Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Orbital journeys between the main suburban centres (formerly separate towns)
within Greater London and the other conurbations are a distinctive sub-set within this
general category. As with the main inter-urban motorways the M25 around London
and the equivalent orbital routes in the West Midlands and Greater Manchester have
been built without any attempt to incorporate provision for public transport.
In the areas beyond the conurbations some of the inter-town links are catered for
well by rail services which, in the main, radiate from London and from other regional
and sub-regional centres. But many others either lost their rail services in the Beeching
era or - more likely - were never rail connected. The pattern of bus services linking
these towns typically reflects the era when each of them functioned as discrete markets
for employment and other services. Although individual routes may run from town A
to town B they have traditionally operated primarily to connect rural settlements in
between with their respective 'market towns'.
Since the 1960s public authorities have intervened financially to support rural bus
services, with enhancements funded by the Rural Service Bus Grant at the end of the
1990s. But the focus of public concern, and particularly of local elected members, has
been with protecting accessibility and countering social exclusion within the smaller
settlements. As a result services are often slow and meandering and their use for 'end
to end' journeys is inevitably confined to people without the option of car use.
Over the last decade some commercial operators have recognised the opportunities
which exist to make more attractive provision for the inter-town market, and major
changes have been made in particular cases, e.g. to serve airports, out-of-town retail
centres, hospitals and the like where there are concentrations of demand. But the
traditional pattern is still strongly in evidence and even where inter-town improvements
have been made, services are still relatively infrequent as operators are working from a
very low patronage base. Planned interchanges with the rail network are rare and there
is no comprehensive marketing of these services as a distinctive product.
This pattern has to be set in the context of substantial population growth in
the Outer South-East in particular and of the transition in functional terms from
'freestanding towns' to urbanised sub-regions. Planning restrictions in these areas
coupled with the workings of employment and housing markets typically results, in
substantial 'enforced' commuting and other trip-making between separate towns for
which there is no reasonable alternative for would-be car users. This is most strongly
evident in the major growth areas of Milton Keynes/South Midlands and the Thames
Gateway - areas which are ostensibly being developed as 'sustainable communities'!
Although local authorities are now empowered to pay for enhancements to
commercial bus services the intervention required to bring service levels 'within
scope' for people with the option of car use is completely beyond their means, even
if they were minded to do so. In any case to make serious inroads into the present
pattern of car-dominated behaviour would require a comprehensive strategy involving
a network of services across local authority boundaries, with funding support and
extensive marketing, plus complementary investment in passenger facilities and high
quality vehicles. The institutional inability to fund such a strategy contrasts starkly
with the hundreds of millions of pounds spent by the Government on supporting local
rail services which - albeit patchily - deliver a similar function.
Given an overall policy context which, nominally at least, is founded on the
principle of offering sustainable travel choices, the need to remedy this deficiency is
glaring. Not doing so - and hence not being able to tackle car dependence in the areas
referred to - is also extremely risky over the longer term as we are literally building
Search WWH ::




Custom Search