The Central Line Credit:Daniel Leal-Olivas /AFP/ Getty
The shock of the Covid-19 lockdown has hit transport systems like a heart attack. Don’t expect them to recover quickly. It’s obvious that airlines will be on life-support for years. What is less well-understood is that, as discussion turns to reopening the economy, urban public transport is now looking at the equivalent of chronic heart disease, with lower demand, but even lower capacity.
As lockdowns ease, discretionary travel will be discouraged; home-working will remain ubiquitous, business travel will be almost non-existent. The economy will limp along for years, suffering first from the friction of social distancing, then from the destruction of everyone’s balance sheets: individuals, companies, charities, public sector and government. A few years of loose fiscal and monetary policy is likely to be followed by another decade of austerity.
Lower overall transport demand will be exacerbated by a dramatic shift away from trains and buses. Until the arrival of a vaccine — One year? Two? — those who are out and about are going to be scared of crowded vehicles. And with good reason: over 100 transport workers have already died of Covid-19 in the US, 39 in London by 3 May. Data from China shows that as the lockdown was eased, private car use surged to a 66% share, from 34% pre-Covid, with public transport use seeing an almost identical decrease in usage.
For the foreseeable future, public transport operators are going to have a massive capacity problem, particularly at rush hour. The most cursory look at the average bus or train carriage shows that if you really want to maintain strict social distancing on board, you have to run at 15% to 20% of peak capacity — with no one standing and only every fourth seat in use. The London Strategic Coordination Group has recently woken up to the problem, estimating in a confidential report that the Tube’s capacity could be reduced to 15% of normal levels, and buses to 12%.
If capacity is allowed to shrink by more than demand, cities can expect dystopian years of congestion, gridlock, air pollution, emissions and parking shortages. The ability of the economy to bounce back from the Covid-19 lockdown could be rate-limited by that most prosaic of things, a lack of urban transport capacity.
Three things need to be done, then. And done quickly:
First, authorities need to rebuild trust in mass transit. People need to feel safe travelling on trams, trains and buses even before the virus has completely disappeared. Visibly step up cleaning regimes; issue staff with PPE; mandate the wearing of face coverings by passengers; increase capacity to the greatest extent possible; and restrict passenger numbers so that social distancing can be rigorously observed.
Second, promote active travel and micro-mobility, not as a nice-to-have for sustainability or health reasons, but as a public priority vital to keeping cities moving and enabling robust economic activity. Reward people for walking and cycling; remove barriers to scooter and e-bike use; massively increase rental bike capacity; create temporary bike and walking lanes; and set up bike and scooter parking and charging locations. Cap the numbers of taxis and private hire vehicles — which will otherwise soar — and discourage the use of private cars.
Third, find creative ways to increase capacity. Obviously, this means increasing the volume and frequency of public transport services, but in many cases the capacity to do so is limited — London’s Victoria Line, for example, was already running a train every 100 seconds during rush hour before Covid-19. To supplement it, therefore, integrate private sector transport and smart mobility providers, many of whom have been idled by the impact of Covid-19 on the travel and hospitality industry.
A number of the big names in smart mobility – Uber, Via, Moia – have the ability to initiate dynamic bus and minibus services immediately. As soon as Covid-19 hit, a young London-based start-up I chair, Zeelo, pivoted from providing commuter coach services to out-of-town employers to providing safe transport for critical workers. Zeelo and others could recruit and manage thousands of coaches to supplement public transport services on the busiest routes. Driverless shuttle providers such as Navya and EasyMile could provide safe services on campuses, business parks and shopping streets.
Not only would these smart mobility services add capacity but, because they are fully digital, they are ideally placed to supporting the “test and trace” phase of pandemic response – subject of course to privacy controls.
When the Covid-19 pandemic eventually passes, life will return to normal. Not the old normal, but one in which the public can again go about its life without fear of catching a deadly disease. Some of the behaviour changes like home working, video-conferencing, remote medicine and education are proving popular, and people will demand that elements of them continue in place.
Even so, the likelihood is that within a few years of the final Covid-19 case, transport demand will have bounced back to the levels of 2019 and beyond. However, transport authority budgets will remain under far too much pressure to respond by adding capacity in the traditional way, by building infrastructure and adding services. Public transport’s peak-time capacity problem is here to stay.
Until Covid-19, the blurring of boundaries between public and private transportation and the integration of smart mobility services into daily commutes was the stuff of specialist transport and planning blogs. That is about to change.
When historians look back on the current era, the death of the post-war public transport paradigm will not be seen as the arrival of Uber, but the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. A new, smarter form of urban transport will have to be born.
Michael Liebreich is the Chairman of Liebreich Associates, Founder and Senior Contributor of Bloomberg NEF, ex-TFL Board Member and Chairman of Zeelo.
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Some of us have not stopped using buses and tubes every day because we have to work still, the idea that working class people will not be back on the buses and tubes from day 1 after the lockdown is fanciful middle class crap.
If you are poor and you are told to go back to work you do or lose your job!
Working class people will get over any fear asap as they have rent to pay and if you do a manual job, cycling and walking to work like I would have to do of about 12 miles there and back is not practical.
When the lockdown is over open up as normal, we will survive, we have no choice
I will happily ride a train, tram, bus or airplane as soon as all the blooming knee jerking fear mongers get out of the way and allow us to. For those that choose such, you can go and sit in an isolated cubicle somewhere and wait for the “end of the world”! Me, I’m all so ready to get LIVING again and I’m more than happy with the actual numbers to know that the real risks are hopelessly inflated. Governments all around the world have to orchestrate a staged reentry of everyone back into the work place only because to simply end the lock down would be tantamount to actually admitting they over reacted and truly screwed up! Many are already regurgitating the narrative that the “curve” also based upon bullshit data, is only flattening because of their swift reactions. I’d like to give most of them the toe end of my boot and see how swiftly they react to that!
I will have no concerns in London travelling on crowded public transport, which I normally try and avoid by being on the tube at 6am and returning either early or post the hour. I was travelling on the tube up until the lockdown and flying on the 2nd Feb. and I have lived to tell the tale. I would be more at risk riding a bike or scooter.
Some fair points, but largely a manifesto to increase the profitability of his own business interests.
The 2m social distancing rule is not discussed here, it’s just taken as a given. As far as I’m aware, there is no real science behind it. The WHO says 1m. It could be more. 2m is very likely safer than 1m, but by how much? The 2m rule was also initiated in a world where mask wearing was not mandatory in public enclosed spaces. Masks should reduce airborne inflections, potentially by a lot. It would be nice to think that in the time we have been in lockdown, the authorities might have been initiating research to get a better picture of just what the risks are of getting the virus from different sources and the relative importance of different aspects of the lockdown. Public transport sounds riskier than a walk in the park, but by roughly what factor? There are no easy answers in any of this, I fear, but there should be better informed answers if the right analysis is being done. I do not have any great expectations that it is, though.
“Restrict passenger numbers”? How is that going to work? Where will people queue safely before being allowed onboard?
I like many of the points made – esp looking for technology lead solutions that maximse existing infrastructure (ie roads). I don’t care if its Uber or someone else, but bring on the Uber share concept of booking and sharing a point to point shuttle/van. Strangely enough, share shuttles/vans on flexible routes have been common in developing countries for decades – with the not immaterial benefit that they’re mostly out of reach of local government bureaucratic transport planners.
I think after all this has passed we should maintain the 2 meter rule in public life purely on grounds of courtesy, comfort and overcrowding control.
We may need to build bigger trains.