Where we are today 

There is no substitute for the private car in terms of flexibility, cost and radius of travel – except, that is, when oil prices are likely to breach $200 per barrel, translating into £2 per litre for petrol, when car parking in the central areas of most major cities is £5-£10 per hour or higher, and travelling a total distance of 600 miles in a day is just not feasible – which just about sums up the soon to be normal experience of motorists in the UK. 

The largest problem is that outside most major cities (indeed, outside London in fact) there are few options but to have a private car. The infrequent or non-existent bus services, the expensive buses that are available, and the lack of any well-developed metro or subway service dramatically limit transport options. 

Case study: Northwest England 

Liverpool – one of the largest cities in the UK and the 2nd largest in the North of England – is close enough to Manchester, the largest city in the region and the 3rd largest in England, that the conurbations overlap and include a population the size of a medium-sized European country (5.6 million).  

Just across the Pennines, there is yet another gigantic urban sprawl that is not particularly well connected to this megalopolis by road or rail. The East-West rail lines in the North of England are not electrified and are served infrequently by antiquated rolling stock. Taxis cost £3 per mile and thus the reality for nearly everyone is that they must have a car. 

What may work best is a model where buses are replaced by multi-capacity, on-demand hybrid bus-taxis which can take separate fares at separate prices. This model is not just a nice add on – it is a necessity.  

The average car is used only one hour per day and spends most of its time parked. When it is used, it carries just one person (the driver) for 90% of its trips. While providing gainful employment and profits to automakers, this is no good for the average person, especially since the cost of simply operating the car is around £300-£600 a month. 

Imagine, then, if a customer could, for £400 per month, buy a subscription, a carnet of passes for all their monthly trips, upgrading with options packages any extra services to their “base buy”. Effectively, this would replace the need for a car during the week for any work commutes, or indeed any supermarket trips. The effective cost per trip, especially for longer-term subscriptions would be considerably less than a taxi trip today and in many cases cheaper than a single bus ticket. A point-to-point travel paradigm is possible, without fixed routes, for considerably less cost to the consumer than a government-operated bus service. 

It would be much like a season ticket for a bus, except that this covers usage in a shared-ride vehicle of appropriate capacity and capability for a specific trip. 

For the weekends, where the average use is likely to be significantly greater than one hour per day, a multi-day car hire is easily managed. Furthermore, putting car-hire businesses in the heart of communities, rather than located on industrial estates far from where people live is another way to make better use of land. A car-rental (carshare) business (where one car is used by many different people although not at the same time) can be located in purpose built multi-storey car parks. It will become apparent to many people that investing in a mobility subscription will be far more cost effective than owning a car, especially when a car can be hired for those small number of occasions when one is needed for multiple consecutive days. 

A key driver of this system could be a comprehensive congestion charging scheme, run as a public utility, on all roads. Such a system would have to be restricted to the hypothecation of revenues garnered – so that there is no incentive or temptation for the city government to use motorists as a funding source for general taxation. 

Conclusion 

Regardless of the power source of vehicles, the overarching requirement must be to make mobility affordable, delivered through a mix of shared rides, car share, and integrated public transport. 

There really is no way to maintain the current system of road usage and vehicle ownership when the costs of energy are rising so dramatically. The total costs of domestic energy (electricity and natural gas), petrol and food (itself a derivative of wholesale energy prices) make car ownership extremely costly. While the government still earns significant tax revenues from petrol taxes, this form of taxation has to evolve and change. 

In order to mitigate the wasteful (in terms of both time and fuel) congestion we see every day on our busiest routes, we need a better way of managing roadspacetime. 

Eric Matthew W. Masaba

^{Image: Wikimedia Commons}