INTRODUCTION

Link to Figure 1    Journeys by Transport Mode

       “Personal mobility is much valued in the late 20th Century”(Hibbs, 1993,p.12).¹

Critically examining this statement, it would be more correct to say the freedom of access provided by personal mobility was much valued in the late 20th century (and will probably continue to be).

Observation gives the impression that the private car is the dominant mode of personal mobility, but that it creates problems including, severance, pollution, accidents and congestion, which limit its efficiency. Most payments for its use are up-front with much lower point of use costs.

I live a few yards from the major Folkestone to Honiton A27 trunk road, which bypasses the nearby town of Arundel. This suffers severe congestion from visitors at weekends, during holidays and at commuter peaks. Local opinion is divided between building more roads, or attracting more people to walking, cycling and public transport. Public Transport provides personal mobility but rarely goes door to door, usually involves reliance on a timetable and requires payment of what appears to be a high price at point of use.

The State has traditionally provided roads, but do road users pay their full costs? Most public transport was privatised in the late 20th century with subsidies being reduced. If all transport costs were transparent, road users paying at point of use, would that attract more people to more use of walking, cycling and public transport, or even accessing their needs with less transport?

The growth of car use far exceeds any loss of public transport patronage and all the evidence suggests the majority of car use growth has come from the non-motorised modes of cycling and, especially, walking.

Commentators and politicians suggest that if public transport were improved, road congestion would reduce. However, one look at figure 1 will indicate that the amount of public transport infrastructure needed to be built to incorporate the massive difference between private road and public transport is just not practical. Doubling train journeys would be a massive investment but the impact on road journeys would be so negligible that no one would notice. However, if the number of journeys walked were doubled the number of car journeys would be reduced by approximately one third.

Graph compiled using figures calculated from various tables of ”Transport Statistics Great Britain 1999”

Note until recently most statistic compilers have ignored walking as a mode of transport and journeys less than one mile long were also ignored. Therefore the above graph has taken into account that virtually all the generated car journeys were to access needs that previously were accessed with a journey less than one mile in length usually on foot.