Covid-19: a catalyst for redesigning transport services?

Among his plethora of typically journalistic sound bites, last week the Prime Minister expressed the desire that the Covid-19 pandemic could be a “catalyst for change”. He was picking up the growing desire not to return to the ‘old normal’ but shift to a new, more sustainable and regenerative trajectory. There’s a lot of this sort of talk around at the moment, but to redesign a system and shift to a new socio-technical trajectory requires a lot more than mere bravado talk.

In an earlier Design Blog (20th November 2019) I explored how emerging technologies were making possible the fundamental redesign of urban metros, with expensive tram networks being challenged by more cost effective and flexible GPS-guide, fast charged battery vehicles. But what is the next stage on from the redesign of a public transport system’s infrastructure and vehicles? It is the redesign of the system itself.

Structurally, a major reason for the long-term decline in bus services is the very system design of how buses work. Bus services operate fixed routes using big vehicles to fixed schedules. They work best for intense urban corridors from suburbs to city centres. But today’s travel patterns don’t map onto this model. In our increasingly 24/7 world, travel is highly dispersed across city suburbs, peri-urban fringes and rural areas. Most travel is not commuting (which is now only 15% of trips), with a big growth in leisure and recreational travel that isn’t along urban corridors, but is dispersed away from major bus routes. Much of the reluctance to use buses is not about ticket prices or frequency – it is simply that its core system design doesn’t map onto 21st century patterns of travel. The pandemic has only accentuated this trend, with homeworking, grocery deliveries and internet shopping becoming deeply entrenched. When we emerge from the pandemic, there may be a desire for travel to be greener, but the core design of our public transport system will be less capable than ever to meet such a desire.

Back in 2008, I took part in a ‘Transport Vision’ question time event that we hosted at the Open University. This connected into the issue of what might be done to reinvigorate public transport in Milton Keynes. My contribution, advocating replacing bus services withon-demand minibuses, caught the attention of the press. With me labelled as a ‘transport boffin’ (a term I still have mixed feelings about!), the newspaper report linked my ideas to the old dial-a-bus service that had run in Milton Keynes in the mid 1970s before being abandoned as too costly to run.

My point then was that modern, cost effective technologies and systems were coming into place to provide a public transport system redesign that fits 21st century reality. This would be a reinvention of the bus using smaller vehicles operating more frequently (or only on demand) across a wide network of routes and not just flows along corridors to and from major centres.

2008 may have also been a bit too early for such a radical move, but in the meantime Milton Keynes Council started to put together the people and organisations needed for such a move.

The last few years have seen the appearance of digital invaders to the taxi market – Uber, Kapten, Bolt and Ola. These have won over Millennials in bigger cities for whom these services match their modern lifestyle and resultant travel patterns. But as presently formatted, although featuring many elements that could form part of a public transport reinvention, these digital taxi models fall short of being affordable for all public transport users. Affluent Millennials in Islington are one thing; those on benefit in social housing in Milton Keynes are another.
Designing a ridesharing service from scratch that is rooted in modern ICT tools could be a significant step towards the digital taxi sector entering into mainstream public transport in a way that works for all. This is what the Mercedes-backed company ViaVan has sought. Rather than a generic taxi service, ViaVan’s model represents a fusion between Uber and the bus. You book and pay by an app and go to a nearby pickup point where you are met by a minivan which takes you to a drop-off point closest to your destination. The price is about midway between a bus and minicab.
ViaVan started to operate in Milton Keynes and, in January 2020, Milton Keynes Council ran a trial to see if a ViaVan service at a bus-level fare and accepting concessionary bus passes could complement traditional bus services. Covid-19 seems to have accelerated things. With pandemic actions squeezing budgets, MK Council simply did not have the money to continue supporting its poorly used by socially necessary subsidised bus services. So, instead of just cutting services, the experience with ViaVan has been used to radically redesign the way public transport is provided. The financial pressures brought about by Covid have led to an innovation intended to improve mobility for all.

From next April the entire network of supported bus services will be replaced by a demand response system of small vehicles, booked as people need to travel. Tenders are to be issued and the exact design of the new service will be part of this. It is doubtful that things would have moved anywhere near as fast in this radical direction if it had not been for the financial impacts of Covid-19. The catalyst effects are starting to happen, although the pessimist in me thinks that most other places will simply go for service cuts or try to get other government handouts rather than face up to the radical changes that will inevitably be needed.


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