Opinion
to existing sites, and encourage higher density, mixed-use development near nodes or corridors well-served by public transport. The Cardiff Crossrail project provides multiple opportunities to deliver on these policy objectives by enabling a range of strategic development projects across Cardiff. We also have to learn from other major transport led regeneration projects. At a recent dinner in Cardiff, Terry Morgan, chair of Crossrail in London, stressed the importance of using transport projects as a means of stimulating economic activity and regeneration and of exploiting the land use impact and value uplift that can result around new transport links and stations.
The right time to propose The Cardiff Crossrail proposal provides multiple station-focused development and regeneration opportunities across the city, the value of which can be captured to help fund some of the development costs. So, by exploring a range of innovative funding mechanisms alongside more traditional sources, then over a period of perhaps 10 years a Cardiff Crossrail can be delivered. Perhaps a public/private partnership in the form of a Metro or Cardiff Crossrail development corporation could be tasked with developing and delivering these schemes. With Cardiff Council exploring its
LDP and a Welsh Government Task Force
investigating the Metro Concept, this is the right time to be putting forward projects such as a Cardiff Crossrail. However, to make it a reality, the scheme must be identified as one of a small number of strategic, regional Metro projects. By augmenting the Metro’s first phase,
VLE, these projects can form the basis of a strategic Metro Plan for the region that can be delivered in a phased programme from perhaps 2017 – to 2026. The Metro Consortium is a group of stakeholders lobbying for a step change in the approach to and investment in transport across the Cardiff City Region. Contact Mark Barry at
mark@mgbarryconsulting.com
Barriers to rail use: what stops people taking the train ?
Research has shown that even when rail travel is the most cost-effective mode of transport for a particular journey, many travellers still choose other modes. Simon Blainey, Adrian Hickford and John Preston of the University of Southampton’s Transportation Research Group (TRG) discuss why
D
espite recent significant and sustained growth in rail usage, rail still only accounted for four per cent of motorised
trips made in Britain in 2011. While many of these trips will have
been inherently unsuitable for rail travel (for example because they were too short, or because they were to places not served by rail), even for trips longer than 25 miles only 12 per cent of trips were undertaken by rail. In order to tackle the twin challenges
of congestion and carbon emissions it is desirable that a significant proportion of trips made by car and air should shift to rail, and TRG has therefore reviewed and summarised the evidence on factors which prevent people from using the train, in order to inform efforts to achieve mode shift.
Expensive to address These factors can be considered under three broad headings, with the first being ‘hard’ barriers to rail use. These are barriers which affect all people who make a particular journey, and include uncompetitive travel times, (un)reliability, poor service frequencies and timetabling, the need to change trains, high costs, the complexity of
the ticketing system, issues relating to station access and egress, and the physical limitations of the rail network, often linked to road-oriented land use patterns. While such barriers can be easy to
identify and understand and the means of dealing with them on particular corridors may therefore be relatively obvious, they often tend to be expensive to address (although not always – ticketing complexity appears to be a notable exception).
Less obvious hard barriers are
structural car dependence, where people have no viable alternative to car use, and car-oriented government policy, often influenced by the powerful (and media conscious) road lobby.
Difficult to identify The second group of barriers can be termed ‘soft’, and these are barriers which are specific to (or of varying importance to) particular individuals. They include factors such as inaccurate perceptions of the rail service offer (of ‘hard’ barriers, in other words), journey planning requirements, the level of information provided before and during journeys, the range and quality of station facilities, the cleanliness and condition of stations and trains, the presence (or absence) of
railway staff, perceived or actual personal security during the journey, the level of crowding and (often linked to this) comfort, and the undesirable habits of other passengers. Conscious car dependence,
where people are unable to perceive any alternative to car use, and the convenience, freedom and control provided by cars also come under this heading. While addressing soft barriers may
in some cases require less financial resources than dealing with hard barriers, it may be difficult to identify which interventions will make most difference to most people.
Efforts to compensate The final group of barriers is termed ‘complementary’, and includes barriers which are not directly linked to the quality of the rail option, but instead relate to the impact of wider lifestyle, cultural and economic factors on mode choice. Complementary barriers include trip
chaining (where people visit multiple destinations during a single trip), habitual behaviour, mobility restrictions caused by age, health, and disability, the need to transport large quantities of goods
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