Transport planners plot route through the unknown

Covid-19 threw com­muter trav­el into dis­ar­ray, with mil­lions of employ­ees fur­loughed or work­ing from home. How­ev­er, the long-term impact could be far wider, upend­ing plan­ning assump­tions for years to come. 

Last sum­mer, Leeds sta­tion, the North’s busiest rail­way hub, was giv­en six years to boost capac­i­ty or risk “fail­ing”. In 2016, there were warn­ings that London’s tube net­work was set to be “inop­er­a­ble” with­in 15 years. What now for such fore­casts as we emerge from the pan­dem­ic? It’s still unclear – so much so that the Depart­ment for Trans­port has launched an “Uncer­tain­ty Toolk­it” for trans­port mod­el­ling. 

So as plan­ners try to pre­dict com­muter demands of the future, what do they know? And just as impor­tant­ly, what don’t they know? 

Three things we know now

1. There will be more home working

Just 5.7% of peo­ple worked from home before the pan­dem­ic, accord­ing to the Wales Insti­tute of Social and Eco­nom­ic Research and Data. Covid has changed every­thing, and the effects could be long-last­ing. 

While offices might be open again, McK­in­sey has found that 52% of work­ers glob­al­ly want a hybrid work­ing mod­el. Like­wise, research pub­lished by YouGov this April showed that 20% in the UK want to per­ma­nent­ly work from home. 

In Leices­ter, about a fifth of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion have office jobs, accord­ing to Andrew Smith, direc­tor of plan­ning, devel­op­ment and trans­porta­tion at Leices­ter City Coun­cil. Now, “we sense flex­i­ble work­ing will shift to work­ing in-office two-three days a week”, he says.

The coun­cil has just launched a trans­porta­tion plan to 2036, pre­dict­ing an erad­i­ca­tion of rush hour. Smith says he envis­ages hybrid work­ing con­tribut­ing to 25% few­er car jour­neys, with com­muters choos­ing bus­es, trains or cycles when they do trav­el. 

Ewan Moore, client devel­op­ment direc­tor at inte­grat­ed agency Unlim­it­ed Group, is embrac­ing this new real­i­ty. Since the Bris­tol-based firm went hybrid, he cycles the 7km jour­ney to the office. “Bris­tol is a safe city to cycle in and is get­ting bet­ter all the time,” Moore says. “Cycle lanes give me con­fi­dence when cycling at peak times or even at night.” 

2. Town and city centres are changing

Pre­dic­tions of the “demise of the high street” pre-date Covid, but the process is like­ly to be accel­er­at­ed by hybrid work­ing. West­field, for exam­ple, is review­ing whether future foot­fall will now be enough to sus­tain a planned £1.4 bil­lion shop­ping cen­tre in Croy­don. 

Exist­ing retail out­lets could suf­fer from a fall in com­muter num­bers. For exam­ple, Pret a Manger has already announced 2,800 job loss­es and the clo­sure of 30 sites after report­ing a 60% fall in trade. 

Trans­port plan­ners are try­ing to encour­age more work and leisure trips by reimag­in­ing cities as green­er and health­i­er spaces. Last sum­mer, for instance, Liv­er­pool pedes­tri­anised Bold Street and Cas­tle Street, as well as adding out­side din­ing and launch­ing an e‑scooter tri­al through the provider Voi. 

Liv­er­pool res­i­dent Ioana Popo­va still works cen­tral­ly, but reg­u­lar­ly uses the e‑scooters. It means she doesn’t have to walk from the train sta­tion or catch a bus. “Scoot­ers are faster and more fun,” she says.

3. The shift to localism

Regard­less of where hybrid work­ers choose to live, many trav­el experts envi­sion a shift towards local­ism and localised trav­el, with employ­ers think­ing holis­ti­cal­ly about commuting’s impact on local ameni­ties. 

“Pre-Covid trav­el pat­terns we were all used to will change,” argues Andy Marchant, traf­fic advi­sor at Tom­Tom. For exam­ple, he says Tom­Tom has analysed firms in busi­ness parks that have col­lab­o­rat­ed to stag­ger in-office work­ing days, dis­si­pat­ing trav­el and reduc­ing over­all traf­fic and rush-hour delays. 

Towns and cities are embrac­ing local­ism, offer­ing “smarter”, real-time infor­ma­tion to trav­ellers, says Marchant, in areas like car park­ing or charg­ing facil­i­ties for elec­tric cars. 

Three things we still don’t know

1. Where people will choose to live

Hybrid or remote work­ing means many of us no longer need to live close to work. In a sign of the times, Corn­wall has over­tak­en Lon­don as the most searched-for loca­tion on Right­move. 

But accord­ing to Fran Collins, chair of the Busi­ness South Mar­itime and Trans­port Action Group, there are still major ques­tions over what this means for local trans­port net­works. While Dorset’s roads are at 100% capac­i­ty, plan­ners don’t know if “this is an imme­di­ate post-pan­dem­ic trend, or whether the sta­tus quo will return in two-three years”. 

Already 12 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties have faced reduc­tions in trans­port infra­struc­ture, accord­ing to con­sul­tan­cy WSP. More arrivals could leave regions resem­bling “trans­port deserts”, where infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment lags behind pop­u­la­tion growth. 

Sime­on But­ter­worth, WSP trans­port plan­ner for Leeds, says it’s impor­tant not to over-analyse the data. How­ev­er, “those work­ing on the North­ern Pow­er­house Rail Project, for exam­ple, are already ner­vous about what the future of rail use will be”, he warns. “Part of this is where peo­ple will com­mute to and from.” 

2. How people will want to travel

There is now far greater uncer­tain­ty about the poten­tial for “modal shifts” in trans­port than before the pan­dem­ic, says Nick Richard­son, trans­port plan­ner at the Char­tered Insti­tute of Logis­tics and Trans­port. 

Train usage is cur­rent­ly 40% of pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, though is expect­ed to recov­er. Bus trav­el is par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to pre­dict, Richard­son says, with data from the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Forum sug­gest­ing that 40% of com­muters “nev­er want to use it again”. Yet it must still be con­sid­ered. “Any city resur­gence plans must incor­po­rate bus access as unpre­dictabil­i­ty gives bus oper­a­tors a rea­son not to pro­vide ser­vices.” 

If towns and cities do aim for a green­er, health­i­er future, cycling could be the big win­ner. How­ev­er, the future here is also unclear. While fig­ures show that cycling in Lon­don rose by between 7–22% to the end of March 2021 com­pared with Spring 2019, an emerg­ing new trend is adding uncer­tain­ty: the return of the car. Trans­port for Lon­don data from June shows that the num­ber of jour­neys walked, cycled or made on pub­lic trans­port over the cal­en­dar year fell from 63% to 57%, while car jour­neys rose as peo­ple regard­ed them as safer. 

Could this present oppor­tu­ni­ties for e‑scooters, which poten­tial­ly offer the best of both worlds? Hal­fords saw a 184% year-on-year rise in sales of e‑mobility prod­ucts in Novem­ber 2020, and claims that about a third of com­muters would con­sid­er using one for short jour­neys.

“Uncer­tain­ty sur­rounds the set­tling down peri­od Covid has cre­at­ed,” says Anna Wil­son, a WSP trans­port plan­ning direc­tor for the Birm­ing­ham region. “The longer peo­ple do/don’t use cer­tain trans­port modes, the hard­er it is for plan­ners to plan.”

3. How towns and cities will respond

“City cen­tre man­age­ment will be crit­i­cal as the new nor­mal unfolds – but it’s not easy to plan,” argues Mike Waters, direc­tor of pol­i­cy, strat­e­gy and inno­va­tion at Trans­port for West Mid­lands (TFWM). More home work­ing means town cen­tres will suf­fer, unless they attract peo­ple for both leisure and work, he says. 

TFWM recent­ly launched schemes that it hopes will encour­age trav­el to towns and cities. This includes a car trade-in scheme, where work­ers can scrap cars and receive up to £3,000 in cred­its for use on pub­lic trans­port. Three months ago it also launched “demand respon­sive trav­el” tri­als, includ­ing Uber-style smart bus­es that can be hailed on-demand. 

Envi­ron­men­tal demands add a lay­er of uncer­tain­ty. While May­or of Lon­don Sadiq Khan wants 80% of jour­neys made on sus­tain­able forms of trans­port by 2041, falls in bus and train usage (also seen nation­al­ly) endan­ger this goal. 

“Towns need peo­ple using them,” says Alex Williams, TfL’s direc­tor of city plan­ning. Conur­ba­tions must think of the best uses for their streets, he says. 

Home work­ing won’t mean less trav­el, but more dis­parate trav­el, Williams believes. Indeed, towns could see their pop­u­la­tions increase, as defunct space is turned into res­i­den­tial areas. 

“This could mean small towns and cities require more infra­struc­ture invest­ment.”

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