Friday Reads – 30 March 2018

1. Hmm, making Paris transport free would get rid of the problem of widespread fare evasion and blatant tailgating…

2. ‘Free transport’ is one of those ideas which sounds crazy until you look at the overall cost of charging. Remove gateline equipment, ticketing issue & checking, cash/credit handling costs and it starts to – occasionally – make sense.

   In a similar vein, I recall in the 80s being told by BT that they would make a much higher profit if they didn’t charge for UK-internal calls at all but only for international ones.

3. Is the Sydney Metro really going to have “two trains every minute” by 2024?? Shurely shome mistake!

4. I’m sure TfL could have some fun with the algorithms developed by Alex Bell of the bus and cycle lane blocking video analysis (4th article on the list). I’m sure a London modification to spot the yellow mini cab markers in the windows would prove interesting for the Uber discussions.

5. More automated traffic rule enforcement would be useful.

   For example, average speed cameras in 20 zones –

   According to https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-for-great-britain-2016 in 2016:

   46% of cars exceeded the speed limit on motorways
   8% of cars exceeded the speed limit on national single carriageways
   53% of cars exceeded the speed limit on 30mph roads
   81% of cars exceeded the speed limit on 20mph roads

6. The experience of CCTV enforcement of bus lanes in London shows that infringements have been cut by about 80% within 3 months of the start of enforcement. This is primarily because the use of CCTV means that detection of infringements is at about the 80-90% level. This compares with police stop on the street types of enforcement which typically detect less than 5% of infringements. With the very low levels of detection the risk of getting caught is very low and this just encourages drivers to infringe. Last the other end, the high levels of detection with repeated issuing of PCNs has led to drivers very quickly realising that the chances of ‘getting away with it’ are so low as to be not worth it. At a more sophisticated level, London’s bus drivers have quickly identified which box junctions are covered by CCTV and which not – making sure that they steer well clear (pun intended) of those that are camera enforced.

7. Free travel on transit has some things going for it, but what it certainly does is to encourage excess trips and, on a longer timescale, longer trips. This is both bad in areas where overcrowding is a problem, and also bad for city sprawl and energy use. The trips do, of course, have to be paid for by someone, which in this case presumably means local taxpayers. It’s by no means clear that this would be progressive, whereas the more limited and targeted levels of subsidy that we have at the moment are more likely to be progressive.

8. Bob
   Even when paying attention, it’s often far too easy to exceed 30 mph limits, especially where some supposedly “safety-friendly” council has decided “30” not “40” – I try to observe 30’s but there are times…when ……
   20mph is different, very different. It’s a very difficult speed to drive to, actually, in many cars, because the gearbox ratios never seem to work. “Blanket” 20 areas are particularly bad, where there are semi-major feeder routes, often with buses, where the sensible speed is actually 23-26 mph, as opposed to back-roads/residential side-streets, where you don’t want to exceed 15-18 mph, anyway.

   Mind you, not too far from here, just outside the GLA boundary is a long stretch of “A” road – & a bit that has been downgraded to “B” which used to have a 60 limit – & most locals still do 55 – it has a 40 limit, that only about 2% of drivers obey.
   It’s called: “Bringing the law into disrepute”.

9. In my opinion, there is a big difference between understanding illegal speeding (which we should probably all try to do, with a view to finding the best way to prevent it), and condoning it, which I feel quite strongly that no-one should do. The law is there for very good reasons – mainly to save lives. Most drivers, perhaps all, speed occasionally through inadvertence – none should ever do it deliberately.

10. @AlisonW wrote: “In a similar vein, I recall in the 80s being told by BT that they would make a much higher profit if they didn’t charge for UK-internal calls at all but only for international ones.”

    As a telecoms journalist for decades, I’m sure this is true. In fact I remember writing a column for an IT publication saying more or less that sort of thing (I think I actually said that BT could flatten all national call rates so they were equal to local call prices).

    But the problem is that in the mid-1980s the Thatcher government was just starting to encourage competition into the market, initially via Mercury Communications, backed by the newly privatised Cable & Wireless; and BT itself was just about to go through privatisation. Mercury had a banal competitive model of just charging what BT charged less about 5%. As Mercury was mainly competing in what was then called the long-distance market, ie anything that BT didn’t regard as a local call, making all calls free or very low cost would have killed off all competition.

    At the same time BT in the early/mid 1980s had a fully costed plan to install broadband to every home (at least every urban home), so deliver cable TV. That would have allowed BT to renew and modernise its network and build new revenue streams. But the government wanted competition from a new set of cable companies, most of which went bust. So BT was explicitly banned from offering TV services.

    Moral of this off-topic (sorry) ramble: it’s the politics, not the economics.

11. I would expect that a significant proportion of bus ridership can be attributed to zip and 60+ Oyster beneficiaries. I understand that these subsidies are Mayoral in origin and borne out of TfL funds. How accurately are these reflected in individual route revenues?
    In view of the bus funding shortfall can these be removed or more carefully targeted? Eg school journeys only and half fare everywhere else for zip. (I have no idea why 60+ was introduced but will carry on using it as long as teenagers get a concession.)

12. Malcolm says, re speed limits, that the law is there for very good reasons,. to save lives.
    I read about research, albeit from media reports a couple of years ago, that showed there is NO evidence to suggest that 20 mph limited roads have become safer since their speed was reduced from 30 mph.
    Many 20 mph limits have been introduced since then.
    Can I suggest that …
    [No you can’t, not here anyway. PoP]

13. Jim Elson,

    Well lets turn the question around and correct a few misapprehensions.

    First of all, is there any evidence it doesn’t save people’s lives?

    Secondly, only a small proportion of people die if hit at a vehicle travelling at 30mph. A switch from 30mph to 20 mph would be expected to show far more difference in serious injuries – including live-changing injuries – than lives. 20mph rather than would primarily mean that someone who might have been injured might not be and that injuries are less severe.

    Thirdly, it isn’t just about safety. Amongst other things, it is about the desire not to make roads barriers to communities and make places more pleasant. For example, it is well known that zebra crossings do not increase safety. Install a zebra crossing and far more people will cross the road than if it wasn’t there and some will get injured on it. So, you may ask, why have them? The answer is to stop communities being isolated.

    I am well aware there are enforcement issues but a lot of new and controversial measures did not immediately lead to a change of habits and took time for attitudes to change – drink driving as monitored by breathalysers, for example.

    Note: We have had long discussions on enforcement of driving regulations before so any comments relating to this will be deleted.

14. @jim “I read about research, albeit from media reports a couple of years ago, that showed there is NO evidence to suggest that 20 mph limited roads have become safer since their speed was reduced from 30 mph.”

    If a plurality of drivers are still driving at the same speed they did when the road had a 30 limit, you wouldn’t expect the road to be any safer just because the signs have been changed.

    That’s why changes in road design and enforcement (narrowing, cameras, surfacing, light timing, etc) are also required so that slower speeds are actually adopted.

    For what it’s worth I’ve driven quite a few new cars recently and they all seem to cruise quite happily at 20mph. I recognize the issue Greg raises (cars not having a suitable gear to travel at 20mph+/-) but thankfully technology does catch up.

    Some new cars also remind drivers of the current speed limit, brake automatically for pedestrians, and complain if you change lanes without indications, all of which are quite useful. Eventually, one hopes that technology will make it impossible to drive unsafely.

15. @ Nameless – re 60+ and child / student concessions I’ll just nick the closing sentence from Alan BG – “it’s the politics, not the economics”. The current concessionary schemes are clearly pretty generous when set against other areas. I’ve no issue with the Freedom Pass and that’s essentially for the Boroughs to manage. While I will no doubt risk the ire of some other commenters and would deprive myself of a future benefit I think the 60+ Pass is the more questionable concession. The main problem is that the entitlement age for the national concessionary pass / Freedom Pass is getting later as a result of gov’t policy. These means an increasing number of people will take up the 60+ Pass despite possibly being still in employment or in receipt of company pensions or other income. The forecast cost to TfL is estimated to exceed £100m per annum in a few years time and will keep rising. This strikes me as unacceptable in a very constrained funding environment. If it was made the 65+ Pass then that would reduce costs somewhat at the cost of undoubted political “fall out” for whichever Mayor took the decision. Unfortunately they’re all too cowardly to do this. They prefer to cut investment in services or assets to fund a freebie. I do think that a crunch is on the way for the 60+ Pass as it will become increasingly unaffordable for TfL given all the other pressures.

    There’s more logic for child and student concessions as these groups are not huge wage earners in their own right, families no doubt benefit from not having to pay child fares and helping to reduce the “school run” impact on the roads is no bad thing. There is also some element of encouraging a longer term commitment to public transport use amongst young people rather than them all learning to drive come age 17. The downsides are the need for more school bus routes and the sometimes ludicrous overcrowding of buses in the peaks from excessive amounts of school kids using the bus. My local route suffers from this problem – I have to avoid using it at certain times as I simply can’t get on. I know the child free travel scheme is controversial – it flares up as an issue on other forums with tedious regularity. It would be helpful if that could be avoided here as it just ends up as a stalemate “chucking bricks at each other” type of argument.

    I am sure TfL have a reasonable view as to usage of these concessions as they’re all issued on trackable Oyster cards and people have to touch in. The only gap is children aged 5-11 who don’t need a pass to travel free. TfL can certainly estimate the revenue loss for Freedom Pass holders and I’ve had FOI released numbers (from a few years ago) about the annual cost of all of the other concessions. I’d expect TfL could impute usage to route / journey level on the bus network if they needed to. They do this for Travelcards / PAYG so should be able to do it for other pass holders. To answer your basic question then any concession can be removed or changed but it requires political decisions that are likely to be vote losers *unless* it’s being done to avoid something much, much worse. We’re not yet at the “we need to change these concessions or else we close “X” tube stations / cancel “Y” bus routes” type of argument.

16. @WW
    Just to point out that if the 60+ was replaced by 65+ today, no-one would qualify at all until the first cohort of individuals who will reach their state retirement pension age over 65. These cards would be replaced by a Freedom pass after a few months. Then a few months after that, 65+ cards would only last for a year until the 65 to 66 band of increases.

17. Nameless, Walthamstow Writer,

    But I think part of the point Walthamstow Writer was making is that the 60+ age when one qualifies is, by definition, fixed, whereas the pension age is only going to go up creating a situation over time where the liability to TfL becomes greater.

    I could easily see the day when free peak-hour travel on the tube for seven years leading up to retirement could influence travel patterns or even where some older people choose to live. The cost will only go up as people inevitably play the system. It will also be even more expensive as more services (including the Elizabeth line) become TfL run and therefore qualify for morning peak period free travel.

    A possible compromise solution (given the situation we are currently in) is to limit the period to 5 years before the national pension age. Another is to remove the free travel before 9.30 a.m. (applies to TfL services only) for the 60+ which would do a lot to eliminate free travel at a time when it is not a marginal cost. A lot of the logic behind this (and also, incidentally, keeping Senior Citizen’s Railcard conditions of use simple) was on the basis that old people get confused easily. Apart from being rather patronising, the logic seems flawed if the person has sufficient cognitive ability to hold down a job and use the 60+ free travel to commute to work.

18. 60+ Oyster Card was introduced following (another) fairly off-the-cuff commitment by Boris during the 2012 Mayoral election campaign. The Gordon Brown government had legislated to increase the state pension age to 66 for all by 2020 and this had started to have an impact on women as far as state pensions were concerned, and Freedom Pass for everyone by 2012. At the time, of course the cost of the 60+ card was very low as it’s life was little more than a year, so it was a cheap deal for Boris and allowed him to have a political knock against Labour at the same time. He was warned that the cost would increase rapidly but, presumably, took the view that this would be other Mayor’s problem.

    Given what we know about voting habits – that older people are considerably more likely to vote than younger people – it makes the scheme, politically, very difficult to pull out of, even though the benefits are, at best, slight. And as more and more people in the 60-65 age range still work full time, the rational arguments in its favour are almost non-existent . It will be a very brave Mayor, though, that changes the scheme or, indeed, stops paying for all Londoners over 60 (including Freedom Pass holders) to travel free during the morning peak.

    For the same reasons, it’s extremely unlikely that the boroughs would cut back on the very generous benefits from Freedom Pass, even though they are not obliged to do anything other than provide for free off-peak bus travel.

19. @ PoP – you have captured my point well. I was proposing a way of reducing the cost by pushing back the age at which you are entitled to receive the pass. As it would not be a shock for the pension age to be pushed back even further this would just vastly inflate the cost of the 60+ Pass. Of course the cost to the Boroughs of the Freedom Pass may fall somewhat if the pension age went up to 70 but that doesn’t help the Mayor or TfL one jot. They’d receive less income from the Boroughs from the Freedom Pass but would be burdened with an escalating cost of the 60+ Pass.

    @ Quinlet – I agree with you that the politics of the 60+ Pass are very difficult but if older people are typically remaining in paid employment for longer it makes little sense to provide them with a generous concession when it could be argued, in future years, that it is (will be) at the cost of maintaining services or funding investment. As you say it was a deeply political move by Boris with little rationale (quelle surprise!). That makes it fairly indefensible on any sensible basis.

20. @quinlet. Not all Londoners over 60 can travel free during the morning peak. As with fares in general, there is a premium to be paid for living south of the river unless you confine yourself to the buses.

    As it happens,, the over-60s in my office all commute on NR services.

21. Anyone who still has to work at 60+ probably deserves a small break.

    Pensioners on generous final salary schemes should probably be the last group to prioritise for free travel.

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