Equality, Fraternity and Frequency

In a prelude to his Autumn 2021 Budget, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak, announced funding for local transport by stating:

“There is no reason why somebody working in the North and Midlands should have to wait several times longer for their bus or train to arrive in the morning compared to a commuter in the capital.”

Sunak’s implied moral injustice of equality glosses over the deep structural reasons for the imbalance. This text explains them, first by calculating the feasibility of making Britain’s public transport services just like London, then by demonstrating why population density matters to public transport service levels, especially in ensuring funding is not leaving regions behind.

British Public Transport Services in the Coronavirus Pandemic

An analysis of how British public transport service levels have changed, from immediately prior to the Coronavirus pandemic, to the domestic “lockdowns” of early 2021. Explores the political and practical meanings of service, describes changes overall and by nation/region, seeks explanatory correlations, reassesses service as connectivity, and draws some conclusions. A headline summary:

• 87% of public transport services have been maintained across Great Britain, with no evidence of disproportionate service cuts in rural areas.
• There is at best a weak correlation between change in service level and change in the viability of public transport for essential work travel.
• The bus sector has tended to protect mid-frequency routes that could have been made un-viable for essential work journeys, had service cuts been more uniform.
• National rail has cut services more harshly away from London, and emphasised strategic national connectivity over connectivity for work-related travel.
• Wales not only reduced service levels more than elsewhere in Britain, but did so with no particular regard for maintaining work-related connectivity.

Connecting the Union

“Connecting the Union” analyses the perception of public transport connectivity between the four nations of the United Kingdom. It responds to a core aim of Peter Hendy’s Union Connectivity Review – to widen the benefits of cohesion across the UK – by using a method which emphasises journey opportunities, not the actual journeys common to conventional assessment. Public transport inter-nation connectivity is summarised, then further probed to reveal three strategic truisms:

• Union connectivity may be more local in character than the term suggests, especially for Wales.
• The negative power relationship of distance renders egalitarian policy aspirations undeliverable in practice.
• Rail is suited to perceived long-distance connectivity, aviation to actual travel.

Spain demonstrates a natural evolution of territorial cohesion from the high politics of physically linking territory, to an embedded service connectivity which reflects the character of place. Some suggestions are made for assessing something similar in the UK.

Buses are Always a Footnote

In a footnote to Boris Johnson’s reconfirmation of the troubled HS2 railway megaproject, the Department for Transport announced additional funding for buses. £5 billion (less £350 million … or maybe a billion … for cycling) over 5 years, spread across “every region outside London”. Presumably within England, since local transport policy is devolved elsewhere, although in a nebulous style typical of the Prime Minister, the language is of “country” – however one chooses to see it.

Needless to say this “new vision for local transport” is extremely light on detail, as yet devoid of strategy, and still pending the appropriate Comprehensive Spending Review. We’d all be well advised to get it in writing first.

One billion pounds per year is not entirely insignificant – almost 50p per bus passenger journey (in England outside London) or just over £1 per bus vehicle mile operated. Potentially enough to buy aspirations for “higher frequency services” or “more affordable, simpler fares” on urban networks. But nowhere near enough to deliver “turn up and go” frequencies in small town, periurban or rural areas, where patronage and consequent farebox revenue would tend to be minimal. A but that will be the bane of this politically, since much of the electoral constituency of Johnson’s government is small town, periurban or rural, precisely the places where public transport does not deliver as much “bang for the buck”.

Dialling a Ride for Eight

An exposition of the current regulatory travails of Britain’s Community Transport sector, with an exploration of the legal possibilities for operating Dial & Ride style community services using vehicles with capacity of no more than eight. This essay provides insight into why there is so little taxi policy locally, and why the British have such a problem with sharing.

What is Connectivity?

This essay expounds the policy concept of transport connectivity in Britain from two diverging epistemological perspectives – nation and location. The text characterises the difficulty of managing the midst, before applying the implications to Mobility as a Service.

Aquius – An Alternative Approach to Public Transport Network Discovery

As the complexity of public transport networks grew during the 20th century, so did the inventiveness of the attempts to communicate those networks to users. Angular schematic maps, in the form of the London Underground map attributed to Harry Beck, have since become common for core urban and suburban public transport networks. Since at least the 1990s these maps have infected service design, with high frequency bus networks increasingly structured to be readily communicable as stylised network maps – inevitably limiting the range of direct destinations offered. Inter-regional networks necessarily remain complicated, and, as illustrated by various European attempts at national network flow maps, are challenging to communicate in schematic form. At least on paper.

Saving Ferroviarias

This essay reviews the broad policy context of Spain’s passenger railways, highlighting the residual tension between pre-democratic and Modern eras, the financial impetus to make the high speed network more viable, and the evolving policy paradigm of rationalisation.

Is Alta Velocidad Fast?

This essay analyses and explores the regional passenger fare structure of Renfe, Spain’s national railway operator. The question, “Is Alta Velocidad Fast?”, derives from Renfe’s tradition of pricing slower trains cheaper. The question asks whether, in the era of yield management (balancing current patronage to current capacity by modifying price), the traditional fare structure should be applied to high speed, AV, operations? The journey provides an insight into the structure of modern transport geography, the haphazard strategic development and exploitation of Alta Velocidad, the management of national inequalities through fares, the conflation of public and commercial roles within single shared operations, and, from a perspective other than infrastructure, the contemporary challenges to Spain’s railways.

Arriva Celta

Arriva Spain Rail’s announcement of a new cross-border railway service from A Coruña (La Coruña) in Galicia to Porto (Oporto) in northern Portugal took some in the railway industry by surprise. The first proper phase of the liberalisation of Spain’s national passenger railways was widely expected to be focused on the high speed AVE network, a somewhat commercial near-aviation market, theoretically serviceable with trains acquired outside Spain. Even interest in cross-border services had hitherto focused on the high speed route from Madrid via Barcelona to the south of France, which judging by its latest search for 15 new cross-border drivers, state operator Renfe intends to respond to competitively. After all, the Spanish government had declared every regional railway service to be “Obligación de Servicio Público” (Public Service Obligation, OSP), to be financially supported as a Renfe monopoly, likely well into the 2030s. Add the difficulty of acquiring and operating uniquely Iberian gauged and signalled rolling stock in an environment where almost all the relevant assets are held by state operators, and one might dismiss the whole A Coruña-Porto scheme as an ill-conceived dream of a multinational that had not yet understood the local railway environment. Except the Arriva Group have been operating buses in Galicia since 1999 and Portugal since 2000, and so should know the territory as well as anyone. Perhaps more importantly, while Arriva’s British rivals sought liberalised markets for their initial forays “overseas” in the 1990s, Arriva learnt to work with whatever competitive environment it found on mainland Europe. That combination of local experience and competitive adaptability makes Arriva’s approach to Spanish railways unique. That Arriva’s first instinct is A Coruña-Porto, and not head-to-head competition on flagship intercity routes such as Madrid-Barcelona, reveals much about Spanish railway liberalisation.