With urbanisation likely to continue into the future despite Covid, what will transport in the city of the future look like?
Much of what has driven the car industry for a century is changing. The Future of Transport is a new series which aims to explore the new types of vehicle, new fuels and new ways to travel which are transforming every sector of global transport. Part two explores the city of the future and how coronavirus could clash with public transport, electric bikes and scooters and the way city transport is designed.
The future of the city
A year ago, the future of urban mobility seemed clear. Forecasts showed that both global population and the proportion of it living in cities were growing fast.
Of 9.8bn people expected to live on Earth by 2050, 68pc of them — 6.6bn — would be urbanites. To put that into context, the entire population of the planet only hit 6.6bn in 2005. The world was undergoing a profound and shockingly new migration towards urban centres. Dozens of new “megacities” of more than 10m citizens were being created. And yet, just 200 years ago, 93pc of the world’s population lived in the countryside.
Such cascading urbanisation, which has gone hand in hand with rising economic prosperity, appeared sure to have inescapable consequences for transport in wealthy cities: declining car use and the prioritisation of micro-mobility alternatives such as bike and e-scooter hire linking highly coordinated webs of public transport — from suburban commuter trains to tubes, trams and buses.
Ride-hailing and sharing would help fill the gaps, and subscription payment would give users seamless access to some or all of these options. There would be more people and fewer cars. Cities would be greener, smarter, more automated. The air would be breathable. The noise would be hushed. Quality of life would be higher, despite the crowds. A modern miracle.
Then came Covid.
Now what?
The question for town planners now is how much town to plan for. Will the pandemic reverse global urbanisation, or slow it, and for how long? And among urban residents will it slow or reverse the move away from the private car towards public transport and micro-mobility?
On the first issue, the answer seems clear. There is no reason that Covid-19 should interrupt future densification of cities.
“Urban density has been widely blamed for the severity of the pandemic in places like New York City,” Creighton Connolly, an urban geographer at the University of Lincoln, told a conference at the London School of Economics in June.
“But in fact Asian cities like Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei are far denser and have had far fewer cases of Covid 19 per capita – so governance is actually a more important factor than density in determining the severity of outbreaks.”
Asian cities, among the densest in the world, have suffered less than the West. And 90pc of future urbanisation is expected in Asia and Africa. Still, Connolly admitted that some urban designers are now arguing for a so-called “Goldilocks” density – sufficient to make good use of precious space, but “not so high that you have people living in 30-storey apartment blocks which rely on extensive uses of public spaces like elevators.”
Cities, then, seem likely to continue getting bigger – although perhaps with greater thoughtfulness about how density is achieved.
On the second issue, urban transport, Covid seems certain to have an impact. In the last few months, we have clearly wanted to travel on our own – in cars, on bikes and using e-scooters. To have private, not public transport. The latter has nosedived. Tube operator Transport for London (TFL) recorded 170m London bus journeys a month at the beginning of the year, falling to 29m in lockdown and only recovering to 46m in June. Some 106m January Tube journeys fell to six million in April, up to just 13.3m in June.
Transport use change under Covid
But surveys suggest short-term reluctance to use public transport will fade within a year or so, just as post-9/11 horror of flying was fast forgotten.
Yet, it is not just fear shaping declining public transport use. Many companies are considering a semi-permanent move to “work from home”. Daily commutes en masse may become a thing of the past.
A report for the Boston Consulting Group noted that city authorities such as TFL may need to accept that passengers are less dependent on their services and diversify – “pause or waive operating licenses or parking fees, offer providers credit, or even invest in” flexible, local, private transport providers, whether ride sharing or last mile delivery companies.
All transport providers will have to work hard to win back the trust of travellers.
The consultant Deloitte has gamed several future scenarios including:
Who governs city transport is up for grabs. But whether it be state or silicon valley, three trends seem with us to stay: more working from home; greater reliance on ecommerce and home delivery; and heightened safety meaning not just avoidance of accidents on journeys but sanitisation of every stage of a trip, from the moment you leave to the moment you arrive.
Tube Train Particles
The UK
The most immediate upshot of the pandemic in Britain has been the announcement of a £2bn package to put cycling and walking “at the heart of” post-Covid transport.
In pre-pandemic London, 37pc of trips were made by car, 29pc by public transport, 29pc walking and 3pc by bike. Drivers spend some 73 hours per year spent in jams.
In City Hall’s 2018 strategy, Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a target of 80pc of journeys completed on foot, by cycle or using public transport in 20 years time, when the capital’s population is expected to have grown from 8.7m to 10.8m and the total number of trips from 27m to 33m per day.
Last year the government published its own Urban Mobility Strategy. Both documents are quick to point out the extraordinary dominance the car established in 20th century urban planning – and the costs of that.
There were almost 1,800 deaths in accidents in the year to June 2018 (with driver error responsible for 85pc), and the annual cost of pollution is £20bn. Indeed, transport contributes 27pc of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions; and road transport 91pc of that; of which 61pc is emitted by passenger cars.
In cities, among the biggest victims is space. According to the Department for Transport (DfT), there are six cars for every 10 people in the UK, but the average car is unused 96pc of the time. Parking spaces occupy between 15pc and 30pc of a typical urban area.
Change is coming down the road
Change, the government recognises, is already underway due to advances in data and connectivity. Half of new cars are internet enabled: increasingly we know exactly where vehicles are and how long multistage journeys will take, allowing us to plan those journeys and use machine learning to optimise them.
SCOOT – or the Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique – already uses sensors to change traffic lights to speed urban car journeys. But, for example, it does not account for emergency service vehicles. In one pilot, Liverpool based company Red Ninja updated existing algorithms with new GPS data, historical ambulance data and the SCOOT system to clear roads ahead of ambulances, shaving up to 40pc off emergency response times.
Greater connectivity allows a melding of public and private transport in services such as ArrivaClick – a minibus that passengers can order and track like an Uber.
And the data revolution is being reinforced by automation and the convenience of new forms of transport such as e-bikes and e-scooters.
The latter were illegal until a few months ago, but their popularity in the pandemic has forced a swift DfT rethink and a 12-month fast-tracked trial is now underway.
It is an example of how regulation and entrepreneurship have met to improve both. Scooters, convenient but haphazardly deployed, must now meet certain standards and – for the moment – be used only by those with a driving licence.
Electric Scooters
Upshot
Covid will probably not dent global urbanisation trends, though it may cause a medium-term decline in use of public transport.
E-commerce is here to stay – UK shopping trips have decreased 30pc over the past decade, with all that means for the future of our once congested high streets.
Multifarious forms of transport, from walking to mass transit, are here to stay. Blending them coherently is the challenge.
The dream remains one in which smart cities, larded with sensors and highly connected vehicles, are able to create seamless journeys across road, rail, train, tube, tram, bike, boat, scooter – you name it – from both state and private sector providers. The nightmare is a barely-managed mess, with ever more clogged streets, pavements littered with cheap bikes or scooters and mass harvesting of data.
Despite the frustrations of many on our crowded island, Britain’s biggest city is still regarded as a “global model” in the real-time use of data, transport start-up investment, and pollution reduction targets. It must now fight to hold onto that crown.
Read more in The Future of Transport series:
Part one: Is this the end of the road for the traditional car?
Part three: Air taxis and electric planes get ready for take off
Part four: When the boat comes in, it won’t have a crew
Part five: All aboard Elon Musk’s Starship enterprise
How will coronavirus change the future of public transport? Share your view in the comments section below
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