Clean Transport 101: Replace

Last time, we discussed how to Reduce overall travel demand. This time, let's talk about how we can Replace unsustainable trips with more sustainable ones. 

People often assume transport is demand-led, but it's actually supply-led. That is, people think Australia is a nation of drivers, and this requires our governments to prioritise private cars over everything else when allocating space or funding to different transport modes; the truth is, Australia is a nation of drivers as a consequence of our governments prioritising private cars over everything else. 

We obviously do have a small number of car enthusiasts, but most Australians just want to get where they're going in a way that's fast, convenient, comfortable and safe. As long as the car is the only mode that ticks those boxes, people will keep driving; when other modes do, they'll use them. 

There is huge latent demand for cycling in Victoria (via Lauren Pearson)

Evidence from a recent study of demand for cycling in Greater Melbourne and 6 large regional LGAs indicates that 2.8% of Melburnians were "Strong and fearless", completely happy to ride among traffic anywhere; 3.2% were "Enthused and confident" - already riding, but perhaps not often and certainly not everywhere; 15.7% were the "No way, no how" group who would never cycle under any circumstances; and a whopping 78.2% were in the "Interested but concerned" crowd - those who would be keen to cycle but are put off by the hostile environment our roads mostly provide for cyclists. This isn't just inner-city latte-sipping lefties, either - across every LGA in Melbourne, and in regional Ballarat, a minimum of 65% of respondents fell into this category. 

We may never convert the "No way, no how" group, but we don't need to; if we can get two thirds of Victorians out of their cars and onto their bikes for a decent chunk of their travel, that will absolutely decimate our emissions (and traffic congestion) in no time flat. To do that, we need to make riding your bike safe and convenient, absolutely everywhere. 

Reguliersbreestraat, Amsterdam in 1980 (via Nationaal Archief) and 2019

Melbourne's not Amsterdam, and neither's Ballarat - but always remember that Amsterdam wasn't always Amsterdam, and half the cycle lanes in the Netherlands have been built since 1996. In the 1970s it was as clogged with cars and hostile to cyclists as any big western city. There were plans to fill in its famous canals to turn them into arterial roads - plans that went ahead in other Dutch cities like Utrecht (but were undone in 2020). And when Dutch politicians announced that they'd be shifting the focus away from cars and towards people, not everyone was happy - there was exactly the kind of resistance you'd expect here, even death threats. Even after 30 years of progressively prioritising bikes and pedestrians over cars, a proposal to turn Delft's market square from a car park back to an actual market in 2003 caused huge controversy from businesspeople who thought their businesses relied on parking spaces. 

But in all of these cases, they did it, it worked, and people ended up very happy with the result. The No Way No Hows always get stroppy, but the politicians who push through get results - and get re-elected. 

From 2005-06 to 2010-11, V/Line patronage doubled (via V/Line) 

The same goes for public transport. The Regional Fast Rail project started wrapping up in 2005-06, and within five years, V/Line patronage doubled. The only line not part of RFR - the Seymour line - only rose by 26% in that time. Since 2011, patronage has continued to grow, reflecting both the initial RFR investment and subsequent investment in things like Regional Rail Link. 

And when we make these improvements, the value for money is incredibly good. The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in that network, so if you double the number of buses (or computers connected to the Internet, or whatever) you quadruple the usefulness of the network. 

The road network accessible by cars is incredibly comprehensive, so of course it's extremely useful to get around. By contrast, the public transport is much less comprehensive - bits of it are good, but it's not consistently good all the way across Melbourne (and certainly not across regional Victoria), mainly because crummy buses leave whole suburbs without a decent PT option. Ditto the cycling network - there are good bits, but many areas have very little safe cycling infrastructure, and what's there is often isolated away from the network at large. 

And unfortunately, if you don't have enough useful nodes in your network to make the whole of a trip viable, you don't always get credit for making most of a trip viable; if a person can get to a destination by PT but not home afterwards, for example, or if they can cycle 90% of the way safely but risk their life in the last kilometre, they'll probably drive. 

It's tempting to look at the slow, infrequent, buses that run for a short span of hours, or the piecemeal bits of safe cycling infrastructure that are separated from each other by car-dominated hellscapes, and say "Look, nobody's using what we're providing now! Why would we invest more money into it!?" But you can't judge the need for a bridge by counting the people swimming across the river, and you can't judge the demand for PT or cycling when the options provided are crummy. 

"Why does nobody use the buses we provide?" (via Philip Mallis)

If we instituted some smart bus route reforms and topped that up with, say, 30% more budget, we'd get significantly more than a 30% uplift in passengers, because once we got over that tipping point, it'd be like flicking a switch from unusable to usable, and people would be attracted in droves. From 2000-2019, Melbourne's Metro train service kilometres increased by about 50%, while passenger numbers increased by about 100% (1); in Perth, from 1999-2009 bus service kilometres increased 27% while patronage increased by 43%. 

Similarly, the UN recommends governments dedicate 20% of their transport budget to active transport, but the Victorian government currently spends less than 1%. Even if we only diverted enough funds to bring this up to 10%, that's ten times what we're spending now while barely making a dent in the roads budget - but it could genuinely result in a tenfold increase in walkers and cyclists. 

We don't need to embark on some huge psyops behaviour-change campaign, or "tell people what to do". We just need to give people a genuine choice - make sure that these more sustainable modes are as convenient as driving a car is - and they'll choose it. If you build it, they will come. 

Improving walking and cycling infrastructure, and running more PT (especially buses) on existing infrastructure, is not only cheap, it can be done very quickly. No decade-long tunnel-boring projects required - they can be implemented in a matter of months, if there's the political will. This is crucial, because to stay under 1.5 degrees of warming, we need to make big cuts early, to buy ourselves the time to make the more complex changes. 

Travel time comparisons (via The Geography of Transport Systems)

All of the above applies to planes just as much as cars; zero-carbon commercial aviation is still many years away, and in any case carbon is not the only externality of flying, so we should replace it wherever practical. Assuming the trip is over land (or under it) conventional rail done well will beat flying on trips below about 350km, while High Speed Rail will win everything below about 800km. And that's purely on the basis of door-to-door travel time, too; if governments start implementing jet fuel taxes (or broader carbon pricing), or introduce frequent-flyer taxes, or start banning short-haul flights, or even just if more people are conscious of their emissions, rail could compete on even longer routes. 

Unlike the service improvements, big rail infrastructure improvements aren't always cheap or quick to implement. This doesn't mean they shouldn't happen, it just means we can't rely on them alone. We should still take on these big projects, judiciously, when they make sense - but the quick, cheap, low-hanging fruit is the high priority. 

People are often skeptical that we can reduce our emissions by getting Australians to change their travel habits, rather than just cleaning up the status quo. But the evidence is clear - if you provide quality active and public transport options, people will use them, and we can implement most of the key changes really quickly and cheaply. All we need is the political will. 

In the next post in the series, we take a closer look at the third priority - how to Repower our vehicles. 

1. It's hard to provide clean links to these figures since they're buried in multiple budget papers, but for those wanting the precise numbers: in 2000 there were 124.2 million passenger boardings on 15.5 million service kms. In 2019, passenger boardings had risen 96% to 243.2 million, while service kms had only risen 54% to 23.8m.