Cities around the world confront a huge and pressing problem: how do you accommodate growing numbers of people? It is forecast that by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas, and transport planners face the daunting task of making sure everyone can move around without too much of a struggle.
The UK’s population is expected to grow by almost 10 million over the next 25 years – London’s population could reach 9.8 million by 2025. Since many of our cities already suffer from overcrowding on trains, congestion on roads and worsening air pollution, there is an urgent need to find new ways to adapt to the demographic changes.
How will our transport systems cope? How might we best utilise new technologies to make our journeys more productive and less polluting? The Guardian, supported by Heathrow, recently hosted a roundtable discussion to address some of these issues.
While the scale of the challenge is formidable, there is optimism cities can handle peak populations and even be made more liveable, the roundtable heard. “Transport is a force for change,” said Susan Claris, associate director at Arup, the engineering, planning and design firm. “It can help shape better cities, and make them more socially inclusive.”
Many of the experts on the panel identified the humble car as holding huge potential for a more efficient transport system. “Cars are amazingly efficient vehicles when they have four or five people in them, and we should be doing more to encourage more efficient use,” said Ali Clabburn, CEO of Liftshare, a social enterprise offering commuters the chance to organise shared car journeys. “At peak hours, every train or bus is full, and there are millions of empty [car] seats on the road. It’s a crazy situation,” she added.
There is also greater potential for shared ownership of cars, according to Martin Uhlarik, Tata Motors’ UK head of design. “The shared economy opens up the potential for people to share the product and use [each car] three or four times as much,” he said.
Self-driving cars
Uhlarik believes advances in self-driving technology could change the nature of long car commutes. “Autonomous vehicles will be arriving,” he said. “And once they come, we might still spend two hours in traffic, but it’s a chance to question how you are spending that quality time. Are you working? Are you entertaining yourself? It might be about managing your time better.”
Working life in Britain today still revolves, largely, around a nine-to-five schedule. Debra Charles, CEO of smartcard company Novacroft, would like to see business and government get behind a major programme to promote flexible working, leading to fewer peak time journeys. “We’ve got flexible working to some degree in the UK, but what if that was better incentivised? The rigidness of the way people work – if we could change that it would make a difference.”
Shifting the nature of short journeys will also be vital. A recent report by the Greater London Authority found that more than one third of all car trips in the capital are less than 2km, and could be walked in 25 minutes or less. The same report shows 2.7m daily car trips in London could be cycled. Getting people out of their cars and walking or cycling could boost health and reduce congestion.
Many cities have made bold moves to encourage active lifestyles. Both New York and Paris have made efforts to repurpose parking spots for walking, biking, and public space. In Copenhagen, pedestrianising shopping streets and raising parking prices has seen the proportion of people driving to work fall from 22% to 16% (pdf). Claris would like to see more trials run by local authorities in the UK to assess the benefits of pedestrianisation. “If you make cities more pleasant to walk around in, then even the most reluctant walkers will think, ‘It’s not actually so bad,’” she said.
Tom Cohen, deputy director of the UCL Transport Institute, agreed. “People are dying because of inactivity. Whatever we might say about the future of transport in cities, it has to incorporate physically active travel.”
Cutting unnecessary road trips
Some business leaders on the panel believe commuters can be usefully nudged into streamlined routines to cut down on unnecessary road trips. Parcel service Doddle, for instance, offers commuters the chance to pick up their online orders from its stores in train stations, saving delivery vans from making so many repeated trips to customers’ doors when they’re out at work. “If you’re trying to change behaviour, it’s about how intuitive and accessible you make things for people,” said Tim Robinson, Doddle’s CEO.
Rail commuters are already getting their grocery shopping done at major station supermarkets on their way home, and some are also choosing to hold business meetings at station restaurants and cafes. Tim Hedley-Jones, major projects director for Virgin Trains East Coast, said larger train stations are becoming “the focus of their community”.
Hedley-Jones also said the UK could alter planning policy to make better use of the “huge quantities” of brownfield land near train stations. “If you can give people good quality housing next to good quality public transport, then you can start to break the cycle of car dependency for short journeys.”
There remains, however, the almighty task of making sure public transport is ready to cope with increased passenger numbers. Despite major infrastructure projects such as HS2, Crossrail 1 and Crossrail 2, Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King’s College London, said even more capacity was needed in the south east, particularly across south London. “In London, we have a world class transport system, but it’s still not good enough,” he said. “We need to get more people in our underground systems, we need to think about tram systems, and getting it all joined up with the National Rail network in a much better way.”
John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow, which is waiting for parliamentary approval for its third runway, said his airport is experimenting to make sure increasing passenger numbers does not mean more congestion. There are improved links to public transport, a large staff car-sharing scheme, and driverless pods that carry people to Terminal 5. “We can pioneer with some of these things, make them happen, and hopefully develop models that can be applied elsewhere,” said Holland-Kaye.
If some major, energy-intensive engineering works are inevitable, there are high hopes new ways of sharing data can make the transport system as sustainable and efficient as possible.
Making better use of data
In Bristol, the city council has developed a web-based service, the Bristol API, that allows any developer to connect their app to existing transport data: route maps, live train and bus times, and car park occupancy. “Once you build transport infrastructure, it just gets full again, quickly,” said Stephen Hilton, Bristol city council’s futures director. “So the real challenge is about trying to use every bit of spare capacity within the infrastructure that’s not being used effectively.”
Data might also be better used to give walkers and cyclists the chance to choose the least health-harming journeys. Londoners have become particularly conscious of poor air quality. Almost all of this year’s mayoral candidates offered measures to tackle air toxicity, and Sadiq Khan has pledged to bring in an ultra-low emission zone in central London in 2019.
Researchers at King’s College London have designed the London Air app for the iPhone, which visualises air pollution levels in the city and allows users to check how much longer a less pollution-choked route might take. “The technology is there to give people an informed choice,” said Kelly. “But we need to do more and we need to do it more quickly.”
The experts on the panel agreed government and business need to work together to support innovation. In Bristol, waste-to-energy company GENeco has partnered with Wessex Bus to apply for a government grant to bring 20 “poo-powered” bio-buses to the city by 2019 – the buses will run on biomethane gas generated from sewage and food waste. “We felt in our wacky way we could demonstrate there’s a form of transport that reduces noxious emissions,” explained GENeco’s managing director Mohammed Saddiq.
Uhlarik said the particularly rapid growth of London and the south east presents an opportunity for businesses in the UK to spearhead international solutions. “The growth of big urban centres is a phenomenon that’s accelerating,” said Uhlarik. “It’s a global issue, but London could be a test bed because of the higher level of technology here and, potentially, the organisational skill.”
At the table
- Gwyn Topham (Chair) Transport correspondent
- Debra Charles CEO, Novacroft
- Ali Clabburn CEO, Liftshare
- Claire Haigh CEO, Greener Journeys
- Tom Cohen Deputy director, UCL Transport Institute
- Susan Claris Associate director, Arup
- Tim Hedley-Jones Major projects director, Virgin Trains East Coast
- Stephen Hilton Futures director, Bristol City Council
- John Holland-Kaye CEO, Heathrow
- Tim Robinson CEO, Doddle
- Prof Frank Kelly Professor of environmental health, King’s College London
- Mark Jenkinson City director, London, Siemens
- Mohammed Saddiq Managing director, GENeco
- Martin Uhlarik Head of design UK, Tata Motors
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