"Modal Shift" (car to bus) in rural areas

[TheManOnThe172]

Modal shift from car to bus is widely touted as a way to reduce transport emissions – and it seemed to be quite a large part of the future envisaged by the Welsh government spokesperson justifying the cutting of their roads programme on Radio 4’s PM last night.

But in rural areas, is this modal shift actually a good idea? I fear that it will mean more emissions, not fewer.

Car users avoid buses, even when they can use them without charge, because they take too long, connect badly, and have excessive gaps. Or because they need to visit several destinations in one trip, or take (or bring back) something heavy or bulky.

Because of the distances for rural journeys, going through a succession of villages, or around two sides of a triangle, by bus (even if it is the same bus, or has excellent connections) can easily mean that a round trip involves an hour or more of extra time on the road. So whatever you do about improving frequencies, you aren’t going to tempt many people out of their cars – even in the most benign case (visiting one destination, in the centre of town, without needing to carry anything heavy or bulky).

If you want to tempt people away from cars, you are going to have to offer pretty direct services, and these will either need to be very frequent, or on demand. But very few of these services would be two-way flows. So the two trips made by the bus (once to take you, once to bring you back) are likely to be empty in one direction. Depending on where the bus goes in the meantime, that can mean as much as twice as many miles as you would have done in your car (which stays in town until you come home). If we guess that even a minibus will have twice the emissions of a small car, then it would need three or four car-loads of people on the bus to avoid creating more emissions than the car trips it would replace.

Even if the funding was available, how many frequent, direct bus services could we create that would achieve that level of usage across the operating day? Very few, I fear.

Demand-Responsive Transport certainly doesn’t look like it offers anything like that loading either – my analysis of Yorbus around Ripon suggests that just 2% of journeys were carrying four or more passengers.

So is continuing private car usage actually the least-bad future for rural travel?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, the use of electric private cars and taxis probably is the best option for rural areas, with subsidised taxis for those who cannot drive for medical reasons and age. That's why I've proposed before that we should replace fuel tax with a combination of urban congestion charges and parking taxation, which means you wouldn't be penalised for using a car when there's genuinely no sensible other option, and encourages the use of park and ride so you'd drive to town but park on the edge to avoid those fees.

I fear Drakeford has been taken in by ideology over practicality here, and that the choice made is a very bad one. It's simply never going to be economic to operate attractive levels of bus service (which to me means minimum hourly from 7am to 11pm, roughly) in very rural areas other than where the routes happen to cover a rural route between two urban areas of reasonably high demand.

(Also don't forget that buses run on roads, not just cars!)

 

[johncrossley]

Only a small proportion of traffic is to and from rural areas. Most traffic is from town to town, or within towns, where public transport is (or could be) a realistic option. If 100% of rural to urban or rural to rural traffic goes by car but 0% of other traffic was by car, there would be hardly any traffic at all! So rural transport is a bit of a red herring. Sort out urban transport first where it is easy.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Only a small proportion of traffic is to and from rural areas. Most traffic is from town to town, or within towns, where public transport is (or could be) a realistic option. If 100% of rural to urban or rural to rural traffic goes by car but 0% of other traffic was by car, there would be hardly any traffic at all! So rural transport is a bit of a red herring. Sort out urban transport first where it is easy.

I tend to agree. Public transport is about the mass movement of people and that the greatest benefits of public transport are where the greatest number of people are. In Wales, I find it bizarre (but know the reasons why i.e. politicking) that the TrawsCymru routes T19/T22 are supposed to get electric vehicles, as is the T1. Yet there isn't a single EV bus in Swansea or Wrexham where the air quality benefits would be greatest.

Similarly, there really does need to be continued investment in public transport and focussed on the areas with the greatest population density if you want to achieve significant modal share. That means decent bus priority to improve both journey times (i.e. make them faster and more attractive) and make them more reliable; at the moment, the vagaries of congestion mean that routes in Swansea are ridiculously slow if traffic isn't encountered because of the recovery time built in.

I wouldn't say it is easy in the built up areas but it is certainly where there is the greatest scope to effect change.

 

[Ken H]

I thunk we will have to accept that the car will be the transport mode in rural areas for some time to come. There is not the population density to make running even a minibus worth while.
even running an empty EV minibus isnt 'green'

 

[richard13]

I used to live in a small rural hamlet - between us we used 8 different schools as pupils or teachers. It is a simple example of life being entirely car centred with resources spread across many surrounding locations. You won't get 8 school buses - we had none, but 1 or 2 could have happened.

It is the same as an older man complaining that a rural route was being withdrawn - he needed it to visit the dentist, but hopefully only once every six months and the appointment could be at any time of the day so the bus needed to be frequent.

School transport uses a huge resource with taxis being feeders to bus routes for primary and secondary levels - there is no choice of school, you get the one the bus goes to, unless parents play taxi. Post-16 education is just tough - moped schemes, etc.

It is incredibly inefficient, but is a product of the car and schools, NHS, work etc being located without rural transport in mind.

 

[markymark2000]

Similarly, there really does need to be continued investment in public transport and focussed on the areas with the greatest population density if you want to achieve significant modal share. That means decent bus priority to improve both journey times (i.e. make them faster and more attractive) and make them more reliable; at the moment, the vagaries of congestion mean that routes in Swansea are ridiculously slow if traffic isn't encountered because of the recovery time built in.

And in some cases, the bus priority makes things worse as the sensors are too close to the lights so buses don't hit the sensor and so the normal traffic goes and buses have to sit and wait ages for the cycle to come back around. Combine that with the fact that the road just outside of the bus station has 2 lanes for pointing right towards car parks but only a single lane heading north and that has to be shared with tens of buses per hour.



To answer the OP though, I think we need to work out how rural you are thinking about.
For rural areas which have had a service over the past 10 years and it has since been reduced or areas which are rural but alone a 'core route', I would say increase concessionary reimbursement. The pass reimbursement is so dismally low that many operators can't afford to run the rural routes anymore because of the losses. Higher reimbursement would keep more interurban core routes running on higher frequencies. Often people can walk to these routes but the lower frequencies mean it's easier to just drive.

For rural areas which are near a main road or between a current commuter flow, I think the best solution is a scheduled bus/DRT hybrid. Scheduled at major points but DRT to some villages along the way. Very similar to Salisbury Reds 102/103 and Compass 99. These systems do need to be updated though to include online booking 'anytime prior to the bus leaving the origin' and basically have a phone in the cab (same as normal DRT have the tablets in the cab) so each departure, it says 'Requested villages: [Village A], [Village B]' etc. and then as the driver gets to the village, they swipe left for picked up or swipe right for not picked up. This way, online bookings from people who then don't travel (and consequently delay everyone elses journeys needlessly), can be stopped from booking for repeated no shows. Having calling up as the only booking method for these semi DRT services is a major barrier to getting anyone under the age of about 60 onboard.

For really rural areas where there is no potential for any kind of bus service to work without huge journey times and/or huge amounts of subsidy and where conventional DRT would be inefficient, I think the focus needs to be on more park (car or bike) and ride services and make these attractive to people who are travelling into towns/cities. Park and rides have potential but not when they are so poorly advertised or the bus service from the site is a bit of a shambles. Rural mobility hubs would be quite good I think for some areas. A few parking spaces, a bike shed and a frequent bus route to the city. People aren't driving their car too far into the city and are using their car to get to the bus in the same way that people drive to get to train station or airports, they drive to the bus stop.