Transport and economic development - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 7

Today, in relation to London particularly, 'suburbanisation' amongst wealthier groups
takes the form of weekly commuting to second homes in the country or by the sea,
sometimes outside Britain altogether.
Transport improvements also provided operators with the opportunity to market
leisure experiences to appeal to the growing time and money available to city dwellers.
These included the seaside resorts promoted by the Victorian railway companies, the
outings into the countryside by charabanc (motor coach) during the inter-war period,
and the overseas package holidays by charter air firms later in the 20th century. As
the private car came to dominate domestic travel so the marketing initiative shifted to
today's sports, entertainment and heritage sites, even humble garden centres, to woo
the mobile family into literally 'spending' their leisure time.
The significance of economic growth for personal travel is greater than the
performance of the national economy alone would suggest because transport has
the characteristics of a 'superior good', i.e. people consume proportionally more of
it as they become more affluent. In the thirty years to 1998 the share of average UK
household expenditure on transport increased from 13% to 17%, mostly because of
the spread of two-car ownership. In absolute terms, expressed in 1998/99 prices, this
represented an increase from £32 to £55 a week (Aldous 2000).
Service industries have responded to this greater personal mobility by restructuring
their operations into fewer outlets offering a greater range of goods or services at
lower cost. This is most evident in the restructuring of retailing (from small 'high
street' shops into supermarkets, DIY warehouses and the like) but also in a range of
public services such as doctors' surgeries, general hospitals, schools, libraries and post
offices. A consequence of this is an increase in the average length of journeys, with the
additional monetary costs accounting for part of the increased household expenditure
on transport.
In effect some of the higher costs of production or distribution previously associated
with services organised in smaller, more dispersed units have been transferred to the
transport costs of the consumer. Whilst this is normally seen as economically beneficial
in aggregate it does prompt questions about ancillary impacts (e.g. on safety, the
environment and fuel consumption) which the additional transport has created. It also
masks large shifts in the relative accessibility, and hence welfare, of different groups
within the population depending on where they happen to live and whether or not
they have use of a car.
Viewed in terms of both economic organisation and personal lifestyles the scope for
growth in travel through further exploitation of the opportunities presented by greater
mobility seems almost infinite. Certainly throughout most of the second half of the
20th century there was an almost direct relationship between growth in the national
economy and the increase in freight movement and personal travel (Figure 1.1).
It is important to emphasise that the growth in transport derives not so much from
an increase in the volume of goods being carried or the number of journeys being made
but in the average length of haul or journey. This reflects the spatial restructuring of
both business operations and personal lives which greater mobility makes possible.
Over the last thirty years the average length of personal journeys has increased by a
third, and the average freight haul by more than two-fifths (Table 1.1).
However this growth in length does not derive from uniform increases in the
average distance of all journeys. For person journeys there has been a marked decrease
in short journeys (under 1 mile) linked with a decline in walking as a mode. Meanwhile
there has been a 'surge' in the proportion of journeys in the 5-10 and 10-25 mile