Local service buses again formed less than half of all traffic in Princes Street, with other significant vehicles including tourist buses and especially taxis. Many of these vehicles don’t stop at all on Princes Street, using it simply as a short cut thoroughfare. If reducing traffic on Princes Street is a key aim (as it appears to be as part of the ‘City Centre Transformation initiative’), wouldn't it make sense to look at removing such traffic first?​

Another thought on street clutter...although widely recognised as a significant problem for pedestrians (both because it reduces the available space for walking and because it can represent a serious hazard for some people, most obviously those with visual impairments) what is less widely acknowledged is the apparent effect that street clutter has on attracting other clutter.

The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) has announced its programme of annual awards for 2018. Unfortunately there is no category this year for ‘reducing street clutter’ as in 2017. This award was a very welcome initiative in view of the publication of the new Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD, or ‘Traffic Signs Regs’) in 2016. 

To those unfamiliar with this less-than exciting sounding document, this is the statutory guidance which governs when and where road signs are required. The guidance states ” the number of traffic signs has doubled in the past 20 years. This is unsustainable, and bears out the need to reduce signing wherever possible. A culture change is needed in the way signing is used” (2.9).​

During his recent work in Edinburgh (1) the influential Danish urban designer Jan Gehl reportedly described Princes Street as a “big bus station”. Certainly, the pedestrian environment is dominated by traffic, which can also obscure the famous views to the Old Town and Castle. There now seem to be growing whispers of a radical change to Edinburgh’s transport system; to shift buses off Princes Street.  
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The Council is currently consulting on hugely unpopular proposals for a triangular gyratory system on Picardy Place (2) on the north-east edge of the UNESCO World Heritage site. Officials have recently claimed that one benefit of the scheme is that it would enable buses from the north side of Edinburgh to terminate there and turn around. Passengers for Princes Street and beyond would then be expected to change onto an expanded tram network, so removing hundreds of buses a day from Princes Street. This is not something that should be considered lightly.

People on lower incomes are much more likely to walk to work thank those on higher incomes, who are much more likely to drive. While this may be an intuitive and obvious statement, the difference in the travel-to-work patterns of poorer and wealthier people in Scotland is starkly evident from statistics published by Transport Scotland earlier this year. * The chart below shows the correlation between income and driving; and also the inverse correlation between income and walking. This demonstrates, not for the first time, the importance of investing in walking not only on environmental and health grounds, but also to promote social equality.
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Lothian Taxicard, offering discounted taxi fares to disabled people, was started 25 years ago. As the council officer who was principally responsible for developing the scheme, I thought it a timely point to reflect on its history - and the possible future of such schemes.​

The introduction of a Taxicard scheme was not my idea; my then boss Keith Gowenlock proposed the service as part of ‘the multi-modal approach’ to accessible transport that Lothian Regional Council (LRC) was developing. This was supported by the head of the Public Transport Unit David Chambers, and at a political level, by Councillors Ron Muir and then David Begg who chaired the Transport Committee. The Lothian scheme was loosely modelled on the London Taxicard scheme which the GLC had funded for some time along with dial-a-ride services. Interestingly, a taxi subsidy scheme had also run in Edinburgh for a number of years, administered by the rather unfortunately-named Edinburgh Cripple Aid Society (which has since re-branded solely as ‘ECAS’). The ECAS scheme issued “chits’ giving discounted fares to a group of disabled people for use with a contracted local taxi firm, Radiocabs.

However, the ECAS scheme was not sustainable; for a start, it applied only to a small group of people in Edinburgh, and the Regional Council, which had taken over funding of the scheme, needed to ensure that services were available more fairly, including in the other districts in the Region (West, East and Midlothian).  ECAS was keen for the Council to take over administration of the scheme. For its part, LRC saw a Taxicard scheme offering several distinctive benefits which other services could not. In particular, although LRC funded the local dial-a-ride service Handicabs, and since 1990 a semi-scheduled Dial-a-Bus shopping service, these door to door schemes did not suit everyone. Getting through on the phone to secure a booking was a problem and not everyone wanted to (or could) plan their trips in advance. In addition, as a service specifically for disabled people, dial-a-rides were seen by some as having a degree of stigma as a ‘special’ or segregated service, and they provided limited choice to the passenger. Of course, mainstream public transport was a complete no-go area for most disabled people at this time as buses typically had three steps up to a high floor. Taxicard therefore complemented other door to door services and efforts to improve the accessibility of mainstream public transport.​

Edinburgh District Council had also been the first council outside London to stipulate that all taxis must become wheelchair accessible. Along with this requirement, Edinburgh led the way in training taxi drivers on how to assist passengers using wheelchairs, with mandatory sessions for drivers overseen by the Cab Office, then managed by the police. Unquestionably, not all taxi drivers welcomed these new obligations, but a Taxicard scheme could complement these regulatory measures by encouraging disabled people to use taxis, stimulating customer demand.

So the Lothian Taxicard scheme was launched in 1992, offering a maximum of 104 single trips a year (this maximum limit echoed the demands of the ‘One Trip a Week’ campaign for dial-a-ride funding which I had led in London a few years earlier). The chief criterion for eligibility for a Taxicard was that the applicant was unable to use buses. Local taxi and private hire companies were invited to participate in the scheme, so that there was usually both a choice of service provider, and of vehicles type. The user had to make a minimum payment of £1.00 and would pay no more until the fare exceeded £5.00; anything above that was payable by the passenger. In 1992, this subsidy of up to £4 per trip paid for a reasonable distance. Triplicate receipt pads were issued to participating companies, with passenger, council and taxi firm each getting a copy. The scheme was launched in West Lothian and then rolled out to the other councils with (from memory) an annual budget of £0.5 million. It is hard not to feel a little nostalgic for a time when a local authority had both the money and the political will to initiate new services like this!

Unsurprisingly, the scheme was immediately popular, with rapidly-developing demand for Taxicards and immensely positive feedback. The number of trips by Taxicard quickly outstripped those by dial-a-ride and Dial-a-Bus, and with a financial ceiling per trip, it represented a cost-effective way of significantly increasing travel options for many disabled people to the council. A Taxicard Users’ Association developed, which became influential as a disability-led group campaigning for accessible transport. The scheme was part of the reason that Lothian Regional Council won the first Equality Award by the European Commission in Scotland in 1995, and several other regional councils introduced similar schemes. However, controlling budgets was always a problem and it was administratively cumbersome, with thousands of trip slips processed monthly to control the 104 limit and to check taxi invoices. Eligibility was largely controlled through requiring that Taxicard applicants did not also hold concessionary travel (bus) permits but eligibility was always prone to ‘grey areas’ given that people do not neatly fall into two boxes - those who can, and those who can’t ‘use conventional buses’. As buses have become more accessible and concepts of disability (including mental health) have changed, eligibility has no doubt become more contested.

The scheme survived local government re-organisation in 1996, with each of the four successor unitary councils in the Lothians maintaining their own Taxicard schemes. However, over the years, the benefits provided have been eroded as senior officials gave the scheme less priority and reduced budgets. The minimum flat rate contribution by the passenger was raised to £2.00 and over time, the remaining £3.00 subsidy went less and less far - literally - due to taxi fare inflation. Perhaps I’m reading more into this than I should, but I’m struck how the scheme logo in Edinburgh today is completely unchanged from 1992! While the scheme continues in the local authorities today, Midlothian closed the scheme to new entrants in 2015.

In January, the Scottish Transport Minister Humza Yousaf announced that there would be a consultation on the future of Scotland’s concessionary travel scheme (1). The current scheme, which was set up in 2006, has faced criticism on the grounds of escalating cost - £207.8 million in 2016-17 (2) - and also from bus operators, who have seen reimbursement levels fall in recent years to a new low of 56.9% of the standard fare (3).

Update September 2017 - consultation on scheme open until 17 November 2017 bit.ly/2guM5Ag 

However the review is also timely in providing an opportunity - overdue at that - to review the value for money of the social benefits that the scheme provides. Leaving to one side wider issues of taxation and spending, the very considerable concessionary travel budget is currently poorly targeted at people who need it.

Many disability advocates have begun to see the prospect of the driverless car or autonomous vehicle (AV) as a truly revolutionary mobility solution. Although it is entirely possible that predictions of an imminent driverless car revolution have been overhyped (1), let us assume that the model of ‘Mobility as a Service’ takes hold. In the future, it becomes the norm for people to summon a driverless (electric) car that meets their requirements at a moments notice through an app, ‘Uber-style’. Payment will be based on use and because of the economics of intensively-used vehicles, to own and use a private vehicle will become unattractive for most people.

References
1) Driverless cars: the road ahead is difficult, NESTA, July 2016 

2) Driverless driving for disabled people within the decade? Robin Christopherson, June 2016

3) Understanding why some people do not use buses, Scottish Government Social Research 2010

4) Importance of safe pedestrian environments to ensure older people travel with confidence.  Musselwhite, C, October 2016

5) Huffington Post, January 2017 

6) GATEway demonstrates how teleoperation and autonomy can improve mobility for disabled drivers, GATEway, January 2017 

7) Pathway to driverless cars, DfT January 2017

8) Ruderman Family Foundation, January 2017

There is currently much discussion about autonomous vehicles and the impact that they will have on our streets. Some anticipate that they will make private cars, buses and taxis virtually obsolete by 2030. Others are more sceptical. But we do not need to look 15 years into the future to anticipate significant changes in how roads are used; they are already evident.

For example, van traffic in the UK has increased by 70% in the past 20 years and is currently growing at 4 % a year. This is likely to be due in part at least, to the ever increasing rise in internet shopping and home delivery. What are the implications for our streets?  

Without wishing to jump to “white van man” stereotypes, it is hard to avoid concluding that there are a number of negative impacts on streets and their users. ​ A 2015 study by TRL found van drivers to be twice as likely as other drivers to use phones while driving. Anecdotally, vans seem particularly prone to illegal parking/loading, pavement parking and poor driving standards generally, encouraged no doubt by the employment and productivity pressures which apply to many van drivers. This can only have a negative impact on pedestrians, cyclists and indeed other drivers. 

The rise of Uber is another recent change in traffic patterns, which is certainly disrupting traditional taxi businesses in urban areas and has led to calls for more regulation. But it is not only motor vehicle patterns which are changing; on a recent 20 minute walk I made through Edinburgh in the early evening, I passed 6 cyclists - five of which were Deliveroo couriers, whose road behaviour has also been subject to criticism. Deliveroo started operations only in 2013.

Companies generating new traffic like Amazon, Asos, Uber, Deliveroo, etc have business models built on the free use of a public asset: the road. Of course, we love home delivery of shopping and take-away food, and low ‘taxi’ fares. But it raises the question of whether commercial road users should pay more for using assets that they currently use for free - especially if their behaviour puts a cost (in terms of safety, convenience and accessibility) on other road users. The current taxation regime (for fuel, VED etc) is a very blunt instrument for making road users pay a fair price for using roads. In the longer term, ‘smart’ road pricing may become more acceptable as a means to apportion charges on road users more fairly, on top of the growing need to curtail urban traffic because of congestion and air quality. Indeed just this month the London Assembly has called for urgent reform to the capital's Congestion Charge. As so often, the technology is there, but the legal and regulatory environment lags behind.