Coffee in the Square

Bigness

Old Oak Common - a big hole in London's infrastructure

Hats off to Terry Farrell for challenging some of the perceived truths about travel and communications and for questioning Foster's Thames island airport proposal.

In an article in Planning in London he argues that big ideas, like the new airport, are expensive and take a long while to come on-stream, while smaller projects can solve the problem in the short term, without compromising the big idea.  He calls it incremental planning and I'm sure he's got a point.

He's also to be applauded for putting forward a very neat solution for increasing access to Heathrow by linking the check-ins to a new High Speed 1 and 2 interchange at Old Oak Common.   When I was doing a masterplan for Swindon more than ten years ago we were told that there would soon be check-ins at Hayes to link Heathrow directly to the West Country Lines and to the Reading-Swindon Silicon Vale.  That never happened.  Though it was a condition of the construction of Terminal 5 to reduce car access to the airport I see no signs that this has worked.

But I think both Farrell and Foster are missing something in their future gazing.  The premise of both schemes is that air travel will continue to grow.  This assumption should be questioned.

I was advising the Gatwick Diamond Development team the other day.  They almost fell off their chairs when I asked the question, "What if air travel decreases in the future?"  But it's a question we should be asking. 

Air travel is one of the most carbon extravagant things we can do.  Just one trip to the USA every year will cancel out any benefit you gain from living in a state of the art eco-house (1). As carbon taxes kick-in then air travel will be hit more than most.  As governments expand the high speed rail system around the UK and Europe, more and more people will (I hope) decide to go by train.  That option just isn't here at the moment.  It could well be that internal flights become prohibitively expensive.  And I'm never convinced that a jerky flight between close locations isn't the mugs way of travelling anyway.  Show me a comfy carriage and a view of the countryside any day and I'll show you a place where I can work, send emails and relax! 

The assumptions are that everything will always get bigger.  This is the sub-text of Terry Farrell's article.  But I just don't think that an unfetteredincrease in air travel is either desireable or inevitable.  If you work on policies to reduce air travel to the minimum and increase travel by other means (good old modal shift), then the projects that government needs to support would be quite different. 

All that money could be spent on a series of smaller interventions, including the Old Oak Common interchange, and would mean spreading the benefitsto a wider public.  Even though Mayor Boris Johnson supports the airport scheme, his opponent, Ken Livingstone does not.  With mayoral elections coming up this spring, we may find that Farrells solutions will curry favour with a new administration.

The clincher for me is that it's easier to get twenty smaller schemes on the go than one big one.  Given the history of developing airports in this country, anyone who puts all their regeneration eggs into an airport basket is in my view - just that - a basket case!

I think we can be pretty sure that world populations will continue to rise.  The need for travel and communications will also rise, but whether that has to be linked to air travel is not definite.  For starters lets try to encourage people not to take internal flights, but to travel by train instead.

1. BioRegional assessments of occupants in BedZed found that those who travelled by air cancelled out the benefits of the housing.

Communter Trains Fares in the UK - The Most Expensive in Europe

Pity the poor commuters who's train fares will rise tomorrow by an average of 5.9%.  And remember this is just an average and just for this year.  The government has announced that fares will go up by RPI+3% next year and again RPI+3% in 2014 as well. If RPI is 3% for the next two years then that would mean a staggering 16% cost rise over three years. 

This year the government has changed the rules.Some commuters, like those unfortunates who travel from Chester to Crew, will have to suffer an increase of 10.6% this year and heaven knows what that increase will be next year.

The rational is that government and the Association of Train Operating Companies both want to increase investment in our ailing railway system.  We'd all agree with that.  But government has decided to fund a few, very high costs schemes like Crossrail, Thameslink and the new High Speed Link.  So the man who lives in Chester and works in Crew seems to be unfairly subsidising large and important schemes down south, rather that see his own train services improve.

This is a difficult connundrum for the government who can not be blamed for the mistakes of the past.  All recent governments have failed to invest sufficiently in our rail system.  The myth that private enterprise will do it is long dead - stopped in its tracks ('scuse the pun) - by the recession.

There is something we can do.  The Campaign for Better Transport is hoping that tomorrow commuters will text, tweet or email the treasury to tell them how much their own fares have increased and say what that means to them personally.  Check out the website FARE FARES NOW.

I think one of the problems the government have is that they are obsessed with speed, rather than regularity of service.  Of course we don't want slow trains, but so often the cuts in any form of public transport lead to fewer services across a shorter working day.  But the trend is for people to work more flexible hours.  Commuter fares do encourage people to travel outside peak hours, but they do nothing to encourage other low carbon initiatives like tele-working once a week, for example.  Also some enlightened employers consider train travel time to be work time.  You can tap away on your lap-top as well on an Intercity train, as you can at your desk. Train travel should be recognised as part of the working day in the way that driving a car can not be.

The national need is not to shave a few minutes off any one particular train journey but to reduce traffic on the roads during peak hours and to reduce carbon emissions.  Policies don't take that into consideration at the moment. For example it's cheaper to fly from London to Manchester or Scotland than take the train.  That's just plain stupid! 

Please don't stop using trains, but perhaps just get a bit better at finding the cheapest fare. 

Here are my top ten tips for cheap train travel:

1. Become a student - a student card gives a third off even at peak times!  (And London students get cheaper Oyster travel as well.)
2. National rail enquiries on the web now has a cheapest fare icon - which is worth checking out.
3. Book ahead.  Use ticket bucket shops like megatrain.com (though you do sometimes find that the journey is by coach!)  Train tickets booked well in advance on the slower trains cost as little as £1.
4. Take the coach instead of the train.  The Oxford Tube is a very comfortable and often speedier way of getting between London and the Centre of Oxford.
5. Take the slower train or a different route - for example the walk on fare is £19.90 to take an afternoon train via London Midland Railways from London Marylebone to Birmingham but Virgin passengers at Euston can pay £79.00 standard single fare.  The time difference is about half an hour. 
6. Stay at home.  Consider Scype'ing your colleague or holding a teleconference (many websites for this)
7. Take a heritage steam line.  It might not be cheaper or quicker but it can be fun.
8. Go to the train company website and get on their marketing list so that you get to hear about special deals.  (These do not get recorded by National Rail Enquiries)
9. When on holiday consider rover tickets which can provide very good savings if you are taking a number of journeys.
10. Take a friend and/or a family along with you.  Many train companies offer family fares, especially at weekends, and you don't actually have to be related!

As always on matters of trains, my friend Mark Smith has an excellent cheap fares advice page on his wonderful website The Man at Seat 61