David Metz - Good to Go? Decarbonising Travel After the Pandemic

Good To Go? Decarbonising
Travel After the Pandemic

Series editor: Diane Coyle

The BRIC Road to Growth Jim ONeill

Reinventing London Bridget Rosewell

Rediscovering Growth: After the Crisis Andrew Sentance

Why Fight Poverty? Julia Unwin

Identity Is The New Money David Birch

Housing: Wheres the Plan? Kate Barker

Bad Habits, Hard Choices: Using the Tax
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A Better Politics: How Government Can Make
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Are Trams Socialist? Why Britain Has No
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Understand To Money That Understands Us David Birch

The Weaponization of Trade: The Great Unbalancing of Politics and Economics Rebecca Harding and Jack Harding

Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere? Christian Wolmar

Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore

Gaming Trade: WinWin Strategies for the Digital Era
Rebecca Harding and Jack Harding

The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography,
Hash Rates and Hegemony David Birch

Catastrophe and Systemic Change: Learning from the
Grenfell Tower Fire and Other Disasters Gill Kernick

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?
Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland

Technology Is Not Neutral: A Short Guide to
Technology Ethics Stephanie Hare

Good To Go? Decarbonising Travel After the Pandemic David Metz

Good To Go? Decarbonising
Travel After the Pandemic

David Metz

london publishing partnership

Copyright 2022 David Metz

Published by London Publishing Partnership
www.londonpublishingpartnership.co.uk

Published in association with
Enlightenment Economics
www.enlightenmenteconomics.com

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-913019-61-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-913019-62-4 (iPDF)
ISBN: 978-1-913019-63-1 (epub)

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

This book has been composed in Candara

Copy-edited and typeset by
T & T Productions Ltd, London
www.tandtproductions.com

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

From where do we start?

Chapter 2

What is changing?

Chapter 3

Will investment solve our travel difficulties?

Chapter 4

Do new technologies hold the answer?

Chapter 5

How did the pandemic change travel?

Chapter 6

Building back better?

Chapter 7

How can transport be decarbonised?

Chapter 8

Is your journey really necessary?

References

Introduction

T he coronavirus pandemic has been a defining event of our times. This book is about whether and how we can achieve a positive legacy, rather than letting a good crisis go to waste.

The pandemic has been hugely disruptive to travel. The risk of infection in workplaces, in entertainment venues, on public transport and aboard planes has meant that we have travelled much less. This disruption to established travel patterns points to how our travel could change to ensure the transport system reduces its impact on global warming. Future travel must be sustainable.

So how much of our travel is really necessary? And will a combination of less travel and new technologies make travel sustainable?

The modern transport system, as it has developed over the past two centuries, has transformed our lives. The ability to travel at faster than walking pace, particularly by car, has hugely enlarged our horizons. We now need to ask whether the experience gained during the pandemic might make us willing to move at a slower pace and travel less in order to mitigate the environmental impact of our mobility, accepting some loss of access benefits as a consequence.

One objective that governments had at the start of the pandemic was to decarbonise faster by promoting walking and cycling, but this failed to prevent a rebound in car use. There are many ways of cutting transport sector carbon emissions, and a key question is whether reducing car use by changing peoples behaviour en masse is essential, or whether we can rely on technological developments electric vehicles in particular to achieve our goal.

The broad conclusion of this book is that while there is some scope for travelling less to work and for shopping, we are unlikely to voluntarily accept less access to the people and places we have become used to. We will therefore want to rely largely on technology to cut transport carbon emissions, but will that happen fast enough to meet our climate change objectives? And if not, will we need additional incentives to induce significant behavioural change change beyond that which the pandemic has brought about? These are the key questions addressed here.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed transport systems to a major shock that has transformed travel patterns, at least temporarily and possibly in the longer term. The initial lockdown substantially reduced our access to people and places, lessening our opportunities and choices. Yet there were benefits, too: tailpipe pollutants were down, carbon emissions fell, noise moderated, urban air quality improved and traffic congestion diminished. But subsequently people felt safer while socially distanced in their private cars, meaning that traffic returned and the benefits of reduced traffic were lost.

Sharing space with others on crowded buses, trains and planes was always unappealing, but the pandemic increased this sense of discomfort, despite the efforts of the operators to decontaminate their vehicles and limit the number of people travelling. Some people coped by switching to active travel walking and cycling and many more by staying at home, whether working from home, shopping and meeting via the internet instead of in person, or viewing the ever-widening range of films and performances that are available online at modest cost. Overseas holidays were replaced by staycations at places accessible by car.

As widespread vaccination was achieved and we emerged gradually from social distancing and other measures intended to reduce transmission of infection, we began to see whether long-term changes in travel behaviour were likely. At the most desirable end of the spectrum would be changes that reduce the contribution of travel to climate change. Also very beneficial would be changes that ease the frustrating consequences of dense road traffic and peak-period use of public transport. The need to travel is reduced if we continue to do more domestically and are more flexible in the timing of trips beyond the home. The shock of the pandemic has shown us that there are alternatives to previous travel patterns, and indeed to travel itself. The question is whether the alternatives are superior, so that we do not revert to past behaviour. Will we see breaks in past trends of travel-demand growth?

The World War II poster in figure 0.1 was intended to discourage rail journeys by the general public at a time when the rail network was under great pressure. It was coping with bomb damage, with constraints on coal supplies, and with high demand to move troops, both as formations to new locations and as individuals travelling on leave. The same question was asked by Network Rail at the height of the pandemic, prior to Easter 2020: Is your journey necessary? Please only travel if it is essential. This question, asked at times of temporary stress on the transport system, needs to also be posed in relation to our present and continuing concerns about sustainability, and particularly the contribution of the transport system to climate change.