Four Ways Britain Can Reduce Its Addiction To The Car

The recent Budget included a staggering £27bn for road projects across the country. This is disappointing given the climate crisis we are facing. The Budget even states that road transport is responsible for 91% of domestic transport emissions. Cars in particular are the UK’s main transport polluter and the overwhelming majority of Brits use them every day.

Our dependency on cars stems from a love affair which has lasted the best part of a century. Cars are often objects of status, and owning the right one can be a mark of your success. This is understandable, but there has to be a balance as the environment cannot sustain us driving everywhere going forward.

Indeed, the problem of car dependency seems to be getting worse. A recent report by the Independent Transport Commission (ITC) looked into bus travel across England. One interesting finding was that bus usage had declined amongst pensioners by 9 per cent and their dependency on cars increased by 4 per cent between 2009-2017, despite them having free bus passes. The explanation the report offered was that pensioners have more money to run cars, and there are:

“a slow trend towards living in the smallest settlement sizes, and away from larger metropolitan/urban areas, this is notable because local bus services are typically strongest in the largest urban areas and progressively less convenient in smaller cities and rural areas.”

These findings show one of the key demographics for public transport is holding onto their cars. So what actions can we take to reduce our motor addiction? Here are four ways this can be done:

1) Pay People to Scrap Their Cars

The Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street has come up with a plan to incentivise car reduction through a car scrappage scheme in Coventry. The plan is to offer up to £3,000 worth of credits to people to give up their cars completely instead of upgrading to a newer, cleaner car. These credits could then be spent on public transport, taxis or car clubs. £1m has been set aside for the trial which is due to happen in 2021 and is the first of its kind in the UK. It will be interesting to see if this is successful and whether the idea is taken up by other authorities.

2) Invest More in Public Transport

If car reduction schemes are going to work and our reliance on cars is going to fall, there have to be viable alternatives, the biggest of which is likely to be public transport. While the Government has been talking the talk by promising £5bn investment in buses and cycling, the £1bn Transforming Cities Fund plus £4.2bn for the Metro Mayors to invest in public transport, it now needs to walk the walk. We have seen a decade of cuts to local bus services and trains can be expensive and infrequent in lots of areas.

Reversing bus cuts, keeping concessions and devolving these services to councils and combined authorities will be a big help. Buses are vital for the majority of people, especially the elderly and those less well-off.

Rail schemes also have a role to play in reducing car use, especially if it’s a way of encouraging modal shifts amongst commuters. Schemes like the expansion programme of the Midland Metro and reopening the stations on the Camp Hill Line, to give two examples from the West Midlands, are good ways of encouraging this change.

By increasing capacity and creating new links, we help people leave their cars at home. Indeed, in 2018 the ITC produced another report, which said the large increase in rail passengers since the 1990s had come about because more jobs were now in cities, thus enabling more people to commute by rail.

3) Make People Pay to Use Their Cars

Congestion charging has also reduced car use in numerous cities, notably in London. The city is now planning to expand its Ultra Low Emissions Zone, which charges the most polluting vehicles from entering central London in addition to the existing congestion charge. The plan is to change those boundaries to encompass a much larger area up to the North and South Circular roads.

More widely, several cities in the UK are set to introduce Clean Air Zones in 2020. These would work similarly to London’s schemes but they vary from city to city. For example, Birmingham is proposing to charge £8 for any car to travel into the city centre that doesn’t meet the emission standards. However, Leeds is going to charge £12.50 to taxis and private hire vehicles only. However, both cities are going to charge £50 for HGVs and buses.

These schemes will help to reduce emissions by removing the dirtiest vehicles from the streets but they can also act as a disincentive for drivers and focus their attention on whether they actually need to drive, encouraging behaviour change by ensuring they only use cars for essential journeys.

4) Encourage Walking and Cycling

Ditching motors entirely is probably the best way to reduce car use, as the health benefits really increase if you walk and cycle.

London has tripled the amount of segregated cycle lane provision since 2016 and in 2018 the amount of cycling in London increased by 5%, showing that if you build it, they will come. Many other cycleways are being built in the capital to encourage it further such as Cycleway 4 from Tower Bridge to Greenwich. However the vast majority of riders are white, middle-class men, so more needs to be done to increase the diversity of cyclists.

Walking can be encouraged by reducing speed limits to 20mph, increasing pedestrianisation and restricting car use, for example around schools.

This brings some health and environmental benefits, helping to clean up our dirty air, making the population more active and therefore healthier even if it is a short walk to the shops and back. Re-purposing our city streets away from cars, with more pedestrianisation and greenery will make our towns and cities more pleasant places for shopping and leisure. This would also lead to a reduction in noise pollution. And if there were fewer cars, there would be less need to spend that £27bn on new roads!

I will admit that cars are still essential for lots of people, those with limited mobility in particular, and they have largely transformed our society for the better. A reduction in car use won’t happen overnight, but we have to recognise the environmental and health impacts of car dependency. Taking the bus, train or even your own legs to get to your destination in future is better not just for you, but for the planet.

JP

Why the new £5 note will be the last

I’m certain by now you must have had one of the new £5 notes in your pocket and in the coming months, you’ll have a new 12 sided £1 coin and £10 note to go with it.

The new £5 note launched on the 13th September last year, to some strange fanfare, such as Piers Morgan biting a note on breakfast TV, to this weird trend of people selling “AA01” and “AK47” notes for ridiculous amounts on eBay. But despite the weirdness, these could be the last ever produced.

There’s a couple of reasons for this. First, the new notes are made for the more durable polymer as opposed to the traditional cotton paper. Polymer notes were first developed in Australia and by 1996 they had completely switched. Polymer increases the security as it is harder to forge. For example the clear areas and the use of Intaglio printing means these are incredibly difficult to forge. Not only that, but also they are harder to tear, fold, burn and they are waterproof, meaning their lifespan is much greater than paper notes. This is significant as the old bank note was only introduced in 2002, yet the few that are left aren’t in good condition. Expect to see the new note last much longer. The same is true of the new £1 (which is much harder to counterfeit) and a new £10 note both of which will begin circulating later this year.

This increased durability has coincided with a shift away from cash transactions, especially amongst younger people. We are now in a world where the majority of transactions are cashless. With the introduction of contactless bank cards and Apple Pay, why would you need to have a wallet full of notes? I’m a huge fan of it, as it’s hugely convenient, being able to tap to pay for your cappuccino or to get on the tube means that queuing times at tills have reduced. So much so that Transport for London stopped accepting cash on buses back in 2014, which also saved £24 million in handling costs. Plus some shops have ditched their cash tills and others are sending out e-receipts. This means that technology is yet again making our lives easier by replacing traditional methods, where the physical is being turned into the virtual.

So the combination of more secure, durable and long lasting notes, plus a continuing shift away from cash means that after thousands of years, humanity may have reached a point where dosh may be ditched. This would make the new generation of coins and notes the last the Bank of England ever produce. I guess Numismatists may need to start thinking of a new field to study!

JP

Scrap a Penny?

I was on the tube the other day, when I saw a 1p coin lying on the floor. I picked it up and it got me thinking… what is the point of them?

According to the Royal Mint, there are currently 11.3 billion 1p coins and 6.5 billion 2p coins in circulation at present. However, their buying power has reduced substantially since they began circulation after decimalisation in the 1970s, especially in recent years. Even from when I was a kid, I remember going into the newsagents and buying Penny Chews (sadly no longer with us) but the fact is that as inflation continues to creep up, the penny becomes even more useless.

However, I’m sure the vast majority of people either throw them away or keep them in jars at home. In fact I reckon you’ve got a jar of old 1p and 2p coins at home, just sitting there. Have you ever noticed how pretty much every machine out there doesn’t take them? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vending machine accept a 1p piece in my entire life.

Given that the copper percentage in pennies is now so low and assuming they still make a loss after producing 500 million 1p coins and 200 million 2p coins each year. Isn’t it about time that we got rid of them?

In response to a question from a pupil at a school in September, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney spoke about the possibility of scrapping them in future. Indeed, he already has a track record of abolishing the penny when he was Governor of the Bank of Canada a few years ago. Other countries have also taken this step, with New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and Ireland all getting rid of their copper coins, so a path has already been successfully trodden.

99p stores were recently taken over by Poundland, which led to more calls for them to be scrapped as people realised just how pointless they are. The practicalities of ridding the coins isn’t too difficult, you’d simply round prices up or down to the nearest 5p. Most people are now attuned to the old marketing trick of pricing something at £19.99 instead of £20, so I doubt that extra penny is really going to put you off buying that t-shirt you’ve always wanted.

In the example of Canada when they scrapped the penny in 2013, they continued with precise payments if you were paying by card. If not, then shops and banks would still accept pennies send them back to the mint. If you didn’t have the spare change, they’d round the figure up or down. Sometimes you’d win, sometimes you’d lose but ultimately, who cares if your loaf of bread costs 1p more? That extra penny is hardly going to break your bank balance.

Whilst scrapping the penny might not rake in a lot of money for the Treasury, we are still making a loss on producing them every year for very little benefit. It would make a small contribution and given that so many are thrown away or just sat there, weighing down your pockets, there is surely a positive environmental benefit to getting rid of them as well.

However, scrapping the 1p and even the 2p coin could become a realistic possibility in the coming years, particularly if inflation continues to make them worthless. In fact, as society moves more and more towards cashless transactions, maybe we could see the end of all coinage? But that question can wait for another time…

JP

Automated Responses

Automation: it’s inevitable and it’s here. As humanity’s technological capability continues enhancing, we are developing smarter ways to make our lives easier.

We now stand at the point where robotics and automation are on the cusp of a revolution. A revolution that will radically change every aspect of our society. The problem is we are nowhere near ready.

In the awesome futurist video ‘Humans Need Not Apply‘ CGP Grey explains that just as human created “mechanical muscles” during the Industrial revolution, we have now created “mechanical minds” which are poised to achieve a similar revolution.

We can already see computers replacing those with manual, low skilled jobs. But, no one is truly safe, even white-collar and professional jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots or software.

As robotics becomes cheaper and grow in sophistication, they only need to do the job better than a human in order for it to be beneficial for a business to replace its human workforce.

However, despite the fact millions of jobs are at risk of replacement, this is not an issue on the lips of many. A much quoted study by Oxford University estimates that 47% of jobs could be automated within 20 years. This is a huge and rapid change that could become reality. Simply by talking about the issue more we are raising awareness and making people alert to this change. So what can we do about it?

One potential way of dealing with automation is to try to resist. This has been the approach adopted so far by the Trade Union movement and they have had some success – the London Underground still have drivers, even though the DLR has run without one since it opened in 1987. However, as CGP Grey points out, this is an exception, almost every time unions have tried to fight technological advancement, they’ve lost. The fact that supermarkets are gradually replacing checkout staff with self-serving machines demonstrates this.

Another possible option is to introduce a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This is an idea which is already being experimented and the Green Party is strongly advocating it. The concept is simple, but bold: pay every citizen the same amount each month so they have enough to live off. This would be a major change to society and would see the end of the welfare state.

The idea does have some significant merits. If you’re stuck in a job where you were being treated unfairly, UBI would allow you to challenge your boss without fear of financial hardship – it would always be there to fall back on. However, one counter argument is that by introducing UBI, it becomes impossible to maintain open borders. The options would be to create two types of citizen or to close the borders, which in the post-Brexit world, might not sound like a ridiculous idea.

But what is Labour doing about this? Well, Tom Watson’s ‘The Future of Work Commission’ is already looking at this issue in depth. Fingers crossed it will provide some practical solutions which Labour can put to the electorate.

Despite this, I believe we are not as alert to this change as we should be. Especially as this ‘revolution’ looks set to disproportionately affect the UK’s youth. Many young people rely on low-skilled and manual jobs to support themselves, whether that’s working during your studies or filling a gap in-between jobs; the fact that bar staff, baristas and supermarket workers are at risk of being replaced by machines erodes a vital lifeline from our generation and the ones to come. The future’s coming and we’re simply not prepared.

(Side note, CGP Grey’s channel is awesome and well worth visiting)

JP