Quote of the day - transport technology and strikes

We are in for a decade and more of transport strikes as those working in that industry resist the technological changes - here's Tim Newman commenting about Paris and driverless cars:

I seem to recall Parisian taxi drivers rioting, tipping over cars, and burning tyres when Uber came to town, leading to the government caving in by lunchtime and banning the app in Paris. Presumably they’re going to take the introduction of driverless cabs without a murmur.

Add to taxi drivers the bus and tram workers, the train drivers and the lorry drivers - a recipe for industrial strife if ever there was one. And the nation that manages this change most swiftly and with least disruption is the one that will reap the quickest and earliest changes. It won't be France for sure and probably won't be the UK either.

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"Gimmicks" - or transport innovations at they're known outside West Yorkshire

Tomorrow's driverless taxi?

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority is going out to consultation on its transport strategy. This is a strategy and plan intended to set the direction for transport in West Yorkshire up to 2036. In doing this, the WYCA is acting quite properly - transport schemes are expensive, slow to develop and take a long time to implement so a twenty year planning horizon is sensible. You can contribute to the consultation through the page on WYCA's website.

At the recent WYCA full meeting - where the leaders of West Yorkshire's five councils plus a couple of others tagged on for good measure (like me, for example), we discussed this transport strategy. Not in much detail - these meetings are never big on detail - but enough to get a feel for what it's proposing. And it's not very good.

The strategy is linear seeing challenges such as congestion, air quality and connectivity as solvable only with existing technology - trains, buses - and new infrastructure (roads, bike lanes and so forth) within the existing spatial circumstances. Thus we are keen on HS2 and HS3 (or Northern Powerhouse Rail - NPR - as afficionados will now call it) as transformational schemes and we bemoan the lack of foresight at the Department for Transport in not allowing us to build our exiciting and innovative new 'bus-on-a-string'. As if the 19th century technology of the trolley bus is somehow a solution to 21st century transport challenges.

In setting objectives, the strategy focuses on modal shift, getting journeys shifted from nasty bad cars onto lovely buses, trains and bicycles. The strangest thing about this policy is that it is essentially backwards looking in seeking to move people from a 20th century transport system (the car) onto 19th century systems (rail, bus, bike). And while this is all fine it represents another triumph for anti-invention green strategies.

In our discussions, I mentioned emerging transport technologies - autonomous vehicles, drones, zero-emission vehicles - and wondered why, given the strategy runs to 2036, none of these emerging transport systems was considered worthy of even consideration in our planning? The chairman of the WYCA's Transport Board and the Leader of Kirklees Council dismissed this suggestion. The former thought the 'holy grail' would be to have an integrated ticketing syste across rail and bus by 2036. For Londoners, this is us taking 20 years to introduce the Oytster card system you guys already have.

For the latter, Cllr David Sheard, these new technologies are "gimmicks" and we should focus on "real-time data" (which we already have through the Metro phone app) and "smart ticketing" (those Oyster cards again). The extent of West Yorkshire's transport innovation will be to introduce a system London already has and to improve another system already available in West Yorkshire. And we want to be some sort of powerhouse? With this sort of thinking we'll be lucky to keep up with Manchester let alone close the gap with London.

So, for the benefit of my colleagues on the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, here are some of those gimmicks being introduced elsewhere in the world.

Singapore is gearing up to become the world's first "smart nation", with another deal to bring self-drive taxis to the city.

The city authorities signed a deal with start-up nuTonomy to test autonomous vehicles in March.

Now Delphi Automotive will also offer a small fleet of automated taxis to carry passengers around a business park.

The driverless cabs could reduce an average $3-a-mile ride to 90 cents, the firm said.

Initially, the cars will have drivers, ready to take over if the system fails but the plan is to gradually phase the human out in 2019.

And - even more creative:

A drone that can transport humans has been given the go ahead to carry out trials in the US.

The Ehang 184, which was first unveiled at CES 2016, is a small, personal helicopter that can transport a single passenger. Rather than one large rotor above the body, the "taxi drone" has four rotors underneath the body, resembling a remote control drone.

Ehang will start running tests in Las Vegas later this year in the hope that it could eventually be used as part of the state's transport system, according to a local publication.

Buses might not be so dull:

A driverless electric bus is set to be trialled in Perth in a test run for the use of autonomous vehicles on West Australian roads.

The staged trial is being conducted and funded by WA's RAC later this year using a French-made electric shuttle bus.

With no driver, it will use three-dimensional sensing technology to carry 15 passengers at speeds up to 45 kilometres per hour.

And there's autonomous delivery systems:

"Whilst driverless vehicles once sounded like science fiction, it's now within our grasp," said Domino’s Pizza UK marketing director Simon Wallis. "Harnessing this innovation for pizza delivery opens up a new world of opportunities for us."

The vehicles navigate via GPS technology and feature an onboard Pizza Interface (PI) that calculates the fastest route to the customer.

Plus drone delivery of course:

Amazon will step up its drone tests in UK airspace after winning approval from the Government to lift strict flying restrictions in a major boost to its plans for unmanned delivery aircraft.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has granted the internet retailer special permission to test its aerial vehicles without several of the rules that typically bind drone pilots.

The agreement will see Amazon move a step close to Jeff Bezos’s dream of fleets of drones delivering small packages directly to shoppers within 30 minutes.

Or, on a bigger scale, semi-autonomous freight trains:

Six convoys of semi-automated “smart” trucks arrived in Rotterdam’s harbour on Wednesday after an experiment its organisers say will revolutionise future road transport on Europe’s busy highways.

More than a dozen self-driving trucks made by six of Europe’s largest manufacturers arrived in the port in so-called “truck platoons” around midday, said Eric Jonnaert, president of the umbrella body representing DAF, Daimler, Iveco, MAN, Scania and Volvo.

And the landing of drones in drone ports:

Foster + Partners has unveiled the first full-scale prototype of its Droneport concept at the Arsenale, which is designed to transport medical supplies to remote regions in Africa using unmanned flying vehicles (+ slideshow).

The structure is the inaugural project from the Norman Foster Foundation, set up by the British architect to anticipate technological advances in the field, respond to humanitarian needs and encourage a more "holistic" view of architecture.

All this is before we've got to a world where autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles begin to replace the car as the dominant form of personal transport. This requires us to think about ownership, to look at the way in which we licence taxis, road safety and pedestrianisation. Instead we're going to fuss about installing better bus stops and holding interminable meetings to discuss ticketing arrangements between trains and buses. And instead of infrastructure investment paving the way for autonomous vehicles, drones and other innovations, we'll spend it on trying to shift one-in-thirty journeys from the car to some other form of transport.

With the collapse of the tram and trolley bus proposals for Leeds, there's the opportunity to step over our obsession with trains and buses and to plan for the future that emerging technology is taking us to. Sadly, the leaders of West Yorkshire think that's just "gimmicks". Seems to me we need some new ones - leaders that is, not buses and trains.

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If we're not planning for 'robocars', we are planning wrongly.

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OK we're talking about America here but the point remains a strong one:

The rise of robocars may accelerate metro area decentralization. Congestion will be reduced, and the greater safety of driverless cars may permit higher speeds on metro area beltways and cross-town freeways. Once taxi drivers are replaced by robot taxis, the cost of taxis will plummet and the greater convenience of point-to-point personal travel anywhere in a sprawling metro area will make rail-based mass transit obsolete except in places like airports and tourist-haven downtowns. As in the past, most working-class families with children will probably prefer a combination of a longer commute with a bigger single-family house and yard to a shorter commute and life in a cramped apartment or condo.

We need to understand that this will happen and it will make all our debate about the negatives of personal transport obsolete. This also - with the need to travel also reduced by technology - rather undermines the idea that we will cram ourselves into enormous, dense core cities while the wilderness is recreated as that technology reduces farmland acreage.

Our debate about housing, transport and much else is stale and limited so long as our long-term planning is predicated on urban densification to reduce the impact of the private car. Driverless vehicles as a mass transit solution may be 30 years ago but this is not a massive planning horizon and the places that design themselves to meet this world will be the winners.

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Driverless vehicles make railways (and our fast cars) obsolete

Every time such things as the "Northern Powerhouse" are mentioned the punditry, politicians and media immediately start agitating for billions to be invested in railways. This is despite the fact that railways account for only 3% of journeys in the UK while over 80% of journeys take place on roads. I've always suspected this is something of a 'boys' toys' response - we were brought up with train sets, Thomas the Tank Engine and Ivor. We like railways.

Consider this then:

"By combining ride sharing with car sharing—particularly in a city such as New York—MIT research has shown that it would be possible to take every passenger to his or her destination at the time they need to be there, with 80 percent fewer cars."

Or:

"An OECD study modelling the use of self-driving cars in Lisbon found that shared “taxibots” could reduce the number of cars needed by 80-90%. Similarly, research by Dan Fagnant of the University of Utah, drawing on traffic data for Austin, Texas, found that an autonomous taxi with dynamic ride-sharing could replace ten private vehicles. This is consistent with the finding that one extra car in a car-sharing service typically takes 9-13 cars off the road. Self-driving vehicles could, in short, reduce urban vehicle numbers by as much as 90%."

No new trains, no trams, no trolley buses, no bus lanes - just the realisation that automated cars ('driverless' as we call them) represent the real future of mass transportation. Not only will this, combined with emissionless or very low emission engines, reduce the negative environmental impact of road transport but we'll also see a dramatic drop in road casualties.

The reality is that investment on rail transport is not going to achieve payback ahead of the driverless car revolution - those billions now promised in new rolling stock, new stations and new lines are not needed. Cities need to be investing in the infrastructure required for driverless cars and to start planning for a city that doesn't need large parts of its land set aside to parking cars. This could mean more urban green space, the release of urban centre land for new housing and increased capacity on existing highways.

A world where we don't drive other than in controlled environments like race tracks seems strange in a culture seemingly dominated by the car but this is the likeliest result of driverless vehicles. For most of us the car (however much we drool over Ferrari and Aston Martin) is a practical and prosaic thing used to get us about the place. A very expensive practical and prosaic thing too. A world with vastly fewer road accidents, where we have no need to own a large lump of metal and plastic that sits doing nothing most of the time, and where the air is cleaner and the city greener - this is the world we should prepare for now.

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Driverless cars. Or why we shouldn't waste our money on high speed rail.

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I know I'm a bit grumpy sometimes but I still take the view that the essential limitation of public transport is that is takes you from one place where you don't want to be to another place you don't want to be. Unless you're a trainspotter. And the bigger the distance travelled the further those unwanted start and finish points are from where we want to be. The high speed railway may whizz us from Manchester to London in a breath but for 99% of travellers they don't want to go to Euston station which means an onwards journey, one that could take as long as the journey in the lovely fast train.

The plus side of public transport is that you don't have to drive the train, plane or bus and can sit back and admire the view (or, if you'd rather, get on with writing your novel, catching up with TV or even doing some work). So travel is less stressful, at least until you need to lug your bag across three platforms and up two sets of escalators and then cram yourself onto an overcrowded tube train filled with people who appear to be considering murdering you for having a large bag. And let's not imagine trying to get a bus!

The solution - where the technical investment should go - must be in combining the door-to-door advantage of the private car with the relaxation of good public transport. And this means that, instead of billions on a limited fixed rail system connecting a half-a-dozen places to London, we should be looking at driverless cars. Because these do solve those problems and hold out the opportunity for long distance road travel to be significantly more efficient.

Here's Sam Bowman speculating (not unreasonably) about the opportunity:

Instead of spending 90 minutes driving in and out of work each day, commuters will be able to catch up with a newspaper and a cup of coffee while their car drives for them. Or by working remotely for those 90 minutes, a 9 to 5 employee could increase their daily earnings by 20 per cent.

Coordinating with each other remotely, driverless cars will be able to avoid other traffic, maybe ending congestion entirely. Cars are parked for 98 per cent of their lives: to exploit that, driverless car owners could turn their vehicles into taxis while they’re at work, drastically reducing costs for everyone. Eat your heart out, Uber.

One third of transportation costs are labour costs, which will be eliminated entirely, and driverless lorries will be able to travel non-stop, making goods transportation much cheaper. Driverless freight transport may eventually outcompete rail on time and price entirely, especially if driverless-only highways are built that allow for much faster speeds, making railroads entirely redundant.

We're still a fair distance from this world (and we can add local 'pod' systems such as that proposed for Milton Keynes to the mix) but it is clear that investment - brainpower and cash - is going into the driverless car. And that it makes the £30 billion plus proposed for HS2 seem like a completely misplaced investment.

The problem we have is that the public transport lobby has become a combination of vested interest (rail and bus operators want more money going into railways and bus systems) and misplaced environmentalism. Over half our national transport budget is being spent on subsidising inefficient transport systems and even the capital investment is misdirected - for example, Leeds are planning to spend £250 million putting a bus on a string.

The solutions have to be how we make more efficient use of road space - automation leads to safer travel and to significant improvements in fuel efficiency (what we could call the 'peloton principle') - rather than, as is the case now, responding to congestion by seeking to reduce use. Driverless systems also solve another problem - they are good (by travelling in peleton) for long distances yet still provide the flexibility to allow for door-to-door travel.

Given that we aren't expecting to see HS2 built for at least 15 years, it seems a better bet to line up behind private investment in road transport to get systems that respond to real need rather than narrowly-focused arguments about rail capacity.

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