Will We See The Death Of Cars – As An On Tap Convenience?
Friday, 3. August 2018
Traffic on UK roads is at an all-time high according to the latest statistics from the Department for Transport (DfT). Car traffic reached 254.4 billion miles in 2017 with overall traffic up by 1.3% on the previous year to 327.1 billion miles.
Van traffic increased to its highest level also, up 2.7% to 50.5 billion miles. Cycle traffic showed the biggest increase in percentage terms, up 3.1% to 3.3 billion miles. Bus and coach traffic dropped by 3.4% from 2.5 billion to 2.4 billion miles.
Finally, motorcycle traffic remained pretty much the same. So what does this tell us? Best to ask a few experts, some of whom apparently hold the view that traffic patterns will be changing as people change from car ownership to car usage. I agree with the switch away from car ownership but rather than a mix and match between using a car, train, bus, plane, autonomous vehicle, cycle, walking etc I see the move from owned cars to leased or rented cars with the exclusive use of the driver.
I can’t envisage a time when the vast majority of the population would be happy to plan every trip rather than walk out in their onesy and slippers, jump into their car, drive to Tesco Express and buy an emergency pint of milk, loaf of bread and bar of chocolate rather than wait for a bus either way or order an Uber.
Having said that, I have friends in London who have never owned a car so what do I know. Better turn to those in the know. According to the SMMT new vehicle sales dropped to 2.5 million in 2017 down for the first time in 6 years. They are predicting a further drop this year of 5.1% to 2.4 million new vehicles.
Christoph Domke of KPMG predicted that if this trend continues we will also see a decline in manufacturers. We have 27 at the moment but he suggests that within 10 years this could decline to just 10. An interesting statistic was the rise in access to a car in each household. In 1951 it was as low as 15% but in 2016 that had jumped to 77%.
However, dig a little deeper and it can be seen that families in the lowest income level fare much worse with just 44% of households having access to a car. This has led to confusion. Lowest income families may actually be leading the way to Mobility as a Service (MaaS) the latest buzz expression. Behind the expression is the mix and match of cars, trains, taxis, car shares, autonomous cars etc.
But lower-income families use public transport more because of necessity rather than a planned structured approach to mobility. So will we ever see the day when the majority, if not all, vehicles on the road are driverless and driven by electricity? Motorbikes create a challenge I think, not only to become driverless but also to be spotted and avoided by driverless cars. I mean some motorbikes are capable of 180 miles per hour – that is bloody fast.
On the other hand specialist company MaaS Global launched its app called ‘Whim’ in the West Midlands in April 2018. It offers multi-modal transport alternatives to car ownership. Within the first month there were 3,000 downloads of the app which combines access and payment for various types of transport including public transport, car hire and taxis.
The general consensus was that this could work well in larger towns and cities but it wouldn’t be so attractive in rural areas where public and even private transport links are nowhere near good enough for such a scheme to work. Time will tell! By Graham Hill
