Finding joy in the journey - the importance of maps

“A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know were previously connected.” (Reif Larsen)

One of the problems with satellite navigation systems is that they are pretty linear - we agree a route with the device and the system takes us along that route (without deviation or hesitation, as they say on the radio). Now while this is a pretty welcome and very useful innovation, it alters our relationship with maps. This dawned on me when I arrived at a destination for a meeting but had little real awareness of where I was (other than, very broadly, at a hotel in Yorkshire).

When you look at a map, you get a sense of the relationship between places that you don't achieve through listening to a pleasant voice instructing you to turn left or right, to take the third exit from the roundabout. You'll understand that Warrington is North of the Mersey and that Macclesfield really is in Cheshire. You might follow the route of a river as it winds and weaves its way to meet another river or, for the fortunate few, to arrive at the sea. Looking at a map helps explain local rivalries (except the strange one between Crystal Palace and Brighton) and why there's a town at one confluence but not at another.

Like so many things we take for granted, maps are more complicated, sophisticated and culturally-tied than we give credit. In the UK we give directions (or did before most of them closed down thanks to unhelpful government regulation, cheap booze and the smoking ban) using the often eccentric names of pubs. And names stick - people in Bradford still refer to the Ring O'Bells roundabout at Eccleshill despite it being many years since that pub existed.

It's not just pubs but other institutions that stuck. Growing up, if I wanted to get off the 54 bus at the bottom of Beckenham High Street, I asked for 'the Regal' despite the fact that it had been an ABC cinema since the mid-1950s. There are whole places where the name is taken from something long gone - Queensbury, a town on the hills above Bradford, was originally known as Queen's Head which was, of course, the name of the inn (long gone) just up from Black Dyke Mills.

All this makes the map exciting in a way that digital systems don't - here's mapmaker Tom Harrison on the subject:

When we look at a paper map, Harrison told me, we see more of the surroundings and less of ourselves, whereas digital is the other way around. A digital map, downloaded onto a phone or found on an app, can be revised quickly and cheaply but eliminates the need to locate yourself in the landscape. The premise is that you are the center of everything; there is no map without you.

With a map spread out in front of us - whatever its scale - we've a sense of place, a picture of towns, hill, railways, roads and rivers that captivates. I remember looking at a map of Tristan da Cuhna, tracing the road, the settlements (there's only one really - called Edinburgh) and wondering about the experience of living there. The same pleasure could come from a street map of Bournemouth or a classic Ordinance Survey Landranger of some part of England.

On the wall part way up my stairs is a copy of the original OS survey map of Cullingworth and surrounding areas - it is replete with the history of where I live in a way that can never be the case with a text history. You can trace your finger across the map - look at the buildings that have gone and the ones that survive. We're reminded that the village was much smaller despite having four mills and that what population we had was mostly crammed into back-to-back terraces in the centre of the village - now, bar for one or two, all demolished in the 1960s.

So next time you're going on a trip, for pleasure or business, take a minute or two to get out the map and look at where your going. Before you tap the postcode into your satnav, trace the different routes on that map, look at the places you'll pass, the sights you might see. Take a chance to name the hills you'll drive pass, to know which rivers you'll cross and why the towns you'll pass by or through are there. As you drive, little triggers of memory will prompt you to remember those few minutes of research and the things you learned. Above all you'll have a sense of the place itself not merely the line between where you started and where you'll finish.

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Drunks on a Plane

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Sometimes I wonder about the sanity of some broadsheet journalists. I guess it's probably because they're instructed to churn out a load of clickbait intended to get folk like me going. But this one is utterly ridiculous. The background is that a bunch of drunk idiots caused a plane - presumably filled with a load of other travellers - to land so they could be dumped off and the aircraft continue its journey in peace. Apparently we should be sympathetic:

In these scenarios it’s all too easy for us to blame these men (because that’s what they are) for being ill-disciplined, inconsiderate oiks. “Fine them!” we all cry, obstinately demanding that they are the lowest of the low and should be banned from flying for life.

Instead of that, let’s track their journey through the airport.

They arrive, let’s say at 7am ahead of their 9am flight. Having passed through customs they’re met with wall-to-wall booze, cigarettes and aftershave – all the hallmarks of a true lad.

In the duty-free hall is a bar, offering free samples of rums, vodka, whisky… the list goes on. They could have headed towards the lounge having already had a fair few shots. But oh, look! The airport bar is open. No other bar in the land is allowed to open at this time, but at the airport for some reason that’s OK.

You see these men are so infantilised by modern society that it's impossible for them to pass an open bar without having a drink. This is despite the ample evidence to the contrary - millions of people flying all over the world without getting drunk and causing trouble on planes.

Now it's true that bars at airports are open more-or-less all the time but most of us manage to make it to the plane without getting lashed. And quite a few people - for reasons I am unable to fathom - seem to have an "I'm going on holiday" switch in their heads that makes them quite happy to drink pints of lager or a large glass of wine at 7am. But these people mostly manage not to get drunk, loud or violent as a result. Let's say that there were 150 or so passengers on that disrupted flight - people who didn't pay good money to experience drunk, naked idiots running about the plane. Those people were inconvenienced - they'd people waiting for them on arrival, connections to resorts perhaps even trains to catch. If there's some sympathy it should be directed to those people not the prats who spoiled their journey.

All but a few passengers behave properly - they might drink but they don't get so drunk they think stripping off on a scheduled flight a good idea. What this Chris Hemmings chap (in between reliving his frankly pathetic undergraduate drinking escapades) misses is that these idiots had a choice - they could have chosen to have a drink in the airport, get on the plane, fly to Bratislava and then go party. To suggest that the fault lies with airport bars, cheap flights and duty free is quite wrong. It's the Heinz Kiosk approach - "we are all guilty" - rather than the truth, which is that nobody else at all is responsible for the behaviour of these drunks.

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Are we passed peak car?

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From Aaron Renn in New Geography comes this graph:

This is the the USA - we're told it's much more of a car culture than the UK - and shows a steady decline in car use since 2005. Renn makes the important observation that this graph undermines a central green policy argument - what he calls Say's Law for roads:

...supply of lanes creates its own demand by drivers to fill them. Hence building more roads to reduce congestion is pointless. But if we’ve really reached peak car, maybe we really can build our way out of congestion after all.

Renn points out that projections of growth in car use haven't been matched by actual use growth since at least 1999. Whether all this applies in the UK is moot but the National Traffic Survey suggests that car use is declining - the survey reports that since the mid-'90s trips by private modes of transport fell by 14%. The graph doesn't show the same steep decline but there is no doubt that travel habits are changing. And, as Renn points out this has significant implications for transport policy.

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Signalling the end of the private car?

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There's a bit of kerfuffle about the arrival of Uber in London and its disruption of the taxi business in the city - Londoners are being threatened with go-slows and blockades by black cab drivers. However in reading one person's experience on using Uber, I read his observation about the private car:

Once you start talking about systems like Uber and robot cars in the same sentences, is the longer term implication of things like Uber going to be: fewer privately owned cars? Will Uber 3.0 be the first robot car killer app?

After all the specific advantage that the private car offers over public transport is that it takes you from the place where you are now to the place you want to be. Buses, trains and trams, unless you are a trainspotter or tram fan, take you from one place you don't want to be to another place you don't want to be.

If a public system - it could be a Uber-type application, a robot car or even Milton Keyne's little pods - takes me directly to the place where I want to go then there is less need for me to spend many thousands on buying a rapidly depreciating hunk of metal with an engine. Especially in a large urban areas (and approaching three-quarters of us live in these urban areas) there are huge benefits - not just the money people save by not owning a car but the space saved by not needing to store the vehicle somewhere.

If we marry this with the reduced need for people to travel - think of how other innovations are removing the need to attend meetings and how the world of shopping is disrupted by home delivery or 'click-and-collect'. And this shift is being accompanied - especially in those big urban areas - by a shift to zero emission vehicles. A shift that is driven by wanting a healthier atmosphere rather than supposed threat of climate change. Indeed, as the evidence showing the negative health impact of poor air quality builds, we will see an accelerated shift to very low and zero-emission transport.

The private car won't disappear - people in rural areas will require a vehicle and some folk will remain in love with the idea of owning and driving a car - but we could see a future generation where not doing so is pretty much the norm. And not because of officious, interfering governments but because people decide they don't need the pain and expense of having a car.


Update: In a moment of serendipity, I found this little  snippet from Clemance Morlet on the Project for Public Spaces blog today:

In Paris, where I hail from, 60% of journeys are by foot - far beyond car trips (7%) – and 60% of Parisians do not own a car[1]. In the heart of New York City, 53%[2] of those who live and work in Manhattan never use a car, bus, subway or train in their everyday trips but instead walk, ride a bicycle or motorcycle, take a taxicab, or work at home. Not to mention the large and increasing number of tourists visiting the city (more than 50 million people yearly in 2011[3]), who widely enjoy Manhattan on foot.

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Going anti-clockwise round Coventry - a paen to England's roads

Today, for reasons that are unimportant to you, dear reader, we drove from the fine old town of Bath back to a very nearly drowned Cullingworth. The journey took in a new experience since, rather than the usual sclerotic motorways we opted for a pleasant drive – I would say meander but the one thing the Fosse Way doesn’t do is wander about – passed Malmesbury, Cirencester, Stow-in-the-Wold and Stratford. I say passed since – with the exception of Moreton-in-Marsh – all the places en route are safely by-passed by a well maintained and appropriately sized highway.

At the end of this little trip the navigation (Kathryn) announced that we were now going “anti-clockwise round Coventry”. This tickled me a little but got me to thinking about how we moan and whinge about transport, traffic and roads. Yet, over the years the assorted county councils (in the main) have, along with the Highways agency, smoothed the passage of traffic while allowing the various little market towns, spas and villages to breathe again.

So since we didn’t go through any town centres – a favourite topic on mine – I will comment on roads. Starting with the little windy country lanes that don’t seem to go anywhere but which are lovingly patched up and repaired by a combination of council workers, assorted contractors and the local farmer. The recent bad weather has bashed away at these roads washing away lumps of them, filling dips and hollows with water and strewing the surface with the debris from fields and lanes – a veritable flotsam and jetsam of farm life. And they – those farmers, the men from the water board and the council – were already out mending and making do. Allowing us to pass (actual thigh deep floods aside) from one place to another with the minimum of hindrance.

And then to the better roads – thousands of miles of them that we take for granted. Filled –sometimes to overflowing – with traffic, all going busily about its daily business. These are the arteries of England’s economy. Forget about those trains and planes, ignore the fancy urban tramways and underground systems – it is these A-roads and B-roads along with the wealth of England flows each day. Ten thousand and more vans, pick-ups, low-loaders, trucks, container wagons, car transporters and delivery lorries. Each one with its precious cargo – goods and expertise flowing from one small place to another. Each little trip making it possible for us to have bread on the table, heat in the house and a happy smile on the faces of healthy children.

So to those who look disdainfully at the car, who curse the van and the truck. For all you who hold forth about how all the freight can go on railways or even into barges. All of you are wrong. The future success of our economy depends rather more on those roads, on allowing the easy movement of plumbers and locksmiths, supermarket delivery drivers and truckers, computer salesmen and cheesemakers – all the producers that make us rich. And that means roads.

So if there is to be infrastructure investment let’s spend it on by-passes, new road links, road widening and road improvements. Let’s give councils the money to do the backlog of repairs. Let’s spend the money we get from road users – all £30 billion and more of it – on making life a little easier for those road users. And let’s tell all the tree-huggers and planet-savers that, right now, getting the economy moving is more important than their eco-scaremongerings.

Getting the economy moving means getting people moving. And that needs roads. Including the one going anti-clockwise round Coventry.

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Is London's public transport really so expensive?

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London has a fantastic public transport network yet we still get special pleading:

Travelling in London is nearly three and a half times more expensive than Paris and 10 times dearer than in Rome, according to research by the Campaign for Better Transport.  With successive Governments in Britain allowing fares to rise faster than inflation, the gap has also been widening in recent years.  Next week commuter fares, which are capped by the Department for Transport, will increase by an average of six per cent.

Now this information should be treated with some caution – it’s based on one 23 mile journey rather than an assessment of the system itself. For me the central question is whether Londoners, Parisians and Romans can give up the car (i.e. it is no longer essential to practical living). For most people within the urban area of London Paris the car is only needed to visit maiden aunts in Hampshire, it isn’t needed to get to work, visit locally, shop or do those other regular everyday things.

Rome – crammed to the gunnels with crazy traffic – has just 38km of underground and less than 200km of other urban rail system. Paris Metro is a little longer at 86km and the other light rail is limited. The London Underground alone has 402km of track before we’ve taken account of overground services, trams and bus priority systems.

In London a comprehensive annual ticket (Zones 1-9) costs a little over £3,000. But bear in mind that the transport system in London is so comprehensive you don’t need a car (although this gets a little trickier the further you get from London). The AA gives a running cost for the cheapest category of car (valued at below £12,000 new) at 10,000 miles per annum as £4,553 – over £1500 more expensive than using public transport.

The Campaign for Better Transport is arguing that we should use more of the taxes paid by people who don’t use London’s commuter network to reduce the cost of that commuting rather than getting those commuters to pay the full cost of providing the world’s most extensive and comprehensive public transport system. Especially given that this system is significantly cheaper than running a car (that is only a luxury to most Londoners).

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Cut the tax on flying George

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I received an e-mail from Leeds Bradford Airport today regarding the consultation on proposed increases in Air Passenger Duty (APD):

LBA is warning that passengers still face the prospect of ‘double taxation’ and further increases in flying taxes when aviation enters the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2012; and also that the Chancellor may raise APD next year.

APD in the UK is already up to 8.5 times more than the European average. Many European countries have either already abandoned their aviation taxes, or indicated that they will do so, due to the negative effects on their economies, including: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Ireland and Malta.

Even with the freeze, the UK economy is already losing £750m in GDP and 18,000 jobs as a direct result of the recent November 2010 rises in APD, not to mention the thousands of UK tourism jobs lost because less people can afford to holiday here. 

You can submit your comments and join me in urging George to cut the tax on flying - send your response to apd@hmtreasury.gsi.gov.uk by Friday 17 June 2011.

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Differential pricing keeps overall prices lower - so smile as you stand in the theme park queue!

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The use of differential pricing by businesses is not a new practice – from the inception of travel there were different classes with the greatest luxury rationed through pricing and we experience the same with concerts, sports events and even the purchase of utilities. Today, ticketing systems for air travel, railways and much else allow from greater flexibility – it is far easier to capture the efficiencies of advanced sales, for example, or to charge for additional or extra services.

With pricing differential comes, as sure as night follows day, the outcry. Complaints about the terrible injustice of it all. And nothing is more terrible, of course, than me paying extra so as to jump the queue. Especially among the professionally indignant like Netmums fussbucket, Siobhan Freeguard:

“I find it amazing that parents put up with it. It won’t be long before there’s a backlash.”

Siobhan is talking about Alton Towers and the terrible fact that if I fork out loads of cash, I can jump the queues on the rides. Welcome to differential pricing and note, Siobhan, that these are businesses and if the pricing system doesn’t work (i.e. have a positive contribution to overall revenues) then the business will change it or close.

But I suspect there’s still a bunch of folk out there who think the price should be the same for everyone regardless of their degree of organisation (e.g. buying tickets in advance and seeking deals linked to less busy days) or willingness to buy privileges. These are the same people who want a single rail ticket price for everyone despite the fact that this would increase the cost of travel for most intercity travellers.

What these silly netmums and other complainers don’t realise is that differential pricing provides a benefit to all users – those buying privilege are, in effect, subsidising those who are not buying such privileges. Because some people are willing to fork out extra money to jump the queue, your ticket price for the same experience (slightly delayed) is lower.

As consumers we benefit from differential pricing – from greater choice, from more sustainable businesses and from the greater yield management that flexible pricing systems provide. The impact of imposed ‘fairness’ – whether on travel, theme parks or utilities – will be either longer queues or higher prices (and maybe both).

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Time to put the trains sets away boys!

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The other day, some of Bradford’s finest – including the wonderful John Pennington and Andrew Mason – presented a plan to link the two stations in Bradford City Centre so as to create a link between what were the Midland and GNR networks. And very fine it looks too – might enhance the city a little although it beats me how making is easier to pass through the city would regenerate the place.

But these proposals – plus the jolly plans to open up old railways (somehow I doubt that will mean Cullingworth getting a rail link again) and build new super-fast links between the big cities – got me to thinking about railways. More particularly, to considering why we bother – spending more money on our heavy rail network is just pouring money into a splendid dead end.

The problem with railways is that they require expensive infrastructure that only trains (and certain trains at that) can run on. And this is made worse by the fact that (a common trait in public transport) trains go from one place you don’t want to be (a smelly, untidy, often unsafe station) to another place you don’t want to be.

Quite frankly, roads are more flexible, can take a greater variety of traffic in greater volumes, are cheaper to build and maintain, cannot be held to ransom by operators and suit the dynamism of the modern economy. Railways – other than as commuter transport into an out from employment nodes – are a Victorian anachronism.

And looking to the future the benefits of roads will become still clearer as road vehicles become less polluting with the advances in hybrid engines, electric vehicles and fuel cells destroying the environmental arguments against this form of mass transport. By all means invest in urban mass transit and light rail systems designed to move large numbers of folk over short, congested distances but leave off driving new railways through the countryside in some rose-spectacled, harking back to a bygone age. Railways may look good, you may like them but they are not a solution to modern transport problems.

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