Is the 9bn Lower Thames Road crossing approval bad news for rail?

[DynamicSpirit]

Option 2 is doable, but would require MASSIVE investment in enormous rail terminal capacity across Europe, and indeed rail capacity, a complete rewrite of the European supply chain. This would have to be coordinated across Europe, as it makes no sense to drive from Spain or Italy to Calais, only to then put the container on a train.

Why wouldn't it make sense to drive to Calais and then put the container on the train? If we assume that the infrastructure is in place in the UK to do that, but not in Europe, then you would have the choice of:

1. Drive all the way to your destination in the UK.
2. Drive to Calais. Have the container put on a train (or: onto a ferry at Calais then transferred to a train at Dover). Then somewhere in the UK (Maybe London, or Birmingham or wherever) that's not too far from your final destination, another lorry picks up the container and takes it to wherever you actually want to send it.

Compared to (1), (2) saves you paying for a driver to sit idle on the ferry then spend half a day or more driving from Dover to the other UK train terminal. It also saves you the diesel to do that, and frees up a lorry for that time. Set against that, you have to pay the train and ferry companies to take the container. The latter process clearly uses fewer actual resources and is much less harmful to the environment and quality of life in the UK, so provided the pricing structure reflects that, you'll save money. The challenge of course is that up to now, freight prices don't reflect that (presumably in part because of possible inefficiencies in how rail is set up, and in part because at the moment we're not adequately charging lorries - or road traffic generally - for all the external costs associated with road transport.

 

[Trainman40083]

My supplier 5 miles outside of Dusseldorf is supplying me with a load of widgets for my factory 3 miles outside of Nottingham say.

Option 1, a lorry drives the entire journey via the Chunnel or a ferry
Option 2, a lorry drives part of the way to a rail head, which takes the container to a UK rail head, which then loads it onto a UK lorry

Option 2 is doable, but would require MASSIVE investment in enormous rail terminal capacity across Europe, and indeed rail capacity, a complete rewrite of the European supply chain. This would have to be coordinated across Europe, as it makes no sense to drive from Spain or Italy to Calais, only to then put the container on a train.

I guess East Midlands Gateway is well placed for the Nottingham end. I presume there is a terminal in the Ruhr district too

 

[Technologist]

Road pricing solves those problems by reducing the number of people on the road, but elsewhere you're against the idea of taking measures to reduce the number of people driving.

Those are also some fairly strong accusations you're levelling at academics and journalists there...

By planning reforms I meant, make it easier to build stuff like by-passes. This helps sort out the issue of through traffic in urban areas which is the basis for a lot of the negative externalities of car use. All the cycling paradises of Europe have more roads and more car passenger miles than the UK, they just send cars the long way around on mostly grade separated roads.

Road pricing allocates road space efficiently so more people can travel, faster and with greater certainty, note that I said combine it with autonomous vehicles and the above point around by-passes. What road pricing does is encourage sharing, rail advocates are always pointing out how inefficient road space allocations are so there is absolutely massive capacity from just getting people to share. If you added just 0.2 people to the average car journey you get substantially more passenger km then all other sources provide now.

Most of the frictions to car sharing, (having a stranger in your car, dealing with different schedules on return trips, not having your own car available during the day) are eliminated by dedicated robotaxis. Perfectly possible to design them so you don't even have to share space with the other passengers.

The Guardian has an agenda, the stuff they pump out on nuclear (something I know a lot about) is incredibly biased/misleading. If you want a more generalised example of their view point:

A 'skinny jab' is no quick fix for obesity - and no excuse to let junk food companies off the hook | Sarah Boseley

Britain should be taxing unhealthy food and clamping down on marketing, says Sarah Boseley, the Guardian’s former health editor

www.theguardian.com

"Rather than board the injection bandwagon, Britain should be taxing unhealthy food and clamping down on marketing"

They are generally against technological fixes and instead want people to make collective sacrifices and to punish big business because that aligns with their values even if the best solutions to virtually every problem are ones that don't require behaviour change.

 

[Mikey C]

Why wouldn't it make sense to drive to Calais and then put the container on the train? If we assume that the infrastructure is in place in the UK to do that, but not in Europe, then you would have the choice of:

1. Drive all the way to your destination in the UK.
2. Drive to Calais. Have the container put on a train (or: onto a ferry at Calais then transferred to a train at Dover). Then somewhere in the UK (Maybe London, or Birmingham or wherever) that's not too far from your final destination, another lorry picks up the container and takes it to wherever you actually want to send it.

Compared to (1), (2) saves you paying for a driver to sit idle on the ferry then spend half a day or more driving from Dover to the other UK train terminal. It also saves you the diesel to do that, and frees up a lorry for that time. Set against that, you have to pay the train and ferry companies to take the container. The latter process clearly uses fewer actual resources and is much less harmful to the environment and quality of life in the UK, so provided the pricing structure reflects that, you'll save money. The challenge of course is that up to now, freight prices don't reflect that (presumably in part because of possible inefficiencies in how rail is set up, and in part because at the moment we're not adequately charging lorries - or road traffic generally - for all the external costs associated with road transport.

The yard in Calais would be horrendously large in that scenario, with loads of space needed for the vast number of lorries depositing and collecting their containers. Why would the French accept such a vast use of their land just to reduce traffic on British roads?

 

[The Ham]

By planning reforms I meant, make it easier to build stuff like by-passes. This helps sort out the issue of through traffic in urban areas which is the basis for a lot of the negative externalities of car use. All the cycling paradises of Europe have more roads and more car passenger miles than the UK, they just send cars the long way around on mostly grade separated roads.

Road pricing allocates road space efficiently so more people can travel, faster and with greater certainty, note that I said combine it with autonomous vehicles and the above point around by-passes. What road pricing does is encourage sharing, rail advocates are always pointing out how inefficient road space allocations are so there is absolutely massive capacity from just getting people to share. If you added just 0.2 people to the average car journey you get substantially more passenger km then all other sources provide now.

Most of the frictions to car sharing, (having a stranger in your car, dealing with different schedules on return trips, not having your own car available during the day) are eliminated by dedicated robotaxis. Perfectly possible to design them so you don't even have to share space with the other passengers.

The Guardian has an agenda, the stuff they pump out on nuclear (something I know a lot about) is incredibly biased/misleading. If you want a more generalised example of their view point:

A 'skinny jab' is no quick fix for obesity - and no excuse to let junk food companies off the hook | Sarah Boseley

Britain should be taxing unhealthy food and clamping down on marketing, says Sarah Boseley, the Guardian’s former health editor

www.theguardian.com

"Rather than board the injection bandwagon, Britain should be taxing unhealthy food and clamping down on marketing"

They are generally against technological fixes and instead want people to make collective sacrifices and to punish big business because that aligns with their values even if the best solutions to virtually every problem are ones that don't require behaviour change.

Robot taxis might not actually increase car occupancy.

For one, why would you be more likely to share a vehicle with a stranger of its a taxi over your own car? For many people I suspect it's the "being alone with" aspect which is the issue rather than than the other individual causing damage/making a mess.

Secondly, a parent currently drives their child (probably teenage) to some club (say swimming), with robot taxis they could potentially send them on their own. As such car occupancy has fallen from two to one. Not only that but there's likely to be zero occupancy trips made by the taxi.

 

[eldomtom2]

The Guardian has an agenda, the stuff they pump out on nuclear (something I know a lot about) is incredibly biased/misleading.

Looking over their articles on nuclear power, they seem fair-minded and even sometimes pro-nuclear. Your objection seems to be that they print views from experts who view nuclear as uneconomic compared to renewables.

They are generally against technological fixes and instead want people to make collective sacrifices and to punish big business because that aligns with their values even if the best solutions to virtually every problem are ones that don't require behaviour change.

Yet widespread adoption of, for instance, robotaxis and road pricing will require behaviour change...

 

[Meerkat]

Go large and build a Eurotunnel gauge line from Folkestone to somewhere north of London, such that the lorry shuttles dump out beyond the M25. Drivers would get a decent tacho break before going onward (though not in their cab so not that restful). Connect it to W12 routes north so container trains can come from Germany. Then take it all the way to the Midlands so Euro wagons can get right into the Midlands distribution hub area.
Thing is you really need an independent line at least to Belgium that SNCF and the French unions can't hobble, or you will have reliability problems.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Go large and build a Eurotunnel gauge line from Folkestone to somewhere north of London, such that the lorry shuttles dump out beyond the M25. Drivers would get a decent tacho break before going onward (though not in their cab so not that restful). Connect it to W12 routes north so container trains can come from Germany. Then take it all the way to the Midlands so Euro wagons can get right into the Midlands distribution hub area.
Thing is you really need an independent line at least to Belgium that SNCF and the French unions can't hobble, or you will have reliability problems.

I remember being told the Germans, at the time the channel tunnel was being planned, offered to pay the difference for the tunnel to be built to Holland instead of France. I stil have no idea how true or likely that was but it reveals the sentiment even back then.

Instead we are perhaps funnelling even more traffic via France !.
So should we be focusing on the A14 more ?.

 

[Technologist]

Robot taxis might not actually increase car occupancy.

For one, why would you be more likely to share a vehicle with a stranger of its a taxi over your own car? For many people I suspect it's the "being alone with" aspect which is the issue rather than than the other individual causing damage/making a mess.

Secondly, a parent currently drives their child (probably teenage) to some club (say swimming), with robot taxis they could potentially send them on their own. As such car occupancy has fallen from two to one. Not only that but there's likely to be zero occupancy trips made by the taxi.

That's why they need to be tied into dynamic road pricing models, which will drive people to share where it is possible and where it has a measurable impact on road capacity. Implementing road pricing is relatively easy to do with a app based model. It's also relatively easy to price out or ban rat running in such circumstances.

I did cover the point of "being alone with" in the design of a robotaxi, I would assume that most will have the option of being physically and visually separated from a passenger you don't know. I would also assume that most people will chose to get a shared taxis from around the corner to where they actually live.

They key point here is to avoid everythingism, all of this won't happen on day one and it doesn't need to. Self driving cars will start off as a niche product most likely geofenced but will rapidly result in more journey and traffic chaos to which dead heading will also add. That is where the public support for dynamic road pricing will appear; most likely it will start at some place where we already have congestion charging and lots of taxis, e.g. London.

The parent not needing to drive a teenager to something is also an example of economic growth as the parent now has more time to do something else.

Also note that given that shared self driving cars will have a much lower cost of ownership than current cars and much lower costs of operation than existing public transport the amounts of road pricing required to optimise road usage likely won't be that high and won't be more than the cost savings. In places like London I expect that the shared autonomous vehicle will likely have ~10 seats, but would still be much faster than a current bus as it wouldn't get caught in traffic and wouldn't stop nearly as often.

 

[Peter Sarf]

That's why they need to be tied into dynamic road pricing models, which will drive people to share where it is possible and where it has a measurable impact on road capacity. Implementing road pricing is relatively easy to do with a app based model. It's also relatively easy to price out or ban rat running in such circumstances.

I did cover the point of "being alone with" in the design of a robotaxi, I would assume that most will have the option of being physically and visually separated from a passenger you don't know. I would also assume that most people will chose to get a shared taxis from around the corner to where they actually live.

They key point here is to avoid everythingism, all of this won't happen on day one and it doesn't need to. Self driving cars will start off as a niche product most likely geofenced but will rapidly result in more journey and traffic chaos to which dead heading will also add. That is where the public support for dynamic road pricing will appear; most likely it will start at some place where we already have congestion charging and lots of taxis, e.g. London.

The parent not needing to drive a teenager to something is also an example of economic growth as the parent now has more time to do something else.

Also note that given that shared self driving cars will have a much lower cost of ownership than current cars and much lower costs of operation than existing public transport the amounts of road pricing required to optimise road usage likely won't be that high and won't be more than the cost savings. In places like London I expect that the shared autonomous vehicle will likely have ~10 seats, but would still be much faster than a current bus as it wouldn't get caught in traffic and wouldn't stop nearly as often.

It occurs to me that the shared vehicle is a bus in London and other cities and a coach in between cities. That is how I travel. With rail where I want to afford it (eg sales). So for the subject of this thread that is most likely a coach service from the Dover to the Midlands and beyond with express buses to the home counties.

Something I got told a long time ago is that there are more people who want to share their car than those who want to share someone else's car. So a self driving car would not directly address that problem. I suspect most people who are prepared to travel in someone else's car are prepared to use public transport. This means that the demographic to address are those who do not want to leave the comfort of their own car. Given that you have to have a car to use the channel tunnel that needs addressing as well.

I wonder if self driving taxis will be allowed on the channel tunnel shuttles ?.
If not then suggesting them for the Lower Thames Crossing is probably a weaker case unfortunately.

 

[HSTEd]

The latter process clearly uses fewer actual resources and is much less harmful to the environment and quality of life in the UK, so provided the pricing structure reflects that, you'll save money. The challenge of course is that up to now, freight prices don't reflect that (presumably in part because of possible inefficiencies in how rail is set up, and in part because at the moment we're not adequately charging lorries - or road traffic generally - for all the external costs associated with road transport.

Not necessarily, the intermodal option requires an enormous apparatus that is otherwise unnecessary.
You need to receive the containers, lift them onto trains (which itself requires lots of staff), as well as provide facilities for the trains. Then crew have to drive the train to the destination, with awful productivity as loading and unloading time will dominate over the journey.

And what happens if the train arrives and the receiving driver hasn't arrived?
You have to provide even more facilities to handle those orphaned containers to prevent it gumming up the system.

It all adds up very rapidly.

Any large freight operation will need a new line on the UK side anyway, at which point you can just adopt the shuttle model.

A rolling highway to north of the Thames would allow drivers to reset their tachy counts in transit, achieve much higher train productivity and radically reduce the complexity of the terminals.
Conceptually it would avoid the need to do anything on the French side at all.

 

[Mikey C]

I remember being told the Germans, at the time the channel tunnel was being planned, offered to pay the difference for the tunnel to be built to Holland instead of France. I stil have no idea how true or likely that was but it reveals the sentiment even back then.

Instead we are perhaps funnelling even more traffic via France !.
So should we be focusing on the A14 more ?.

As it would be 4 times longer, I'd be somewhat surprised

Even a tunnel to Belgium instead of Calais would be at least twice as long

 

[Technologist]

Yet widespread adoption of, for instance, robotaxis and road pricing will require behaviour change...

If I gave you £10 million you'd need to change some behaviours but I doubt somehow you'd turn me down.

Moving from a personal car to an unlimited taxi account or personal chauffer is something that people with money choose to do today but are options most poeple are priced out of. Road pricing if done right is part of choice architecture of an autonomous system, if you want to go point to point there is a price and if you are ok with a small delay while the robotaxi picks up or drops somebody else then there is a lower price. If you book earlier there will be a lower cost, if you are more flexible on the time period you will travel it will be cheaper.

The behaviour change that the Guardians of this world prefer are the ones that require sacrifice, like active travel or adjusting your route and timings to accommodate public transport. You can always find somebody who has gone car free and insists that it's no sacrifice , but there's definitely some motivated reasoning going on there.

My key point is that cars didn't substitute public or active transport they massive expanded what was there already. When there is abundant active travel and fast and reliable public transport the private car still provides the vast majority of mobility see the Low Countries.

What I advocate for is abundance, as much space for active travel as you want, public transport if you want, space for cars if you want. Making a reduction of car usage part of policy is self defeating and ultimately unsuccessful. My prediction is that autonomy will basically see cars, taxis, buses and trams merge into one system where the correct vehicle is seamlessly provided for the available demand and road space. I doubt that we will need vehicles bigger than about 10 seats given the volumes of people we already move with low occupancy cars.

The impact on rail could be quite significant, which is why I think the industry needs to stop poo pooing autonomous vehicles and start thinking about what happens if they succeed.

 

[Zomboid]

I think there's a lot of psychological baggage to overcome about "my car" (or bike, for that matter) before any kind of communal autonomous alternative can hit the mainstream. The real benefit that a car brings is that it goes from exactly where I want to exactly where I want, and the departure time is whenever I'm ready - I don't see a communal alternative ever coming close to matching that - even a once person robotaxi will have a lead time, you'd be unlikely to get one to take you to Tescos to arrive in the time it takes to put your shoes on.

Not saying it can't or won't happen, though. I'm sure it'll become a part of the way people get around in future.

 

[Technologist]

Something I got told a long time ago is that there are more people who want to share their car than those who want to share someone else's car. So a self driving car would not directly address that problem. I suspect most people who are prepared to travel in someone else's car are prepared to use public transport. This means that the demographic to address are those who do not want to leave the comfort of their own car. Given that you have to have a car to use the channel tunnel that needs addressing as well.

I refer you to previous point about chauffer driven cars and ubers. Rich people use these services in preference to driving their own cars, because you don't have to drive them or park them. Only the absolute 0.1%+ have a privately owned chauffer driven car.

The only behaviour change that self driven cars require vs the ownership model is that you can't use them as a storage locker. However for most occasions this is handled by having a small bag with you and in the post self driving world people are going to rapidly get used to the concept of being able get things delivered to them on demand. Trades people aren't going to have a van but a series of boxes that arrive at the job site in the morning and go back to a warehouse where consumables are replaced overnight.

I think there's a lot of psychological baggage to overcome about "my car" (or bike, for that matter) before any kind of communal autonomous alternative can hit the mainstream. The real benefit that a car brings is that it goes from exactly where I want to exactly where I want, and the departure time is whenever I'm ready - I don't see a communal alternative ever coming close to matching that - even a once person robotaxi will have a lead time, you'd be unlikely to get one to take you to Tescos to arrive in the time it takes to put your shoes on.

Not saying it can't or won't happen, though. I'm sure it'll become a part of the way people get around in future.

It's won't happen overnight, but we are in the early stages of a 20 year changeover, we've only had a few years of basic unsupervised service.

1: If you live in a city summoning an Uber (or similar) is normally pretty quick ~5min, this is comparable in many cases to how long it takes to get your car out of a car park.
2: Taxis are a relatively small share of the total fleet of cars. If the entire pool of cars is available for usage it is likely that there will be one ready for you unless you are truly in the middle of nowhere.
3: We are assuming an Uber model for summoning it, in an AI world its entirely possible that the system could infer when you would like a car and just have one there for you.
4: The most significant one is cost, cars are really expensive to buy if you share them the cost of ownership drops massively.

Cars cost a lot of money to buy, the average new one if £35k+, if you could spend that on something else a lot of people would. The marginal cost of usage is also much lower than public transport.

 

[quantinghome]

I refer you to previous point about chauffer driven cars and ubers. Rich people use these services in preference to driving their own cars, because you don't have to drive them or park them. Only the absolute 0.1%+ have a privately owned chauffer driven car.

Do they really? The vast majority of rich people own a car, the extremely rich ones pay people to drive it for them.

The only behaviour change that self driven cars require vs the ownership model is that you can't use them as a storage locker.

Cars cost a lot of money to buy, the average new one if £35k+, if you could spend that on something else a lot of people would.

Yes, and that 'something else' is usually a second hand car.

The biggest behaviour change is that people like their own space, and for a significant proportion of people it's a status symbol or a hobby. Utilitarian arguments don't really work that well for cars.

The marginal cost of usage is also much lower than public transport.

The marginal cost argument only works if you actually own the car. If you don't then the fixed costs must be somehow allocated to usage.

 

[Peter Sarf]

Do they really? The vast majority of rich people own a car, the extremely rich ones pay people to drive it for them.

True.

Yes, and that 'something else' is usually a second hand car.

Yes, Furthermore in my case very second hand !.

The biggest behaviour change is that people like their own space, and for a significant proportion of people it's a status symbol or a hobby. Utilitarian arguments don't really work that well for cars.

The owned/leased car does seem to be viewed as more than just transport.

The marginal cost argument only works if you actually own the car. If you don't then the fixed costs must be somehow allocated to usage.

 

[AlterEgo]

I refer you to previous point about chauffer driven cars and ubers. Rich people use these services in preference to driving their own cars, because you don't have to drive them or park them.

…do they? I don’t think they do?

 

[Grimsby town]

Do they really? The vast majority of rich people own a car, the extremely rich ones pay people to drive it for them.

No the data shows that people in the highest income quintile drive more in terms of distance than an other income quintile. The percentage of total distance by car (as a driver) tells a slightly different story:

Average number of trips and miles by household income quintile and mode

Lowest level - 40%

Second level - 46%

Third level - 51%

Fourth level - 54%

Highest level - 53%

So the percentage of distance driven is slightly higher for the fourth high income quintile but that's because wealthy people are overwhelmingly concentrated in London where driving isn't the optimal mode of transport. Even the wealthy drive far more. They also take taxis less e.g. only 0.7% of their total travel distance is by taxi. It's 1.7% for the lowest income.

Data is shown in NTS0705: National Travel Survey

Statistical data set

Travel by vehicle availability, income, ethnic group, household type, mobility status and NS-SEC​

Data on vehicle availability, income, ethnic group, household type and mobility status, produced by Department for Transport.

So wealthy people don't prefer taxis and there certainly is an emotional attachment to owning a car which will be difficult to overcome.

 

[Zomboid]

People with chauffeurs aren't representative of anything in particular. They'd be top 0.1% in terms of wealth, and most people wouldn't even aspire to being there because it's so unrealistic.

 

[eldomtom2]

The behaviour change that the Guardians of this world prefer are the ones that require sacrifice, like active travel or adjusting your route and timings to accommodate public transport.

Personally I find that the "Guardians of this world", when they talk about modal shift, are generally advocating for improvements to transit such as increased frequency, so that you don't have to plan your routine around public transport schedules.

My key point is that cars didn't substitute public or active transport they massive expanded what was there already.

This is objectively not the case. Otherwise the number of rail passengers would not have declined between the 1940s and 1980s.

What I advocate for is abundance, as much space for active travel as you want, public transport if you want, space for cars if you want.

The reality of the world is that we have limited space and limited resources, so we do have to prioritise.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

My key point is that cars didn't substitute public or active transport they massive expanded what was there already.

This is objectively not the case. Otherwise the number of rail passengers would not have declined between the 1940s and 1980s.

Exactly. Add to that the way that across almost the whole country, previously frequent bus routes declined or disappeared between the 1950s and the 1980s: Made unviable in part because people swapping to cars meant there were no longer enough people using the buses - which in turn induced a vicious circle of more people being forced to drive because the buses were no longer good enough. And partly because the sheer numbers of cars on the road - each one taking massively more road space than if the same journey were made by bus or train - created congestion that made it impossible in many places to run buses to a reliable timetable (Getting back on topic, I believe the Dartford crossing is a good example of this: Despite that the crossing links two reasonable sized towns that are very close together as the crow flies, and which in normal circumstances would easily justify a linking bus route, in fact no buses use the crossing because the congestion makes it impossible to run any reliable bus routes).

On the active travel side, so many people have been put off from cycling because they don't feel safe when there are so many cars on the road - so they drive instead.

Cars really have substituted public transport/active travel - and you could make a good case for, that is their main impact, with expanding travel opportunities being only a minor impact.

 

[quantinghome]

My key point is that cars didn't substitute public or active transport they massive expanded what was there already.

This is objectively not the case. Otherwise the number of rail passengers would not have declined between the 1940s and 1980s.

To be fair the latter half of the sentence is correct - cars did massively expand journey options which changed the country in many ways that we now take for granted. But it's also undeniable that it contributed to the decline in rail passengers up to the 1980s.

 

[Technologist]

People with chauffeurs aren't representative of anything in particular. They'd be top 0.1% in terms of wealth, and most people wouldn't even aspire to being there because it's so unrealistic.

You're not getting this; there is a phrase in futurology which is that "the future is already here, it's just unequally distributed". Quite frequently the 0.1% essentially prototype what the general population will do with a technology, they just do it by means of either paying a person to do the function or by using a more expensive but existing technology (see Bill Gate's personal Netflix in his 90's house, that ran using a robotised DVD/Laserdisc archive). Plenty of tech companies do their minimum viable product by brute force or paying people before automating it.

The key points around self driving:

1: It's going to be much cheaper than any other form of transport, with the possible exception of some forms of active transport. The vehicles are mass produced and highly utilised, there is relatively limited staff and a lot of things can be automated (e.g. cleaning and charging) and the infrastructure is already mostly there and is also the cheapest per passenger km to maintain.
2: The lifespan of cars is relatively short so technology change is relatively quick, most of the last mass produced privately owned cars will be capable of self driving either out of box or with relatively simple bolt on mods. People will get used to having their own car drive itself at which point you start asking "why am I paying such a large amount to own this when on demand is so much cheaper and easier".
3: Some technologies are inherently democratising, Elon Musk for example doesn't have a nicer phone than me , a better streaming platform or TV. There will be a brief period where having your own self driving vehicle is a flex but pretty soon a universally high service will be achieved. You could hire a 10 seat luxury vehicle to take you to work everyday, but so can some kids for a school prom so the exclusivity premium will be gone.
4: Car culture will remain but become more niche and focused on older cars with character and driving on nice roads and tracks. See most car YouTube content, it's not on whether a Model 3 or BYD Seal is better it's following 4 guys as they turn a $1000 pick-up into a Baja Racer.

To be fair the latter half of the sentence is correct - cars did massively expand journey options which changed the country in many ways that we now take for granted. But it's also undeniable that it contributed to the decline in rail passengers up to the 1980s.

This is like arguing over how many angels can fit on a pin head!

The graph clearly shows that the vast majority of the car's impact has been to make new journeys rather than to substitute existing ones. I put it up to counter the narrative that if we reverted back to public/active transport we could get rid of cars or substantially reduce their usage, we couldn't, we'd need to get rid of journeys which would have to be done by some means of compulsion or rationing and would result in a whole load of economic or social activities not happening.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The graph clearly shows that the vast majority of the car's impact has been to make new journeys rather than to substitute existing ones. I put it up to counter the narrative that if we reverted back to public/active transport we could get rid of cars or substantially reduce their usage, we couldn't, we'd need to get rid of journeys which would have to be done by some means of compulsion or rationing and would result in a whole load of economic or social activities not happening.

I think to some extent your interpretation of that graph puts cause and effect the wrong way round. You think cars caused the rise in travel, but I would argue it's more correct to point out that growth in living standards plus shorter working week were instrumental in allowing a rise in travel. That rise in travel then combined with Government policies that favoured cars - and that's what resulted in the huge increase in mileage by car shown by that graph. If the Government had followed different policies, that rise in miles travelled could easily have been absorbed to a large extent (although not completely) by buses and trains. You might note that the period that graph shows when car mileage was increasing most rapidly coincided almost exactly with when the Government was extensively building new roads and motorways to allow more motoring. After the mid 1980s, the Government largely stopped doing that and - surprise - car travel mileage suddenly stopped rising so rapidly, and rail usage stopped declining.

 

[eldomtom2]

1: It's going to be much cheaper than any other form of transport, with the possible exception of some forms of active transport. The vehicles are mass produced and highly utilised, there is relatively limited staff and a lot of things can be automated (e.g. cleaning and charging) and the infrastructure is already mostly there and is also the cheapest per passenger km to maintain.
2: The lifespan of cars is relatively short so technology change is relatively quick, most of the last mass produced privately owned cars will be capable of self driving either out of box or with relatively simple bolt on mods. People will get used to having their own car drive itself at which point you start asking "why am I paying such a large amount to own this when on demand is so much cheaper and easier".

These points assume self-driving cars will be cheaper to operate than taxis by orders of magnitude, but so far getting self-driving cars to even be slightly cheaper than taxis to operate seems quite a way off.

3: Some technologies are inherently democratising, Elon Musk for example doesn't have a nicer phone than me , a better streaming platform or TV. There will be a brief period where having your own self driving vehicle is a flex but pretty soon a universally high service will be achieved. You could hire a 10 seat luxury vehicle to take you to work everyday, but so can some kids for a school prom so the exclusivity premium will be gone.

Anyone can in theory rent a limo - doesn't mean limos aren't considered premium and prestigious (though the stretch limo has declined in popularity as people opt for less conspicuous - but still luxury and premium - options). There are plenty of ways a company could offer a premium self-driving vehicle, and I have no doubt they will if self-driving cars take off.

The graph clearly shows that the vast majority of the car's impact has been to make new journeys rather than to substitute existing ones. I put it up to counter the narrative that if we reverted back to public/active transport we could get rid of cars or substantially reduce their usage, we couldn't, we'd need to get rid of journeys which would have to be done by some means of compulsion or rationing and would result in a whole load of economic or social activities not happening.

Well for starters the graph isn't per capita, which makes it fairly useless as it doesn't account for the impact of population growth. I'm also not sure why you're so dismissive of the idea that modal shift can happen.

 

[Grimsby town]

I think to some extent your interpretation of that graph puts cause and effect the wrong way round. You think cars caused the rise in travel, but I would argue it's more correct to point out that growth in living standards plus shorter working week were instrumental in allowing a rise in travel. That rise in travel then combined with Government policies that favoured cars - and that's what resulted in the huge increase in mileage by car shown by that graph. If the Government had followed different policies, that rise in miles travelled could easily have been absorbed to a large extent (although not completely) by buses and trains. You might note that the period that graph shows when car mileage was increasing most rapidly coincided almost exactly with when the Government was extensively building new roads and motorways to allow more motoring. After the mid 1980s, the Government largely stopped doing that and - surprise - car travel mileage suddenly stopped rising so rapidly, and rail usage stopped declining.

Plus the graph doesn't control for population growth meaning that the per capita decline of public transport between the 60s and 80s is more pronounced and the percapita growth in car usage won't be as high.

 

[Technologist]

I think to some extent your interpretation of that graph puts cause and effect the wrong way round. You think cars caused the rise in travel, but I would argue it's more correct to point out that growth in living standards plus shorter working week were instrumental in allowing a rise in travel. That rise in travel then combined with Government policies that favoured cars - and that's what resulted in the huge increase in mileage by car shown by that graph. If the Government had followed different policies, that rise in miles travelled could easily have been absorbed to a large extent (although not completely) by buses and trains. You might note that the period that graph shows when car mileage was increasing most rapidly coincided almost exactly with when the Government was extensively building new roads and motorways to allow more motoring. After the mid 1980s, the Government largely stopped doing that and - surprise - car travel mileage suddenly stopped rising so rapidly, and rail usage stopped declining.

The precise same thing has happened in every rich and middle income country irrespective of culture and political system. Therefore I think it's unlikely that it can be ascribed to government policies favouring cars at the expense of rail or active transport. Most governments spent the first 30-50 years of automotive development actively frustrating it, see red flag laws and similar.

If governments hadn't built roads they would have got voted out for failing to accommodate people's desires, the post war growth was also built on the backs of personal mobility and flexible road freight (which has the same basic trends).

People have agency, they bought cars because they wanted them not because they would have been happy with more and better public transport. Even in the most densely populated country with the most densely populated urban areas where there is excellent public transport (Japan) cars still do more than 50% of the passenger miles.

Plus the graph doesn't control for population growth meaning that the per capita decline of public transport between the 60s and 80s is more pronounced and the per capita growth in car usage won't be as high.

UK population in 1960 was 52 million, it doesn't change the trends that much.

 

[eldomtom2]

The precise same thing has happened in every rich and middle income country irrespective of culture and political system.

Really? Every rich/middle income country invested/didn't invest in roads to the precise same amount? Every rich/middle income country invested/didn't invest in public transport to the precise same amount? This seems very hard to believe, especially when passenger rail modal share in rich countries ranges from 33% (Japan) to 0.3% (America). Government policy surely is part of the reason for that!

 

[Grimsby town]

UK population in 1960 was 52 million, it doesn't change the trends that much.

No not a huge impact but the movement away from public transport to roads was more pronounced than shown by the graph. Most people aren't arguing that car isn't an important part of the transport network. I'm very pro active and public transport but I accept that car is likely to be the major transport mode outside of major conurbations. The problem is the mix is still too far towards car and building new major roads is only going to exacerbate that. Fully autonomous vehicles are nowhere near being a mass transit mode currently and there are huge obstacles to overcome in mean time in terms of behaviour. Meanwhile increasing car ownership is causing significant issues and consuming more and more public space.