INDUSTRY EXPERT REFLECTIONS
The concept appears good; don’t own a car, just use one when you need one. The reality is that giving up a car has many ramifications and not all are logical.
Added to this is the fact that 3,200 vehicles across London is a drop in the ocean, so the chances of finding one conveniently near where you live appears remote. And isn’t it likely that most people will want a car at the same time. As for the rest of the UK - good luck with the 1,800 you have to share between you.
Great idea but without the carrot of supply and the stick of ending private car ownership this one is set to languish. In fairness this solution has much more than a green hue about it but it has to battle people’s emotional attachment to their car to make progress… that won’t be easy.
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
Autonomous vehicles are a bit like dodgy delivery
drivers.....they are around the corner. No, they are not! The business case for 5G is sadly lacking and a few autonomous cars coming onto the market every year is not a business case. No 5G = no autonomous cars.
The chaos of transition hasn’t even been considered; can you imagine cars programmed to work a certain way when interacting with each other sharing the road with manually driven cars behaving as individually as each driver?
Autonomous vehicles have in my opinion their uses - airport car parks could well be a good place to put autonomous pods rather than have uncomfortable and cumbersome buses periodically lumbering around the airport. Putting in a 5G network is probably manageable at most airports.
Once again, the hype and the press releases are the story, not the cars, and that will remain so unless new technology arises that overrides the need for 5G. Otherwise which Government or private company is going to fund a UK-wide 5G programme where there is no business case in London, Birmingham and Manchester? So what chance has for example the Scottish Highlands, parts of Wales or even Norfolk or Cornwall got?
8 BACK ON THE FARM
The point I would like people to take from this article is very simple; Government, DfT, councils and policy makers jump on every passing bandwagon as though they are silver bullets (I know too many clichés) whilst the section of mobility that provides day in and day out most journeys is ignored i.e. taxis and private hire.
The time spent on ‘future transport’ consultations, pilots, tenders, workshops and reports would be better spent on fine tuning the industry, with I might add the industry firmly involved. We don’t need a revolution we need an evolution to enable this industry to expand from what it does now to provid- ing services like demand responsive transport. Door to door services linked to public transport (filtering as it is known in rail and bus circles) and of course without impacting its day-to-day service of filling the public transport vacuum.
These flights of fancy (no not air taxis) ‘based on exciting technology, green solutions and innovative business models’ are largely hot air and nowhere near as green as the exponents would like us to believe.
So why are taxis/PHVs not further up everyone’s agenda? Well, most of the above are seen as cheap solutions. The ‘innovative business models’ are normally simply loss-making enterprises that keep going until the funders decide they are ‘investing’ in a pup. Meanwhile the industry that is really at the heart of mobility sees roads closed, carriageways restricted, car club bays allocated instead of ranks, a procession of regulatory change to show that ‘something has been done’ about problems that have barely a vague connection to taxis and PHVs and taxpayers’ money poured into the latest crackpot project.
It may not be fashionable, sexy or good CV collateral but the answer to improving mobility is already in place – those who wish to enhance or broaden the service just need to speak to us.
OCTOBER 2023 PHTM
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