Mobility Matters Daily #124 - Traffic disappearance and public subsidy
Plus changes in walking and cycling visualised
Good day friend.
There are two things that I have done over the last 18 months that have improved my productivity immensely. The first is reducing the amount that I travel altogether, and those trips I do undertake being on foot, by bike, or by public transport. The other is giving myself only half an hour every day to check emails and respond to them. I’ll be honest, the latter has probably had more of an impact than the former. To the news.
James
Disappearing traffic is not as clear-cut as the evidence seems
The always-excellent Steve Melia published an article in the always-excellent Local Transport Today about traffic disappearance. In summary, understanding the impact of road closures is complicated because highway networks are complicated, dynamic things. As the article states when the City of Paris closed one of the banks of the River Seine to traffic:
…traffic was displaced, congestion increased, and total volumes fell, but later that year, the city reported that traffic on the parallel routes continued to fall during 2017.
This reflects a study by Sally Cairns, Phil Goodwin, and Stephen Atkins, that shows that whilst traffic levels overall reduce as a result of such schemes, there is significant variability by individual routes and in accordance with local circumstances. And yes, some roads do see an increase in traffic levels given the right circumstances. The reasons for this are, as of yet, unclear, but perhaps the reverse (induced demand) can offer some insight into why. Tod Litman has an excellent summary of just this issue.
Could the pandemic change how transport is subsidised?
The public transport subsidy model is somewhat archaic. Typically, there are two options, or slight variations on these options. Firstly, there is the route where operators are paid a flat fee, plus margin for profit, to run a service at a certain level, with the public sector body taking the risk with fare revenues. Secondly, there is the route where operators are paid a subsidy to run the route based upon an estimated difference between the anticipated fare revenue and operational costs. The operator then takes on the fare revenue risk to turn a profit. But how can either be sustainable in a time when passenger numbers are down, and are likely to be so for some time?
There has been a lot of thinking around how to restructure subsidies for passenger transport. Micro-subsidies have been gaining some traction recently, where operators are paid a set subsidy per trip. The Mobility Credit Model links subsidies to an individual’s trips and is being widely trialed. While other authorities have considered subsidy models where potential operators are tasked with transporting a certain number of people between different areas, and are tasked with thinking creatively on how to do this. For what its worth, I think these new models are worthy of testing to understand their impacts.
My slight concern is that while a lot of the debate is on the purpose of subsidy, what is often ignored is the impact of subsidy on commercial risk - partly covered by this excellent report by HM Treasury and the Office of Fair Trading. Subsidies transfer the commercial risk for running services between the public and private sectors. This is a stark commercial reality that affects decisions to operate services at all. With these decisions often taken based upon significant growth in passenger numbers (I’m looking at you, East Coast Mainline). So how do you design a subsidy regime that maintains a service level, but in a time when passenger numbers are lower than forecast? Answers on a postcard, please.
Visualisation of the Day
Cycling and foot traffic is very difficult to collect data, let alone visualise. But the team at ODI Leeds has taken live data from cycle and pedestrian counts across the North of England, and is visualising the change. So simple, but so impactful. This visualisation is of the number of people cycling in one direction on Valley Road in Bradford.
Source: ODI Leeds
If you do nothing else today, do this
Start listening to the Streets Ahead Podcast. I like it because it talks favourably about active travel, but its good because it explores some the evidence around the issues with active travel as well.