Hypothetical scenario where car usage massively declines

[mrmartin]

Having a look at some statistics it seems rails share of commuting is around 8-10%, which isn't really a lot and the network seems to struggle to cope with that.

Let's say for some hypothetical reason that public transport [between rail and bus, LU, etc] had to pick up the slack and achieve a 50% market share. This could be due to global warming or high oil prices (ignoring electric cars).

How would the network cope? Would it even be possible to increase capacity by 500% from where we are now? What sort of projects would happen?

Do also imagine that the government [within its means] would throw enormous sums of money at the problem.

 

[JamesRowden]

Buses provide a far greater passenger flow rate per unit congestion than cars. Therefore new and more frequent bus routes would be introduced and would provide faster commutes to/from work than exist presently if more bus priority schemes were subsequently introduced.

Rail routes within Central London might not be siginificantly affected by a reduction in car ownership since public transport is already the obvious choice. Outside London, longer trains, more frequenct services and the reopening/opening of old/new railway lines would make sense.

 

[jopsuk]

if that figure is for the country as a whole, you'll find the modal share for rail is much higher where rail is a viable option. Railway lines are not evenly spread and all public transport works better where population and employment is desner

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I am aware of the term "hypothetical" in its use on the thread title, but would venture the view that if car ownership were to decline in the way stated, who is to say that large international corporations would not come up with a "hypothetical" method of alternative transport that would still be in the hands of individuals rather than the providers of public transport.
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if that figure is for the country as a whole, you'll find the modal share for rail is much higher where rail is a viable option. Railway lines are not evenly spread and all public transport works better where population and employment is desner

Go on...explain the meaning of the word as printed in the last word in your posting.
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Outside London, longer trains, more frequent services and the reopening/opening of old/new railway lines would make sense.

There are a number of southern-based forum members who would describe that statement as heresy and will insist that Northern Rail is a wonderful provider of rail transport of the style that befits "them oop North"....

 

[ComUtoR]

For the purpose of the posed "Hypothetical"

Why does car usage massively decline ? When I lived in London I never used a car. We walked everywhere and my Mum worked about 2 miles from where we lived. Shops were convenient and the supermarket was also walking distance.

The train for me is for Leisure purposes and I must admit that I use it very little, relatively speaking. I live within a few miles of a large shopping centre but far enough that the car is essential. However; a train would not be a suitable replacement. I would shift to the bus but that made of transport is some kind of hell. I'd probably shift to my bike for commuting, online shopping for the supermarket and my train usage wouldn't change. For a massive decline in the use of the car there would have to be a huge culture change and a major reason why the car is out of use but buses are still rolling about.

 

[edwin_m]

Buses provide a far greater passenger flow rate per unit congestion than cars. Therefore new and more frequent bus routes would be introduced and would provide faster commutes to/from work than exist presently if more bus priority schemes were subsequently introduced.

If there were few or no cars on the road then buses would be much quicker and more reliable. For these reasons more people would use them which would justify more frequent services particularly in rural areas. Buses could in turn then take up much of the demand for transport, but even a Swiss-style connecting train and bus network would never match the car for all types of journey. There would also be much more cycling for shorter jounrneys, as one of the main things discouraging cycling is the actual and perceived risk from sharing busy roads.

 

[northwichcat]

As I posted in this thread: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=120300 there's a lot less men driving than 10 years ago and men in their 30s are now the common demographic group you see on trains, when previously it was men in their 20s, suggesting men are now continuing to use trains as they get older instead of switching to cars as they get older. Women are different - there's now more of them driving cars on the road. (On a completely unrelated topic there's also more complaints about parking spaces being too small.)

We've also seen exponential rail passenger growth over the past 10 years, some stations see more than double the usage they had 10 years ago, not the 500% difference suggested in the original post but still a lot more usage.

 

[deltic]

Having a look at some statistics it seems rails share of commuting is around 8-10%, which isn't really a lot and the network seems to struggle to cope with that.

Let's say for some hypothetical reason that public transport [between rail and bus, LU, etc] had to pick up the slack and achieve a 50% market share. This could be due to global warming or high oil prices (ignoring electric cars).

How would the network cope? Would it even be possible to increase capacity by 500% from where we are now? What sort of projects would happen?

Do also imagine that the government [within its means] would throw enormous sums of money at the problem.

You would be back to a situation that existed in the early 1950s when bus use accounted for 40% of transport miles undertaken and bicycles 10% - rail use would probably not change that much as rail schemes take so long to be delivered - but there are still probably many areas of the country where train lengthening could provide substantial increases in capacity without much need for new infrastructure.

It wasnt till 1961 that the car took more than 50% of passenger miles - what has happened since then has been a massive increase in transport use. If car use was severely constrained most transport use would disappear rather than switch modes.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It wasnt till 1961 that the car took more than 50% of passenger miles - what has happened since then has been a massive increase in transport use. If car use was severely constrained most transport use would disappear rather than switch modes.

Which political party that seriously has a chance of forming a Government would take that particular can of worms on board and actively be seen to promulgate that particular point.

When I see some ridiculous ideas put forward on this website, I often think of one of my many sayings...."Do not ask for realism, as a refusal often offends"...

 

[Mikey C]

Having a look at some statistics it seems rails share of commuting is around 8-10%, which isn't really a lot and the network seems to struggle to cope with that.

It's a very uneven national spread though, and even in the South East. If it was an even 10%, then it would be far far easier to manage.

If you consider commuting to central London, then public transport's share will be really high, 95% or something similar.
By contrast if you consider commuting from the suburbs/home counties to elsewhere in the suburbs/home counties, then public transport's share will be tiny, fine if you work in the centre of Reading for example, but not if you work in an industrial park.

 

[jopsuk]

I seem to have used a non-word. Ahem. Rather meant that train use is higher where there are trains.

As far as I can find, average England & Wales figure for commuting as a car or van driver is 40.5%- though that's an average of the figures for each council ward, which is close to but not the same as the straight %. There's a further 3.3% commute as a car or van passenger, which shows just how many solo-occupancy cars there are.

Annoyingly, this site seperates "Train" and "Underground, Metro, Light Rail, Tram" as two categories. Which mainly impacts London, Manchester & Newcastle

 

[deltic]

Which political party that seriously has a chance of forming a Government would take that particular can of worms on board and actively be seen to promulgate that particular point.

When I see some ridiculous ideas put forward on this website, I often think of one of my many sayings...."Do not ask for realism, as a refusal often offends"...

The OP asked a clearly hypothetical answer to which I gave an answer based on what has happened in the past. Whilst London is an unique situation it has also happened there with car share of passenger transport falling by around 10% points and the distance travelled per person has fallen. I have not seen any political fall out as a result of this policy

 

[HSTEd]

Trolleybuses in all directions - the number of very high intensity bus services would increase drastically and make trolleybuses highly attractive.

And probably busways, assuming the debacle in Cambridge was a one off.

 

[mrmartin]

To be honest, I was more interested in discussing how the railway network would cope. The answer so far is 'it wouldn't put loads of buses on'.

What sort of infrastructure improvements would be required to allow [non london] services to cope? London probably is very high - at least for city centre commutes - but other major metro areas aren't. Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow etc all have very high commute rates. Could we repurpose urban motorways as heavy rail, for example?

 

[ian959]

Repurposing urban motorways would be very unlikely as they would still have a significant role to play in freight transport and longer distance bus/coach services.

Most likely scenario for Birmingham, Newcastle and Manchester would be expansion of the existing light rail systems. Centro certainly has some plans for Birmingham and Metrolink has always been growing. Places like Glasgow or Liverpool where there is already a decent commuter heavy rail network, there would likely be infill or extension of those lines with significantly better bus/rail integration. There is simply a limit to what heavy rail infrastructure can be added to the network in urban areas, unless previously closed lines were protected from development.

Most other cities would simply increase existing bus services on the now less busy urban roads with the possible reintroduction of trolley buses or even light rail on routes of very high density.

 

[deltic]

To be honest, I was more interested in discussing how the railway network would cope. The answer so far is 'it wouldn't put loads of buses on'.

What sort of infrastructure improvements would be required to allow [non london] services to cope? London probably is very high - at least for city centre commutes - but other major metro areas aren't. Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow etc all have very high commute rates. Could we repurpose urban motorways as heavy rail, for example?

Unless the decline in car traffic was planned in advance and took place over a long time then rail would not be an alternative. It took at least 6-7 years for the latest Metrolink extensions to be built and these were mainly using former track allignments - Crossrail has taken nearly 20 years to plan and build. So in the short/medium term the only alternative would be buses.

in the longer term one might see a large expansion in light rail/tram schemes as others have mentioned. Elsewhere I would expect platform and train lengthening to cope.

 

[edwin_m]

As mentioned upthread it would be relatively easy to increase suburban rail capacity around our major cities outside London, simply by lengthening trains. Agreed there would be some platform lengthening and extra depot space needed, as well as extra capacity at main stations, but nowhere near as difficult as providing capacity in the Southeast where most commuter routes are maxed out on length already. However in the hypothetical situation mentioned, most extra rail passengers would not be London commuters because most of them use rail already.

It would be difficult to provide more Intercity capacity to and from London because most long-distance trains on our main lines are at their greatest practicable length and frequency already. Again this is probably a market where rail already dominates to a large degree. There would also be plenty of opportunity to increase capacity by train lengthening on most regional long-distance routes.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

To be honest, I was more interested in discussing how the railway network would cope. The answer so far is 'it wouldn't put loads of buses on'.

I have been involved on a discussion on one of the Manchester Metrolink threads on the SSC website where the matter of connections between Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne by a "hypothetical" new line of the Manchester Metrolink system was proposed as there would not be a commercially viable usage of a reinstated railway line that was once where services of the Oldham, Ashton and Guide Bridge Railway once ran.

On that thread, I pointed out that the existing main road between the two towns had seen no widening and there was ribbon development of terraced properties that would be subject to demolition to achieve any such widening. Then there was the matter that the trams do not have stops in close proximity to each other under normal circumstances but bus stops are found in profusion that adequately serve the local communities.

 

[jopsuk]

Reality is that car use has certainly plateaued, and may well be declining slowly (measuring this is a little wooly), across the country as a whole.

There's also a vast number of car journeys undertaken that are so short that public transport really isn't the answer for replacing them- walking or cycling is!

 

[TimG]

Having a look at some statistics it seems rails share of commuting is around 8-10%, which isn't really a lot and the network seems to struggle to cope with that.

Let's say for some hypothetical reason that public transport [between rail and bus, LU, etc] had to pick up the slack and achieve a 50% market share. This could be due to global warming or high oil prices (ignoring electric cars).

How would the network cope? Would it even be possible to increase capacity by 500% from where we are now? What sort of projects would happen?

Do also imagine that the government [within its means] would throw enormous sums of money at the problem.

It would be interesting to see the share of each mode split by journey distance. I suspect most commutes are under 5 miles, in which case I think electric bicycle would be the obvious choice.

 

[jopsuk]

Figure 14 here is interesting

Breaking it down, 40% of commutes under 2km are by car. 2km at the maximum assisted speed of an e-bike, 25km/h (15.5mph) should take slightly less than five minutes. For anyone in any sort of reasonable health on even an upright old fashioned/dutch style bike with a three speed hub, 0-2km is less than five minutes. 40% of short commutes being by car is crazy

Even the 59% 2-5km and 65% 5-10km is frankly insane. Most of these are car journeys that simply shouldn't happen. All these people are making each others commutes take longer...

 

[HSTEd]

2km in five minutes on a push bike?
I may be out of shape but ten is far more reasonable

 

[edwin_m]

Even the 59% 2-5km and 65% 5-10km is frankly insane. Most of these are car journeys that simply shouldn't happen. All these people are making each others commutes take longer...

And also putting traffic on the road which makes others that much less likely to cycle (and makes buses slower too). So the others start going by car instead. Vicious circle.

 

[westv]

65% 5-10km is frankly insane. Most of these are car journeys that simply shouldn't happen. All these people are making each others commutes take longer...

Perhaps the 10km journey takes far too long using public transport?
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Annoyingly, this site seperates "Train" and "Underground, Metro, Light Rail, Tram" as two categories. Which mainly impacts London, Manchester & Newcastle

That site combines two things I like - maps and stats about the area I live in.
Thanks.

 

[jopsuk]

Perhaps the 10km journey takes far too long using public transport?
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That site combines two things I like - maps and stats about the area I live in.
Thanks.

it's good as it breaks down to postcode level, and then colours the buildings only- which means that it give a clearer picture than many postcode maps

 

[Bletchleyite]

Most likely scenario for Birmingham, Newcastle and Manchester would be expansion of the existing light rail systems. Centro certainly has some plans for Birmingham and Metrolink has always been growing. Places like Glasgow or Liverpool where there is already a decent commuter heavy rail network, there would likely be infill or extension of those lines with significantly better bus/rail integration. There is simply a limit to what heavy rail infrastructure can be added to the network in urban areas, unless previously closed lines were protected from development.

Though it would be very easy (if costly) to provide additional capacity on the North's railways - just turn all those 2-car DMUs running around the place into 12-car DMUs or EMUs. Lots of infrastructure work, but a lot easier than adding capacity in the South East where train lengths are already at that sort of length but the lines are full.
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2km in five minutes on a push bike?
I may be out of shape but ten is far more reasonable

10mph (16km/h) is a fairly typical city cycling speed, that would be 8 minutes for 2km, FWIW.

 

[67018]

Surely the biggest constraint on major building of new and expanded rail lines is the difficulty in fitting them into built up urban areas. Towns and cities were much smaller when the railways were originally built, so by and large they have grown around an existing network.

That leaves either major demolition (expensive and likely to provoke much opposition), tunneling (even more expensive) or use of out of town stations linked to the centre by buses/trams.

So, as has been said, you can increase capacity up to a point, but once you have 12 car EMUs running on minimum headways you sort of hit a sticking point.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So, as has been said, you can increase capacity up to a point, but once you have 12 car EMUs running on minimum headways you sort of hit a sticking point.

Hence HS2, which has very little to do with getting people from London to Birmingham a little bit quicker, and everything to do with getting more of those 12-car EMUs in on the classic WCML.

 

[TimG]

2km in five minutes on a push bike?
I may be out of shape but ten is far more reasonable

Random point to random point, I found that anything under 7 miles is typically faster by bicycle than public transport in London and I'm not fit.

Electric bikes run at 25 KM/H.

The OP's question is a bit like asking what infrastructure change would need to be made to airports if everyone had to commute by plane..

Rail just isn't a solution in most cases.

 

[Greenback]

Rail just isn't a solution in most cases.

This is correct.

This thread may be about a hypothetical question, but without discussing the hypothetical causes of a huge decline in car usage, I think it's impossible to even begin to assess any effect on the rail network.

Far more problems would be caused to the country and it's economy if road travel were significantly reduced for some reason than just the impact on the railways.