Driverless bandwagon moving forward hastily - but where are we aiming to get to?

FOR THE PAST couple of centuries transport has been characterised by the regular emergence of new mechanised transport options, and the related questions of how these technologies are tested for safety and other consequences, and are supervised and regulated.

All have been exciting, disruptive, frightening, and world-changing to various degrees. And also significant for how their full impacts and implications have almost invariably been underestimated or overlooked, and sometimes over-hyped.

The motive technologies and infrastructure provision for the new emerging modes have posed challenges for both the vehicle designers and the public authorities. Sometimes it has meant detailed legislation is required before operations begin, but often the law is chasing behind, as are the responsible local transport authorities seeking to fit these new transport options into the wider mobility landscape, and sit comfortably amongst other public services and facilities – particularly in urban areas.

In this issue, as often these days, LTT reports on a range of new ideas for transport at various levels of development, plus a fascinating look back in time at a situation nearly a century ago when two road-based modes – motoring and cycling – were both growing at pace, but potentially getting into conflict about how to avoid mutual dangers, and impacts on each other’s efficiency and safety.

Research on a forgotten 1930s network of cycleways across the UK has revealed that between 1934 and 1945, the Ministry of Transport paid local authorities to build more than 100 “cycle tracks” alongside major roads modelled on the cycleways of the Netherlands. BritishCycleTracks.com documents why they were built, how they were used, and why they faded from memory.

An experimental two-and-a-quarter-mile “Track for Pedal Cyclists Only” retrofitted to London’s Western Avenue in 1934 was the first of the 101 such cycle tracks built, though at the end of the 19th century several groups and individuals had been calling for similar infrastructure, at first to provide smoother ways for cyclists, and later to protect them from the growing numbers of motor cars on Britain’s roads.

Cyclists had started bravely pedalling along Britain’s still rudimentary roads 80 years earlier at the end of the 1860s. These early riders, generally from the elite of society, didn’t require separation from the road traffic of the day because such traffic, at least outside of cities, was light, sporadic, mostly horse drawn, and generally far slower than the cyclists themselves. Instead, the pioneer cyclists – on large wheel bicycles – essentially had Britain’s roads to themselves. So did those cyclists encouraged to take to cycling subsequently thanks to the introduction of the lower-to-the-ground Safety bicycle in 1885. For the best part of 30 years, cyclists ruled the road. This created in cyclists a feeling of ownership (and guardianship) of roads, the research points out, helping to explain why the later motor-age imposition of separated cycle tracks rankled with many from “organised” cycling.

Plans for such tracks had been drawn up by the Roads Improvement Association, an early road user lobby group formed by the Cyclists’ Touring Club and the National Cyclists’ Union 36 years previously, and to which the cycling organisations still belonged, but motorised vehicle users were becoming part of too.

The cycling organisations told their fellow RIA members that such tracks “would offer no advantages to cyclists, but on the contrary would have several serious objections,” it was reported at the time.

The main reason why cycling organisations did not favour the proposal is because they were concerned that if cyclists were side-tracked in this manner they may ultimately be side-tracked altogether, and not be allowed the freedom of the public road at all.

Cycling flourished nonetheless as the 20th Century arrived and between 1930 and 1935, the numbers of cyclists doubled in the UK, just as motoring was beginning to grow rapidly too. Officials worried that the explosion in cycle use would reduce the utility of motoring. By 1939, there were twelve million cyclists and just two million motorists. Sadly, and quite soon, the dedicated cycling infrastructure of the time fell out of use during and after the Second World War, and cycle use plummeted after 1949, leading to the effective ossification of the MoT’s ambitious-for-the-time cycle route network, as the new research puts it.

Today, many of the cycle tracks, mostly built beside the new arterial roads of the 1930s and 1940s, are hidden in plain sight. Others are buried. Several have remained in use as cycle tracks, but there is little local knowledge that the infrastructure is more than 80 years old and born of a different time.

Space for cycling, which many planners and politicians often now say isn’t there, has been there – often unknown and neglected – for nearly a century, the research points out, and LTT contributor John Dales of Urban Movement has just produced a report for the Department for Transport evaluating the upgrading potential of twelve of those pre-war period cycle tracks to be part of the modern cycle highway system. This report is on the new website (britishcycletracks.com), and makes very interesting reading.

The Buchanan report emphasised that elements of towns have a finite ‘environmental capacity’ which provides a ceiling on the number of vehicles that can be allowed in any area. It also advocated the separation of vehicles and pedestrians, a contention that has been, perhaps unfairly, subjected to most criticism.

By the 1960s not even officials within the Ministry of Transport knew that the UK government had majority-paid for 500 miles of Dutch-style cycleways. Indeed, by the 1960s those in authority, politically and professionally, were seeing the road traffic problem in a very different way.

It was at this time that the pioneering report Traffic in Towns was commissioned from Colin Buchanan, Professor of Transport at Imperial College, who was tasked to study the long-term development of motor traffic in British urban areas and the effect that it was likely to have. Whilst the official weighty published report cost 50s (£2.50), – a significant sum at the time – to make it available much more widely, the government joined with Penguin Books to publish a condensed version which sold in paperback for ten shillings – now 50p – and was something of a best seller.

The report was divided into five main sections. The Working Context set out the background and looked at the growing frustrations of using cars, accidents, damage to environment, alternatives to cars, likely increase in car ownership, and the effect of accommodating cars on town form. The Theoretical Basis examined changes in travel to work patterns, travel within towns, accessibility versus the environment and the consequences for the design of major developments. These deliberations led Buchanan to develop the concept of the ‘environmental area’ (essentially free from external traffic) backed up by ‘environmental standards’.

A familiar issue explored was the separation between town planners, concerned with places and why vehicles moved to them, and road planners, concerned with the smooth flow of vehicles. Buchanan saw a clear need for the two groups to work together. The benefits of walking and the need to preserve or create pleasant places for the pedestrian were also recognised. The suggestion from Buchanan that an ideal road system could be likened to a tree, would probably not meet with favour today, but the division of roads into two types, Distributors for Movement, and Access Roads to serve buildings, will be familiar.

The report emphasised that elements of towns have a finite ‘environmental capacity’ which provides a ceiling on the number of vehicles that can be allowed in any area. Buchanan also advocated the separation of vehicles and pedestrians, a contention that has been, perhaps unfairly, subjected to most criticism, characterised by illustrations showing a decked area and highways to near-motorway standards over Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and the Euston Road in central London. Some vestiges of these ideas remain on the Euston Road, though fortunately the more realistic Buchanan suggestion of ‘minimum redevelopment’ has preserved some parts of nearby areas.

It was probably the graphic illustrations of the effects of full car usage on the urban form that caused most concern amongst lay readers. The final conclusions relate to issues that we take for granted today such as the conflict between short- and long-term measures, and the difficult trade-offs of mobility against quality of place, and a concern at the unwelcome external effects of traffic. These have comprised the meat and drink of countless transport plans ever since – if seldom fully resolved. Buchanan also made a strong plea which also rings true today – ‘A much improved concept of professional collaboration is needed, with much greater emphasis on mixed team working’.

At exactly the same time as Buchanan was producing his report, archetects Christopher Alexander and Serge Chermayeff co-authored Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanism in 1963, also published in Penguin paperback. This equally seminal contribution has largely been forgotten, especially sadly for the loss of the prescient warnings about the car emerging as a key threat to human-centred frameworks for living, and the consequences of our hyper-connected world.

Cars and the automotive-led lifestyles that go with them have moved on a long way since the 1960s, in several respects, including overall volumes, the power and size of individual vehicles, their dominance in the landscape, and their resource requirements – notably fuels, and the infrastructure provision.

The focus of the new NIC study is to consider the incremental steps and interventions that may be required on the road network to pursue a pathway towards more wide-spread adoption and the desired benefits of automated and connected vehicles.

Which brings us to another potentially very significant milepost on this automotive journey – the arrival of AI-managed, digitally controlled and driverless ‘autonomous’ vehicles, as now the subject of both legislative proposals before parliament and work newly commissioned by the Government from the National Infrastructure Commission to pave the way for a new era of automated vehicles.

The focus of the study, set out in terms of reference issued by the Chancellor, is “to consider the incremental steps and interventions that may be required on the road network to pursue a pathway towards more wide-spread adoption and the desired benefits. This would form the basis of an adaptive strategy, exploring what additional policy and infrastructure requirements may be needed beyond the initial regulatory, safety and legislative framework already being developed by government to achieve its 2025 vision for connected and automated mobility.”

In August 2022, the Government set out its plan that by 2025 the UK will begin to see deployments of self-driving vehicles. There is more than a hint that the driving force behind these proposals and objectives is industrial as much as transport-related. As the Government puts it, “improving the way in which people and goods are moved around the nation and creating an early commercial market for the technologies”. Through the measures proposed in the Automated Vehicles Bill, the government says it aims to ensure this market will be enabled by a comprehensive regulatory, legislative and safety framework.

The automation and connectivity technological developments meanwhile “present significant opportunities for delivering improvements to road safety, reducing congestion, improving reliability and accessibility of transport services, and increasing productivity”, the government continues. “The way we plan, operate and maintain our infrastructure is crucial to realising these benefits. Uncertainty is inherent in any emerging technology. However, uncertainty should not be a reason to do nothing, as to do so may result in missed opportunities to realise strategic objectives. Moreover, many of the actions taken to support self-driving vehicles will have benefits for many existing vehicles, which may further support the case for action,” it claims.

In the report of a Transport Committee inquiry into Self-Driving Vehicles published last September the MPs in principle welcomed their introduction, but warned that the Government must take a cautious, gradual approach with the technology introduced only in well-defined and appropriate contexts. “As such, we broadly welcome the strategy the Government has set out. However, without careful handling, self-driving vehicles could worsen congestion and exacerbate existing inequalities in transport access.” The Government must ensure the introduction of self-driving vehicles is responsive to the wider population and meets the UK’s transport goals, said the committee.

But underlining the inherent intertwined issues, the Committee was keen to also record that “the self-driving vehicle sector is a British success story. We were impressed, unfailingly so, by the energy, creativity, and expertise of all those we met, whether from industry, academia, Government or somewhere in between. We have a competitive advantage, and we must maintain it.” To do this the Government must pass comprehensive legislation in the next parliamentary session to put in place the robust regulatory framework it promised, the MPs said. Failing to do so will do significant and lasting damage both to the UK’s self-driving vehicle industry and to this country’s reputation as a trailblazer.

But what is the right framework to address these three different objectives – of industrial and technological economic development, a desirable transport system, and a pleasant human habitat? And can these all sit comfortably alongside each other? Is segregation again the elephant in the room?

There were, when those cycleways were built in the 1920s and 30s (and still can be) many perceived benefits – to motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians – to having protected cycleways. But often, it is obvious that there is no space to provide such separated infrastructure, and some downsides too.

Cyclists and pedestrians benefit from protection, and motorists benefit from potentially freer-flowing roads, an outcome lobbied for by period motorists, and now by some of those keen on autonomous vehicles. But now, having seen the range of unintended consequences and undesirable impacts from a century of automotive-led development, as the car moved from a novelty to a dominant influence on society and the planet itself at a number of levels, shouldn’t we be thinking very carefully on what we are planning for, to what we afford priority, and just how reliable, durable and desirable the expected next era of automated road vehicles will be?

Back in the 1920s and 30s, as we see from that newly-unearthed history of cycleway construction, catering for the newly emerging taste for greater mobility with the two competing modes of cars and bikes led to decisions that we can look back upon as possibly both visionary, and short sighted, at the same time. Just like so many of the decisions related to cars and their use over the years.

Now in the 2020s, the new mode on the block that is demanding attention is a driverless re-creation of the automobile. But should we rush to feed its needs? Is it better to require it to fit into our existing infrastructure – at least in urban areas – where might segregation again be the preferred solution? Or should a driverless vehicle be just another part of mixed traffic, kept firmly in its place. Or could AV’s and human-driven cars (not forgetting pedestrians and cyclists) be a potential nightmare mix?

Must what is sought need, in any case, to be effectively a transition over a 20-30 year period – and by then might the world and our priorities and desires have moved on massively again?

More significantly, should autonomous vehicles just be seen as types of cars without drivers – or the basis of a much more radical change to collective transport when deployed in pods or on rapid transit routes? And even if such options are best, should they be limited to use in suitable urban forms – like newly developed towns and cities where AVs can be comfortably fitted in, and not expected to operate in more traditional and historic environments? Or maybe kept to roads like motorways where cars are really king, and there is a genuine prospect of platoons of autonomous cars, buses and trucks making best use of free flow conditions without the need for drivers on board, or to plan for wandering humans in their path.

There are other wider social and societal issues to consider too – as are emerging in West Coast USA where planning for a driverless future is bringing up a range of difficult challenges as we also report in this issue. Some might ask if the context is really being set by new technology and big commercial interests looking for a market?

There are clearly huge and complex issues to be understood, thought through, and decided upon – and the widest possible approach to those decisions seems essential. In these circumstances is it right that shaping the country’s plans for AV provision is really a job for NIC, when infrastructure is far from being the only issue.

These matters surely need a wider view – a kind of Buchanan report looking as widely as possible at both the context, the challenges and the potential consequences. This time BEFORE the outcomes of the AV revolution – if that is what is coming – kick in.

It all seems as though there is a desperate rush to climb on board this new driverless band wagon, without having much idea at all about where it is heading. More haste less speed, might be useful watchwords. Driving too fast can be dangerous – in vehicles and in policy-making too.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTTmagazine, LTT886, 20 February 2024.