Why can't we get anywhere?

part of
In the latest feature from our ‘At What Cost’ series, we look at how a lack of transport infrastructure and investment is condemning millions to a life of inequality and hardship.

The UK’s trans­port sys­tem is bro­ken. Step out­side of any major city and you will see that pub­lic trans­port ser­vices are on their knees, with local bus routes con­tin­u­ous­ly axed and train tick­ets being the most expen­sive in Europe. Those who are able to afford trains often find them over­crowd­ed and delayed. All the while, trans­port work­ers are being squeezed by their employ­ers for prof­it.

Unless you have access to a car – which is quite expen­sive at the moment – peo­ple are forced to stay in their lit­tle box­es, and it nat­u­ral­ly pre­vents fur­ther min­gling or being able to vis­it oth­er areas,” says Nikkie, a 30-year-old from Peter­bor­ough. She has wit­nessed first-hand how those who rely on pub­lic trans­port to go to work, school, or see their friends are find­ing that their lives are shrinking. 

There’s one cin­e­ma in Peter­bor­ough that’s a bit out of the way and in order to get there. If you don’t have a car, you either have to get two bus lines and walk 10 min­utes through an estate with an under­pass which can be fright­en­ing when it’s dark, or walk near­ly half an hour from town to the cin­e­ma,” she says, explain­ing how every­day trips like this become unnec­es­sar­i­ly dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly at night as a woman for those forced to rely on pub­lic trans­porta­tion. It def­i­nite­ly lim­its the abil­i­ty to go and do things and have a social life unless you have friends or fam­i­ly who can chauf­feur you.

Though Nikkie lives in Not­ting­ham now, she has spent much of her life deal­ing with Peterborough’s ter­ri­ble trans­port sys­tem. The Cam­bridgeshire dis­trict was recent­ly in the news because a moth­er was reduced to walk­ing along an A‑road with her baby to get to a doctor’s appoint­ment. The only bus that served her vil­lage was cut in 2019 because the com­pa­ny was suf­fer­ing heavy oper­at­ing loss­es”. Just last month, anoth­er bus ser­vice described as a life­line” was cut between the town of March and Peter­bor­ough. Once again, rur­al com­mu­ni­ties are being denied the basic right to access vital ser­vices”, said local coun­cil­lor Katie Howard, when respond­ing to the dev­as­tat­ing news. Local bus­es are being cut every­where, with almost one-in-10 local bus ser­vices axed in the UK over the last year, despite gov­ern­ment promis­es to lev­el up” the country’s vast eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ties. From 2010 to 2019, there has been a steady decrease in miles trav­elled by local bus.

Research shows that the lack of reli­able and afford­able trans­port deep­ens social inequal­i­ty in the UK. Accord­ing to the government’s own State of the Nation’ report, the country’s social mobil­i­ty coldspots are con­cen­trat­ed in remote rur­al or coastal areas and in for­mer indus­tri­al areas – espe­cial­ly in the Mid­lands – where poor con­nec­tiv­i­ty by trans­port restricts oppor­tu­ni­ties for both edu­ca­tion and work. Only 13 per cent of dis­ad­van­taged young peo­ple in for­mer indus­tri­al areas and 14 per cent in remote rur­al coldspots progress to uni­ver­si­ty com­pared with 27 per cent in UK’s hotspots. In rur­al and coastal areas, poor trans­port links mean that people’s com­mutes can end up tak­ing up to four times longer than those in urban areas. Peo­ple from eth­nic minori­ties, young peo­ple not in edu­ca­tion, employ­ment or train­ing, stu­dents, old­er peo­ple and women are all report­ed to be par­tic­u­lar­ly at risk of trans­port pover­ty. All of these issues com­bined result in a decreased qual­i­ty of life and well­be­ing, con­tribut­ing to wider social exclusion.

Nowa­days, when Nikkie comes to Peter­bor­ough to vis­it her fam­i­ly, she is imme­di­ate­ly remind­ed that local pub­lic trans­port doesn’t cater to her health needs. I have fibromyal­gia, so it’s been my expe­ri­ence at times that it’s been a strug­gle with a suit­case and nobody is able to pick me up. The train sta­tion doesn’t have an bus stop either so you either need to walk 10 min­utes to the near­est bus stop or order an old-fash­ioned cash-only taxi service.”

Rur­al res­i­dents are being aban­doned by the gov­ern­ment,” Rosa Kell, a dis­abled pen­sion­er from Wells in Som­er­set told The Guardian when her local bus ser­vice was axed because it was not com­mer­cial­ly viable”. She would get the bus to West­on-super-Mare to go shop­ping, meet friends or vis­it the den­tist. We’ll have no access to jobs, col­leges, larg­er shops, GPs, or a social life. There is much talk of lev­el­ling up’, but where is the lev­el when we have nothing?”

It’s ter­ri­ble in loads of dif­fer­ent ways,” says Mary-Beth, a 27-year-old Orches­tra Man­ag­er from Clowne, a small town out­side of Chester­field in Der­byshire. She now lives in Bris­tol, but recalls how a com­bi­na­tion of unre­li­able pub­lic trans­port and finan­cial con­straints man­i­fest­ed in stress and hours wast­ed wait­ing for bus­es in her teenage years. On cer­tain days it felt like [wait­ing for a bus] would con­sume my entire life because I was so reliant on it turn­ing up.” It wasn’t cheap either. A sin­gle tick­et would cost Mary-Beth around £5 to go into the town centre. 

Every­one would learn to dri­ve as soon as pos­si­ble and everyone’s par­ents seemed to get them lit­tle red Cor­sas. I was always real­ly envi­ous because my fam­i­ly couldn’t afford to buy me a car, which was total­ly fine, but I took two bus­es into school and back every day.” One morn­ing, when she was due to be tak­ing an impor­tant A‑level exam, the bus just didn’t turn up and her dad had already left for work. When you’re 18 it feels like one exam is going to define your life and you’re wait­ing for a bus that didn’t come”. 

Luck­i­ly Mary-Beth was able to get a last-minute lift from a teacher. It’s a per­fect exam­ple of how poor pub­lic trans­port ser­vices are let­ting young peo­ple – who have greater depen­dence on it than most old­er age groups – down across the coun­try. Young peo­ple in rur­al areas are espe­cial­ly affect­ed as their aver­age jour­ney to school is near­ly twice as long com­pared to those liv­ing in cities.

Cur­rent­ly, local trans­port invest­ment in the UK favours road build­ing with dri­ving being the most com­mon mode of trans­port in the UK. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in rur­al areas, where 90 per cent of trav­el is made using a car, com­pared with 72 per cent in the most urban areas. Despite this, young peo­ple are dri­ving less than they used to – in part due to the decline in dis­pos­able income (more than a fifth in the past year due to high ris­ing rent and util­i­ty bills as well as gro­cery prices) and high insur­ance costs for begin­ner dri­vers (the price of car insur­ance shot up 50.9% in the last 12 months).

The reliance on cars doesn’t just have a finan­cial impact. Trans­port and city plan­ning affect peo­ple’s health too. In areas with high­er traf­fic, indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­ence stress and sleep dis­tur­bance as well as an increased risk in devel­op­ing heart dis­ease or dia­betes. Peo­ple liv­ing in rur­al vil­lages, ham­lets and iso­lat­ed dwellings take the low­est num­ber of walks when com­pared to those liv­ing in urban city and town areas, adding to the health dan­gers of seden­tary lifestyles.

On a rapid­ly heat­ing plan­et, where trans­porta­tion accounts for one-fifth of glob­al emis­sions and pri­vate cars account for 45.1 per cent of all trans­porta­tion emis­sions – mov­ing away from heavy car reliance and cre­at­ing live­able and sus­tain­able cities would not only sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce our emis­sions, but also improve health out­comes, increase com­mu­ni­ty cohe­sion, and boost eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty on dying high streets. Data backs this up – in 2020 those liv­ing in rur­al areas trav­elled more miles for all pur­pos­es than those in urban areas.

These prob­lems and solu­tions have long been recog­nised, with then Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son out­lin­ing the need for bet­ter ser­vices in the evenings and week­ends, to reflect people’s 24-hour lives and to pro­vide safe, reli­able trans­port” when intro­duc­ing the Bus Back Bet­ter’ pol­i­cy in 2021. In the fore­word, John­son insist­ed on build[ing] back green­er, min­imis­ing pol­lu­tion and tack­ling the con­ges­tion that clogs up our towns and cities.”

Just two years lat­er Johnson’s words seem to have been all but for­got­ten. Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak, who served as Johnson’s chan­cel­lor proud­ly stat­ed in a recent inter­view with The Tele­graph that, The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in the coun­try use their cars to get around and are depen­dent on their cars,” adding, I just want to make sure peo­ple know that I’m on their side in sup­port­ing them to use their cars to do all the things that mat­ter to them.” The Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty is cur­rent­ly wag­ing war on traf­fic calm­ing mea­sures and clean air zones, along­side green poli­cies in gen­er­al, in its attempt to grip onto power. 

So why is the sit­u­a­tion with pub­lic trans­port so unique­ly dire in most parts of the UK and why have so many peo­ple become car-depen­dent as a result? The answer lies in the pri­vati­sa­tion of bus­es and trains. We’ve been left at the mer­cy of pri­vate oper­a­tors who set fares, routes, timeta­bles and stan­dards with lit­tle pub­lic over­sight,” says Hirra Khan, co-direc­tor of cli­mate char­i­ty Pos­si­ble. She explains that in their pur­suit of prof­it, thou­sands of bus routes have been cut, fares have increased and mass tran­sit has been chron­i­cal­ly under­fund­ed. This leaves com­mu­ni­ties with lit­tle choice but to rely on slow, unre­li­able pub­lic trans­port options, or to con­tin­ue to pump out emis­sions by dri­ving a petrol car.” 

In the vil­lage where I’m from there’s one bus a week and it leaves at a very strange time – at about 2 in the after­noon on a Wednes­day,” says Fer­gus, from Ched­ding­ton, a tiny vil­lage in West Dorset. Oth­er­wise, you have to use a request ser­vice. There’s a num­ber you can call up with­in a day’s notice and ask for the bus to stop in your vil­lage. There’s absolute­ly no oth­er way you’re ever going to get out. It ends up being very claus­tro­pho­bic and iso­lat­ing when you can’t dri­ve.” The 28-year-old pro­duc­er, who lives in Lon­don now, says the dif­fer­ence between Trans­port for London’s (TfL) ser­vices and the trans­port back home is night and day. I just can’t believe how far behind we still are in rur­al areas.” 

When it comes to inter­ci­ty trav­el, Fer­gus also feels frus­trat­ed that there is only one train he can get into Lon­don, which can end up cost­ing him between £50 and £60 with a rail­card dis­count. It’s dif­fi­cult and slow.” 

Any­one who has used a train ser­vice in the last year will know that inter­ci­ty trav­el in the UK can be appalling more often than not. In York­shire, for exam­ple, it takes 20 min­utes to get from Leeds to Brad­ford — two cities that are eight miles apart. It was quick­er to get between the two when steam engines were run­ning over a hun­dred years ago.

The dis­par­i­ty in trans­port sys­tems is geo­graph­i­cal too. In 2017, the capital’s trans­port spend­ing was over three times greater per head than that of the East Mid­lands, the South West or North East. Many rur­al regions of the coun­try are so bad­ly con­nect­ed that it’s much faster and often cheap­er (for those who can afford it) to dri­ve instead. Those on low­er incomes and who can’t afford to dri­ve, spend 12% of their dis­pos­able income on trans­port. Some pock­ets of Eng­land, like the worst per­form­ing West Som­er­set, are so under­served by ser­vices that it can take an aver­age 1 hour 46 min­utes to trav­el to work on pub­lic transport. 

In recent years, strong devolved may­oral areas like Greater Man­ches­ter, North of Tyne and Liv­er­pool City Region have made great strides in invest­ing bil­lions of pounds in local trans­port ser­vices. Yet many rur­al, coastal and oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly indus­tri­al areas of the coun­try cur­rent­ly do not have the same polit­i­cal pow­er to do the same.

Khan from Pos­si­ble sug­gests a mul­ti-pronged approach: set traf­fic reduc­tion tar­gets, put in a nation­al pay-per-mile charg­ing scheme – this tax has to be pro­gres­sive, not regres­sive, mean­ing those that earn the most, dri­ve the most, and oper­ate the most pol­lut­ing cars should be the ones hit hard­est with the charge”, she caveats – and invest the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from this scheme into pub­lic trans­port infra­struc­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly bus­es and cycling. We should also stop pour­ing mon­ey into build­ing roads, as those bil­lions of pounds could be bet­ter served being spent on pub­lic trans­port instead of fur­ther incen­tivis­ing pri­vate car usage.”

In the longer term, nation­al­i­sa­tion or more pub­lic con­trol over trans­port would mean that ser­vices would be answer­able to those who use them. Giv­ing the pub­lic con­trol of pub­lic trans­port can ensure bus­es are oper­at­ed in the public’s best inter­est. This means more con­trol over fares, routes, and fre­quen­cy of ser­vices, and prof­its from busy routes can be used to sub­sidise qui­eter ones,” Khan expands. She also insists that local author­i­ties be giv­en the pow­er to make deci­sions on behalf of their communities.

The answer is as clear as day. Not only is fix­ing Britain’s pub­lic trans­port sys­tem pos­si­ble, but it would immea­sur­ably improve most people’s lives – giv­ing us a cheap, cli­mate-friend­ly solu­tion to trav­el that opens hori­zons, allow­ing us to live in healthy, sus­tain­able and func­tion­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Social inequal­i­ties would be addressed too, espe­cial­ly as mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties and peo­ple from deprived areas are more like­ly to live in high-traf­fic areas, inhal­ing tox­ic air pol­lu­tion and becom­ing casu­al­ties of crash­es. A bet­ter world is pos­si­ble, not build­ing one is a polit­i­cal choice. 

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