Two hundred years ago, railways revolutionised travel, but the majority of journeys were still undertaken on foot or by horse-power. A century later, the situation had changed remarkably little, until the coming of the mass-produced motor car started a second revolution. Today, personal mobility is taken for granted in the developed world and is becoming a reality for a great many people in emerging economies.
One result is clogged roads and delays. This, and governments’ desire to cut use of fossil fuels, has intensified the long-standing debate about private versus public transport. The implicit (and often explicit) argument is that public transport is ‘good’ and should be favoured over private cars. It is deemed to be a more efficient way of getting people from A to B, as well as having less impact on the environment.
In fact, the situation is nowhere near as clear-cut as these arguments suggest. In urban areas, buses can be very useful, connecting areas of high population density and being well used. Similarly, for journeys between population centres, trains can often offer the shortest travel times. But public transport becomes impossible to provide effectively in rural areas or even suburban areas with relatively low population density.
The other big drawback of any public transport system, trains and trams in particular, is their inflexibility. They may be very good at getting people between two centres, but they cannot cover each individual route. For example, very large numbers of people commute daily by train into London and other major cities, but a typical 45 minute train ride may actually only be half of the total journey time because people need to get to the railway station from home and then from the terminus to their place of work.
And railways are expensive. The UK government still seems set on pushing ahead with the proposed HS2 rail link to the north of England, at a total cost currently estimated as £42bn. Judging by the prices already charged for rail journeys, this is likely to be an expensive travel option for the majority of people, and of dubious value. Fares in the UK are among the highest anywhere, but government subsidy is still needed to the tune of £4bn annually (Train operators pay £200m to shareholders after £4bn subsidy). Despite rising passenger numbers, the reported subsidy per passenger journey was £2.19 in England, £7.60 in Scotland and £9.33 in Wales.
In contrast, motoring is a very significant net contributor to the public purse. UK motoring taxes brought in about £38 million in 2011/2012, or about 7% of total revenues (see RAC Foundation report Fuel for Thought – the what, why and how of motoring taxation). Annual expenditure on roads varies, but is below £10bn (Labour governments spent £94bn between 1997 and 2010). As an aside, the increasing fuel efficiency of cars and the plateauing of car use are likely to give future governments a headache as they try to compensate for declining tax revenues.
For the great majority of journeys, the car provides the best door-to-door solution, albeit at the cost of congestion and pollution (although that is a rapidly-declining problem). There is also the question of accidents. Even minor ones can cause traffic chaos, and 1,713 people were killed in 2013 (actually half the figure in 2000). The great majority of accidents are the result of human error. Congestion itself is also often the result of poor road use by drivers.
The solution – driverless cars – may be a reality sooner than we think. From being somewhere in the realms of science fiction a decade or so ago, the well-publicised trials by Google and others made the public aware that, at least under certain circumstances, the technology could work well.
We are already familiar with driverless trains, where control is much simpler, but nevertheless has to be fail-safe. Much of today’s flying is done by automatic pilot. Controlling a plane is an order of magnitude more complex than stopping and starting a train, but has the advantage over cars is that flight lanes are well-defined and ground-based air traffic control keeps aircraft well separated.
Get to the level of motorways or city streets and the demands on any control system escalate enormously. But, in reality, it is simply a matter of having the right sensors and enough data processing capacity to react quickly enough. Programming, of course, is also vital, and this is where an element of human error cannot be eliminated. Nevertheless, all the factors are coming together to make self-driving cars a practical reality. We could be embarking on the next transport revolution.
We read, for example, Look mum, no hands! Driverless cars could let children on the road, Germany creates laws for driverless cars and Drivers will not need licence for automated cars. There is, not surprisingly, a degree of journalistic hype to these stories, since current proposals would be for cars which still needed a qualified driver to be ready to take over the controls. But if the principle is accepted, then fully autonomous cars could be a commercial reality in perhaps a decade.
The crux of the matter is public acceptance. If these new vehicles provide a real benefit, then the omens look good. Unlike the market for fully electric cars, which remain a small niche for enthusiasts because they cannot as yet fully replace the internal combustion engine, autonomous cars could provide the range and flexibility of current vehicles and offer many advantages. There is no reason why, over time, they should not also replace most public transport. Pools of jointly- or publicly-owned vehicles could provide an on-demand door-to-door service for the majority of journeys, cutting across the public/private boundary.
This approach could even replace rail commuting at some stage. Railways could be converted to tracks which, instead of carrying trains or coaches (as proposed to increase network capacity) were used by cars or ‘pods’ which could pick up and drop passengers at stations off the main track. Before I get too carried away, I need to add that there are many practical issues to sort out before this becomes a reality, but this is surely a radical approach to future transport which governments cannot afford to ignore.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
_____________________________________