of remote operators.
No reason why this wouldn't work in rural areas. Could have 4G and then starlink backup.
No reason why this wouldn't work in rural areas. Could have 4G and then starlink backup.
duffield
Established Member
4G is patchy or non-existent in many rural areas. Starlink needs line-of-sight to the satellite. You need a rock solid low latency hi-res video capable two way link if a remote operator is going to drive a vehicle. Many single track rural roads in some areas are virtually "green tunnels" (my sister lives in just such an area), and even if they're not, line of sight will come and go constantly as will 4G.
It might just work OK in largely flat, open, treeless areas - parts of eastern England perhaps - but not in places like rural Devon and Cornwall. I think you'd need massive investment in (e.g.) a colossal amount of mini cell towers/repeaters in such areas to make this at all workable.