The nature of transport - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 2

Understanding what transport represents at a particular place and time for all the
different users and non-users is thus much more complex than might first appear.
But for planning purposes making sense of a situation in 'snapshot' mode alone is not
enough. Planning is essentially concerned with change - anticipating it and seeking to
influence it. So recognising where current conditions 'sit' in a trajectory of change -
and identifying the factors which determine this trajectory - are critical.
Transport improvements - particularly individuals' acquisition of a private car -
can themselves be an important impetus to people changing their travel behaviour.
So the link between travel and transport provision is not merely in that one direction.
The two interact.
The social and economic forces promoting change or acting as a brake on it are deep-
seated and relatively slow-moving. To understand the source of present conditions and
to identify the main drivers and constraints on change we have to review trends over
a long period. In this first part of the topic we set out to portray the current nature of
transport and travel in Great Britain in the context of changes which have taken place
over the last half century.
Although fifty years seems like a convenient round number the mid-1950s is not an
arbitrary starting date. It marks the time when the country began to resume normality
after the Second World War. 1953 was the year when the use of public transport
reached its peak. Travel by car exceeded travel by public transport for the first time in
1959. Freight haulage by road overtook the volume carried by rail in 1955.
The 1950s thus mark the beginning of the modern transport era characterised by
the dominance of the motor vehicle. It was in the 1950s that the ownership of private
cars began to change quite rapidly from a luxury affordable only by the well-off to
the commonplace household item it is today. The transformation to a fully motorised
society represents the seismic shift whose consequences we are still grappling with. It
is a transformation which is still far from complete - we are little more than halfway to
a notional scenario in which every adult has their own private car.
In reviewing trends we look first at the relationship between transport and
economic development (Chapter 1) and then at changes in population, land use
and travel behaviour which are to a large extent linked to the underlying economic
changes (Chapter 2). Their combined effect will then be presented in terms of the
trends in traffic growth and its various impacts (Chapter 3). Increasingly it is public
attitudes towards these impacts as much as the demands for transport itself which
are conditioning transport policy and hence a commentary on attitudinal trends is
included as well.
Unless stated otherwise all the figures quoted come from the annual compendium
of Transport Statistics for Great Britain (TSGB) - with most information presented
for England, Scotland and Wales together or the associated commentary on
Transport Trends prepared by the Government Statistical Service. Fuller information
on personal travel is derived from the National Travel Survey (NTS), itself now
reported on annually. These can be accessed via the DfT website (www.dft.gov.uk/
statistics) whilst the full extent of official statistics can be accessed at www.statistics.
gov.uk. For non-transport data, use is made of the compendium published as Social
Trends.
Many of the indicators which we now regard as important for transport planning
were not surveyed in the past. In particular, information on travel (i.e. people) as
distinct from transport (vehicles) only began to be collected in 1965 and at intervals
thereafter. The recording of certain types of impact and public attitudes to them is