Transport has to change.
Transport is the sector which is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and, as if this was not reason enough, transport is central to the way every one of us participates in economic, social, educational and political life so we cannot being to erode the inequalities that prevent everyone from flourishing without providing better transport options.
We have some clear targets to measure our progress against: Net Zero carbon emissions is matched by Zero Harm for safety…for transport is still far too dangerous. (Every day about 5 people are killed on our roads and many more injured, often seriously.)
There is a fair amount of agreement on what will be necessary to reach these targets. To approach the answer from the negative we can see that we will not decarbonise, improve safety and erode transport inequities simply by replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors in private cars. To make better, fairer, cleaner use of our roads we will need to increase the average number of people in each vehicle. In the UK we call this public transport (although I think, for once, the American phrase is better here: Mass Transit is more accurate and less freighted with assumptions (particular class associations)). Outside the London commuting belt, and long-distance leisure, mass transit means buses.
There are many challenges to increasing bus use: buses are not always frequent enough, routes and vehicles are not always well adapted to the uses people want to make of them and cost, frequency and reliability are the most common reasons people will give for preferring alternative ways of making their journey. The thing that should never be a barrier to the increased use of buses, however, is safety.
Before the pandemic TRL produced a set of bus safety standards for Transport for London that cover a dozen sets of recommendations to make buses safer for passengers, drivers, other road users and pedestrians. As well as a set of recommendations, domain by domain, there is a roadmap which helps each stakeholder to understand what they need to do as part of the overall plan to ensure that no-one is hurt by, or in a bus. Of course achieving that objectives requires bus manufacturers, operators and local authorities to change but those changes are well underway and what works for TfL can work for other authorities.
A better world will have more and better buses in it. We should be able to take it for granted that better buses will be safer buses. Given how tricky it is to remove some of the other barriers to increased bus use it is reassuring that on this point, at least, we’ve got a realistic plan that is well on the way to being executed.
Paul Campion, Chief Executive Officer of TRL