Modal shift in the suburbs?

[TheManOnThe172]

Many climate-change initiatives appear to assume that a good proportion of people with cars could be tempted to leave their car at home and take public transport if only the frequency was greater, or the cost lower.

Clearly, building major new hard infrastructure (heavy rail, metro, busways) can widen the range of journeys that are faster than by car. But we aren't going to be able to do this for more than a fraction of the population.

A substantial reduction in private car use from voluntary "modal shift" would mostly rely on making bus services more attractive.

It can clearly work for inner cities (and some inner suburbs) where four helpful things happen:
* High living densities can support frequent services on each route, and multiple routes from each stop.
* Travel distances are relatively short - so going round two sides of a triangle may only add a few minutes
* Traffic congestion often justifies bus lanes, and many roads are wide enough to have the space for them
* Parking at the destination may be difficult and/or expensive

Just as clearly, voluntary car->bus shift clearly won't work in many rural areas, where none of these four factors applies. Even if you could entice a lot of car users onto buses, people have a much more diverse set of destinations than they had in the 1960s when rural bus services last thrived. Sure, you might manage an decently-loaded hourly service for villages seeing four near-empty buses a day at present. But it would still be just the one route, and inevitably a circuitous one taking in every settlement along the way. Anything involving a change could mean journeys taking an hour or two longer than by car - each way.

But where is the cross-over point - where increasing distances to travel, and the decreasing residents per square km, mean that buses can't hope to be even vaguely competitive with the car (on time and convenience) for most local journeys?

My instinct is that the fundamentals of geography mean that each "sweet spot" for buses is actually quite small and that even with substantial subsidy, buses cannot be competitive on time and convenience for many journeys even in middle-radius suburbs.

If this were right, then we could waste a lot of money trying to achieve voluntary modal shift in areas where the geography just isn't compatible. Sure, some of the spending would improve life for those who do not have use of a car. But other spending might be very poor value if it failed to deliver the "modal shift" prize.

And even more importantly, chasing rainbows risks wasting a lot of time before we start to ask the hard questions of what to do instead.

Has anyone seen any published research on the subject?

 

[Via Bank]

You could always do what the Dutch do: rather than going round the houses, (a) run suburban/interurban buses by the most direct route possible, (b) expect people to walk or cycle to the bus stop (including providing bike stands at the stop.) This, however, requires it to be safe to do (b), which is famously something we are extremely bad at in the UK… and is probably beyond the scope of this thread

 

[slowroad]

Many climate-change initiatives appear to assume that a good proportion of people with cars could be tempted to leave their car at home and take public transport if only the frequency was greater, or the cost lower.

Clearly, building major new hard infrastructure (heavy rail, metro, busways) can widen the range of journeys that are faster than by car. But we aren't going to be able to do this for more than a fraction of the population.

A substantial reduction in private car use from voluntary "modal shift" would mostly rely on making bus services more attractive.

It can clearly work for inner cities (and some inner suburbs) where four helpful things happen:
* High living densities can support frequent services on each route, and multiple routes from each stop.
* Travel distances are relatively short - so going round two sides of a triangle may only add a few minutes
* Traffic congestion often justifies bus lanes, and many roads are wide enough to have the space for them
* Parking at the destination may be difficult and/or expensive

Just as clearly, voluntary car->bus shift clearly won't work in many rural areas, where none of these four factors applies. Even if you could entice a lot of car users onto buses, people have a much more diverse set of destinations than they had in the 1960s when rural bus services last thrived. Sure, you might manage an decently-loaded hourly service for villages seeing four near-empty buses a day at present. But it would still be just the one route, and inevitably a circuitous one taking in every settlement along the way. Anything involving a change could mean journeys taking an hour or two longer than by car - each way.

But where is the cross-over point - where increasing distances to travel, and the decreasing residents per square km, mean that buses can't hope to be even vaguely competitive with the car (on time and convenience) for most local journeys?

My instinct is that the fundamentals of geography mean that each "sweet spot" for buses is actually quite small and that even with substantial subsidy, buses cannot be competitive on time and convenience for many journeys even in middle-radius suburbs.

If this were right, then we could waste a lot of money trying to achieve voluntary modal shift in areas where the geography just isn't compatible. Sure, some of the spending would improve life for those who do not have use of a car. But other spending might be very poor value if it failed to deliver the "modal shift" prize.

And even more importantly, chasing rainbows risks wasting a lot of time before we start to ask the hard questions of what to do instead.

Has anyone seen any published research on the subject?

This is about public transport generally rather than buses, but it is relevant even if it does not answer the question:

Density: the missing piece of the UK’s public transport puzzle? - Centre for Cities

Increasing public transport ridership is not just about network coverage and fares – increasing density around stations underpins the success of other policies aimed at encouraging modal shift.

www.centreforcities.org

Increasing the density around public transport stations, both existing and new, helps to maximise the number of people who can easily access the network. Given that research shows that passengers view time walking to stops, waiting or transferring as more onerous than riding a single mode of public transport, proximity to transport stops is a key factor in encouraging usage. The increased likelihood of congestion in higher density areas (caused by the greater volume of people to road space) also helps to make public transport the preferred mode of travel, particularly when effective public transport prioritisation measures such as bus lanes are in place.

Of course, increasing density is a very long term game.

 

[greenline712]

I've often thought that we're approaching the "rural transport question" wrongly, whether for modal shift or for climate change reasons. Here's why . . .

In general, poor air quality is an issue in built-up areas . . . obvious, really, with higher traffic densities and less open spaces to dissipate the bad air.
Conversely, in rural areas, air quality is better . . . lower traffic densities, more trees and grasses to absorb/convert bad air to good air.

Additionally, the problems with attracting rural car users onto public transport are well known . . . lack of frequency of service, difficulty of designing routes that don't wander around green fields in search of the occasional passenger. It's nearly impossible to square that particular circle, and we've seen that DRT simply isn't the answer, and that fixed-route services aren't much better.

So . . . shouldn't "society" actually be admitting defeat on the rural transport question? There is no answer, and we've been trying to find it for decades. Instead . . .

Restrict traffic (and by implication poor air) in built-up areas . . . encourage modal shift onto public transport (and by that I refer to buses as the "quick win" option) by providing high-quality Park and Ride services. By high-quality I mean buses running at turn-up-and-go frequencies, charge to park the car and allow free travel on the bus, so families aren't penalised. A bus always waiting at both ends of the route, and able to access decent bus-priorities along most of the route.

The opposite side of the coin is that car parking in towns is priced much more expensively, so that drivers can easily see the P&R alternative is cheaper and nearly as convenient. Obviously allow unrestricted access for blue-badge holders and drivers who "need" the car immediately accessible, so (for example) health care professionals who have to be able to respond immediately to a call can do so.

Alongside this, improve local bus services to turn-up-and-go wherever possible. IMHO, this would be a much better use of BSIP monies, rather than wasting monies chasing round the countryside for very few passengers.

It'll never happen, of course . . .

 

[Bletchleyite]

Of course, increasing density is a very long term game.

Density is a bit of a red herring. Most Dutch suburbs look remarkably identical to ours.

 

[ChrisC]

I've often thought that we're approaching the "rural transport question" wrongly, whether for modal shift or for climate change reasons. Here's why . . .

In general, poor air quality is an issue in built-up areas . . . obvious, really, with higher traffic densities and less open spaces to dissipate the bad air.
Conversely, in rural areas, air quality is better . . . lower traffic densities, more trees and grasses to absorb/convert bad air to good air.

Additionally, the problems with attracting rural car users onto public transport are well known . . . lack of frequency of service, difficulty of designing routes that don't wander around green fields in search of the occasional passenger. It's nearly impossible to square that particular circle, and we've seen that DRT simply isn't the answer, and that fixed-route services aren't much better.

So . . . shouldn't "society" actually be admitting defeat on the rural transport question? There is no answer, and we've been trying to find it for decades.

I understand where you are coming from regarding admitting defeat on the rural transport question.

There has been a very big change in the make up of the population in rural areas over the last 50 years. The majority of the people who live in most of the villages around here are now very wealthy retired people. Even though they have ENCTS passes, they do not use them. They drive everywhere, and the hourly bus which runs through the villages is an irrelevance to them. I was speaking to someone a few weeks ago, who has lived in the village for 6 years, but he didn’t even realise that there was a bus every hour into Nottingham, from a bus stop within 100m of his house! He’d seen it often enough but had never really thought about where it went to.

Going back 50 years to the 1970’s, to when my parents moved into the village, when I was in my teens, the make up of the population was very different. In those days there were a large number of houses and cottages that were available for rental. There were some council owned houses, farm workers cottages, a number of cottages owned by various land owners and even half a dozen cottages owned by the railway that had been for railway workers. Many of the people renting these homes were on low incomes, and very few had cars. Some were retired people very much just on basic pensions and there were a number of younger families with children. Now, only very wealthy people can afford to live in the village and there are very few children. If my parents hadn’t have bought their rented house, which I have fortunately inherited, I would not be able to afford to live in a village.

In the past people relied on the bus for getting to work, going shopping, going to school, visiting family, and for getting to and from weekend or evening entertainment. People used to plan their day around the hourly bus times. It was not unusual for there to be more than a dozen people waiting for the 9.40am bus into town on Friday morning to do their shopping on market day. The bus would be full picking up passengers at every stop into town. The 6.40pm bus would see a similar number of people going to bingo or a pub. That’s now the last bus and there’s no return bus later in the evening. I never now use the bus in the evening because these is no bus back. I still quite often use buses during the day, but I’m usually the only person waiting at the bus stop and there’s rarely more than about 15 people on the bus.

I agree that rural bus routes do these days often run long roundabout routes chasing small numbers of passengers. Gone are the days when buses ran mostly along main roads and people walked down lanes and farm tracks to the bus stop. It was nothing unusual to see even quite elderly people walking with full stopping bags from a village up to a mile to a bus stop on the main road. People don’t want to walk even a short distance to a bus stop these days and buses are leaving main roads to run through every village, housing development and industrial and retail parks, which all lengthens journey times.

Along my local bus route, a number of quite large housing developments have been built during the last 5 years. In total there must be somewhere around 1,000 new houses and more being built. That ought to be good for the future of the bus route but the people moving into these houses are not using the buses. The buses go past the new houses but no one gets on or off. Again are they houses for wealthy people who will not consider using the bus. The new residents are either using their cars or perhaps driving to park and ride sites on the edge of the city with frequent buses. Perhaps an hourly bus which doesn‘t run in the evening or on a Sunday is not going to attract new passengers especially if they are people who have moved out into the country from the city and were previously used to more frequent buses.

 

[johncrossley]

I've often thought that we're approaching the "rural transport question" wrongly, whether for modal shift or for climate change reasons.

Why is that question addressed so much anyway? The vast majority of people live in urban or suburban areas. If you get significant non-car modal share for urban-urban and urban-suburban trips that would be "job done".

 

[deltic]

The only way to radically achieve mode shift is by removing parking - no other method has ever worked. We give free bus travel to senior citizens but most of their journeys they make are by car. Improving public transport tends to generate more trips rather than getting people out of cars while free bus transport reduces the numbers walking and cycling.

 

[johncrossley]

The only way to radically achieve mode shift is by removing parking - no other method has ever worked. We give free bus travel to senior citizens but most of their journeys they make are by car. Improving public transport tends to generate more trips rather than getting people out of cars while free bus transport reduces the numbers walking and cycling.

What about the various European cities that achieve good modal shares for either public transport or cycling?

 

[slowroad]

Density is a bit of a red herring. Most Dutch suburbs look remarkably identical to ours.

And the Netherlands has similarly high modal share for cars. Active travel seems to substitute for bus passengers and car passengers (not drivers).

Netherlands has very low bus modal share, though high rail share.

 

[deltic]

What about the various European cities that achieve good modal shares for either public transport or cycling?

They have removed parking - look at pictures of Amsterdam in the 1970s - cars were parked all over the place. Paris, Brussels, Oslo have all removed 1000s of parking spaces in recent years, many cities have considerable pedestrianisation schemes. And the Dutch still drive more per person than the British as well as cycling far more, they use buses a lot less.

 

[johncrossley]

Netherlands has very low bus modal share.

Because they use bikes for the short journeys that other countries use buses for. The good thing about bikes is that they are particularly effective in small to medium towns that are too small for public transport to be a realistic competitor to the car. If you can bike the trip in 20 minutes or less, there's little reason to use the bus. The bike mode share in Dutch towns is usually quoted at around 25% to 30%. So even if nobody uses buses they still have a high non-car modal share. Nowhere outside London has anything like that kind of non-car mode share. Maybe you can see such statistics when considering trips to the city centre only, but not when including all journeys in the town/city.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I understand where you are coming from regarding admitting defeat on the rural transport question.

Depends what you'd term "admitting defeat".

If you mean admitting that people won't give up cars in rural locations, then yes, that should have been admitted a long time ago.

If you mean we can't do anything for them, then I disagree. Services like Oxford's Park and Ride is clearly aimed at such people - you drive the bit where the car causes least harm (a small EV or three is environmentally better than a filthy old diesel bus which is what tends to work rural routes due to the low cost) then you switch to public transport into the place where the car causes most harm, i.e. the city. There's also good potential in touristy rural areas like the Lakes where the bus does quite well.

For a fair while I've been of the view that we might be better off replacing fuel tax with a parking tax, such that within urban areas free parking would cease to be a thing entirely, other than potentially off-road at residential properties. This would not only replace the lost income from those who still chose to drive in/around the city, but also discourage people from using cars for local trips (as the parking tax would make the cost disproportionately high) and encourage those coming from rural areas to change modes on reaching the city (to formal park and rides or informal ones like station car parks) rather than continue in.

Coupled to this would be changes that would make it less unpleasant to walk and/or cycle to trunk routes on main roads where relevant, e.g. reducing speed limits on small rural roads to 30mph and some measure of dedicated infrastructure on busier roads.

The car isn't going to go away, it's just a case of limiting its use to where it doesn't cause much harm.

 

[Man of Kent]

Density is a bit of a red herring. Most Dutch suburbs look remarkably identical to ours.

Figures from the World Bank suggest that the Netherlands has achieved a significant increase in population density over the last 60 years, in addition to starting from a higher point than the UK anyway. Certainly it was the country that was widely used as an example for UK planners to follow when the government's updated Planning Policy Guidance note 13 (PPG13) was issued circa 2001, which encouraged much denser development with less space given over to roads and parking. And like the UK, most of the newer Dutch development has been in the suburbs or smaller towns, not in cities.
Source of graphic: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=NL-GB

 

[johncrossley]

It seems daft to talk about population density when the UK (especially England, particularly south of Preston) is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe! The UK sprawls nothing like American suburbia. NIMBYs of course are very strong in the UK and they protest against all most all new home construction. As a result, much of the UK house building in the last 20 years or so is on brownfield sites. Many town centres now have lots of new flats. Town centres offices have also been converted into flats. Manchester now looks like London Docklands.

 

[slowroad]

It seems daft to talk about population density when the UK (especially England, particularly south of Preston) is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe! The UK sprawls nothing like American suburbia. NIMBYs of course are very strong in the UK and they protest against all most all new home construction. As a result, much of the UK house building in the last 20 years or so is on brownfield sites. Many town centres now have lots of new flats. Town centres offices have also been converted into flats. Manchester now looks like London Docklands.

While that’s true, UK still has one of the highest population shares living in houses rather than flats. This tends to favour car use, and the rate of new building relative to the “stock” means that it is not going to change.

 

[johncrossley]

While that’s true, UK still has one of the highest population shares living in houses rather than flats. This tends to favour car use, and the rate of new building relative to the “stock” means that it is not going to change.

But a lot of those houses are small with difficult parking. I live in a 70s apartment complex where everyone has a car parking space, plus there are many visitor bays that can be used by residents as well. Conversely, I know a lot of people who live in old terraced housing where you have to park on street, have to pay for a parking permit and even if you have one you still might not be able to park near your home.

Lots of people (not necessarily you) try to find excuses for Britain's poor record on transport when it is simply that public transport and cycling has not been developed and/or planned as well as in other countries.

 

[slowroad]

But a lot of those houses are small with difficult parking. I live in a 70s apartment complex where everyone has a car parking space, plus there are many visitor bays that can be used by residents as well. Conversely, I know a lot of people who live in old terraced housing where you have to park on street, have to pay for a parking permit and even if you have one you still might not be able to park near your home.

Lots of people (not necessarily you) try to find excuses for Britain's poor record on transport when it is simply that public transport and cycling has not been developed and/or planned as well as in other countries.

Maybe me! I don’t disagree, though, except for the “simply”. Bad planning and underfunding is surely part of the story, but not all of it. And in any case, looking at the big picture, modal share in the UK is not very different from other big European countries. Okay, car share is a couple of points higher than France and Germany, but at the national level cars dominate everywhere.

 

[johncrossley]

Maybe me! I don’t disagree, though, except for the “simply”. Bad planning and underfunding is surely part of the story, but not all of it. And in any case, looking at the big picture, modal share in the UK is not very different from other big European countries. Okay, car share is a couple of points higher than France and Germany, but at the national level cars dominate everywhere.

If you look at the modal shares within cities, there are quite marked differences between UK cities and many of the well known good performers (Zurich, Vienna etc.). However, for long distance and interurban traffic, car is dominant in all countries.

 

[telstarbox]

I understand where you are coming from regarding admitting defeat on the rural transport question.

There has been a very big change in the make up of the population in rural areas over the last 50 years. The majority of the people who live in most of the villages around here are now very wealthy retired people. Even though they have ENCTS passes, they do not use them. They drive everywhere, and the hourly bus which runs through the villages is an irrelevance to them. I was speaking to someone a few weeks ago, who has lived in the village for 6 years, but he didn’t even realise that there was a bus every hour into Nottingham, from a bus stop within 100m of his house! He’d seen it often enough but had never really thought about where it went to.

Going back 50 years to the 1970’s, to when my parents moved into the village, when I was in my teens, the make up of the population was very different. In those days there were a large number of houses and cottages that were available for rental. There were some council owned houses, farm workers cottages, a number of cottages owned by various land owners and even half a dozen cottages owned by the railway that had been for railway workers. Many of the people renting these homes were on low incomes, and very few had cars. Some were retired people very much just on basic pensions and there were a number of younger families with children. Now, only very wealthy people can afford to live in the village and there are very few children. If my parents hadn’t have bought their rented house, which I have fortunately inherited, I would not be able to afford to live in a village.

In the past people relied on the bus for getting to work, going shopping, going to school, visiting family, and for getting to and from weekend or evening entertainment. People used to plan their day around the hourly bus times. It was not unusual for there to be more than a dozen people waiting for the 9.40am bus into town on Friday morning to do their shopping on market day. The bus would be full picking up passengers at every stop into town. The 6.40pm bus would see a similar number of people going to bingo or a pub. That’s now the last bus and there’s no return bus later in the evening. I never now use the bus in the evening because these is no bus back. I still quite often use buses during the day, but I’m usually the only person waiting at the bus stop and there’s rarely more than about 15 people on the bus.

I agree that rural bus routes do these days often run long roundabout routes chasing small numbers of passengers. Gone are the days when buses ran mostly along main roads and people walked down lanes and farm tracks to the bus stop. It was nothing unusual to see even quite elderly people walking with full stopping bags from a village up to a mile to a bus stop on the main road. People don’t want to walk even a short distance to a bus stop these days and buses are leaving main roads to run through every village, housing development and industrial and retail parks, which all lengthens journey times.

Along my local bus route, a number of quite large housing developments have been built during the last 5 years. In total there must be somewhere around 1,000 new houses and more being built. That ought to be good for the future of the bus route but the people moving into these houses are not using the buses. The buses go past the new houses but no one gets on or off. Again are they houses for wealthy people who will not consider using the bus. The new residents are either using their cars or perhaps driving to park and ride sites on the edge of the city with frequent buses. Perhaps an hourly bus which doesn‘t run in the evening or on a Sunday is not going to attract new passengers especially if they are people who have moved out into the country from the city and were previously used to more frequent buses.

This is a very good point. I grew up in a rural area in the 90s-00s and the small town I lived near has gentrified hugely - you can see it in the changing shops on the High Street and the cars that park there now.

As per your post I remember walking a mile down the lane to the nearest bus stop to get to my summer job and back again in the evening.

The last bus from Big Town used to be 11pm, now 7pm, and the Sunday service has vanished. I wouldn't live anywhere that doesn't have a train station now because you can't rely on rural buses continuing to exist in a useful way.

 

[cactustwirly]

I have a "good" bus service. It's supposed to be every 15 minutes but often isn't. It often ends up with 25 minute gaps. The evening service is hourly, and frustrating if you've just got off a train and then have a long cold wait.
It does run late even on Sundays which is a bonus.

Not much use for commuting to work if you work at an office park, it often requires taking 2 buses or a bus and a train which isn't ideal.

Or you just drive down the M4 and get to work in half the time as public transport.

Or in my case there is no public transport at my workplace, except in the wrong direction to Basingstoke, despite having a big government facility nearby, except a very slow bus twice a day which arrives too early for a 9am start.

In short, for modal shift, buses need to be massively improved, and go to other places other than the town/city centre. It's very inefficient to travel to places through towns rather than around.

 

[slowroad]

If you look at the modal shares within cities, there are quite marked differences between UK cities and many of the well known good performers (Zurich, Vienna etc.). However, for long distance and interurban traffic, car is dominant in all countries.

Again, I don’t really disagree - but I think you are underplaying the role of urban form. Those cities have lots of flats convenient for public transport options. In the UK, Edinburgh is similar, and has a relatively high bus/walking share.

And across countries most people don’t live in the inner urban parts of big cities. Cars dominate for outer urban and suburban journeys, and in smaller cities and towns - not just in inter-urban and rural areas.

 

[Meerkat]

While that’s true, UK still has one of the highest population shares living in houses rather than flats. This tends to favour car use, and the rate of new building relative to the “stock” means that it is not going to change.

You only have to drive through the outer London boroughs to see miles and miles of 30's semis and detached houses with significant gardens. I reckon European countries have bigger medium density areas of four or five storey family apartment blocks. And they tend to be in grids - much housing estate design in this country seems almost designed to make public transport unfeasible with big areas of housing only road accessible from one direction, or even one road, meaning a bus that gets near enough to the people has to do big loops that make journeys long and winding.
Taxing parking seems like the only workable solution.......but then nowadays I am not sure how you do that without further killing town centres.

One thing I thought of was using zoning policies to try to get offices out of the hard to serve business parks and into town and city centres, and converting the office parks into housing. That makes the demand more in and out of the centre rather than from everywhere to everywhere.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Again, I don’t really disagree - but I think you are underplaying the role of urban form. Those cities have lots of flats convenient for public transport options. In the UK, Edinburgh is similar, and has a relatively high bus/walking share.

And Oxford has vast swathes of 1930s terraces and semis and nothing really high, and bus has a very high share there, too.

I think there are multiple factors in play. One of them is how unpleasant/expensive driving in is (though parking in Oxford off peak isn't *that* expensive) and another is how good quality the bus operation is. Density is relevant, but in reality there are so many car journeys in most places that you wouldn't need to convert many of them to make a commercially viable bus service.

One thing I thought of was using zoning policies to try to get offices out of the hard to serve business parks and into town and city centres, and converting the office parks into housing. That makes the demand more in and out of the centre rather than from everywhere to everywhere.

Yes, one thing that makes public transport very difficult to do is distributed destinations, which are ideal for cars (because they spread the demand and reduce congestion). Milton Keynes has this problem as well as the lack of obvious radial routes to run the buses down.

I'd agree that planning policy that encourages things to be in the town centre rather than distributed would help public transport's cause. Though with the exception of things you'd be intended to walk/cycle to more locally e.g. doctors' surgeries, primary schools and local shopping facilities (this was one part of the Milton Keynes concept that works very well - the local centres with all of these things in one place locally - and this is increasingly replicated in developments elsewhere now).

 

[johncrossley]

The thing is, if you work on the basis that you have to make the car almost impossible to use in order to get people on public transport, you might as well give up and shut this part of the forum. Or at least you would have to assume that the only point of public transport is for people without cars.

Density is relevant, but in reality there are so many car journeys in most places that you wouldn't need to convert many of them to make a commercially viable bus service.

The previously mentioned low density areas of outer London enjoy high frequency (every 12 minutes or better) buses. Probably not "commercial" (in any case, since Covid we have basically worked on the basis that buses need subsidy outside London as well) but they carry decent enough loadings.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The thing is, if you work on the basis that you have to make the car almost impossible to use in order to get people on public transport, you might as well give up and shut this part of the forum. Or at least you would have to assume that the only point of public transport is for people without cars.

I think accepting that for rural areas is probably sensible. But in urban areas the harms the car causes should mean we are willing to ensure we fund quality public transport for all (and use a light "stick" on car users, e.g. by charging for parking).

 

[slowroad]

I think accepting that for rural areas is probably sensible. But in urban areas the harms the car causes should mean we are willing to ensure we fund quality public transport for all (and use a light "stick" on car users, e.g. by charging for parking).

The “urban-rural” distinction is too crude. It is only the inner areas of major cities that are really “different” in terms of high share for public transport and active travel. The large majority of people live - and work - elsewhere. In some of these of areas public transport does play a role, but relatively very minor.

 

[randyrippley]

Part of the problem posed in the initial question is down to the effective population drop in rural villages in the last 40 years.
Between retirees "moving to the countryside" buying up rural housing at inflationary rates, others also paying inflationary rates to purchase second homes, along with exploitative purchases of housing to be used as holiday lets, the local working residents are forced out of the area. No working residents means no young families, so no commuting to work or school. The villages become sterile homes for the superannuated and rich, who are rarely in residence and when they are, are too lazy to do anything but drive to the nearest Waitrose. Shops die, schools die, bus services die. They're all symptoms of the same malaise. If workers could afford to live in the villages then the commuter bus services would follow, but there's sparse hope of that now.

 

[johncrossley]

The “urban-rural” distinction is too crude. It is only the inner areas of major cities that are really “different” in terms of high share for public transport and active travel. The large majority of people live - and work - elsewhere. In some of these of areas public transport does play a role, but relatively very minor.

If indeed modal shift is impossible, or at least very difficult, in the vast majority of places that people live and work then, clearly, there is no hope.

 

[Ken H]

I live in the dales
When I go to Leeds I park on street and get the bus into the centre. I have a bus pass so its effectively free.
I tend to park out the back of the Yorkshire TV studios. There are 12 an hour down Burley Rd
What could entice me to park further out? Maybe as far away as Otley? But only 2 an hour Otley - Leeds. and there is quite a time penalty as the bus takes a while to get through Headingley.