Rewire
People will do what is easiest. It is human nature.
For 70 years we’ve focused on making the car the easiest and most convenient way to get around. So that’s what people do.
To meet our legal carbon duties we need to reduce car use and achieve a shift in transport modes. If we want people to use alternatives, we need to make their use convenient and frictionless too. We need to make the right thing to do the easiest thing to do.
Wales has made three structural changes alter the underlying dynamics to make sustainable choices easier for people to make.
1. Integrated transport planning
2. Legislated for Highway Authorities to plan for Active travel provision
3. Lower speed limits where people and traffic mix
Delivery context
Responsibility for transport policy has been devolved to Wales since 1999, but Britain’s unwritten constitution is far from neat, and Welsh devolution has been characterised by ‘jagged edges’ along the interface between central and devolved Governments.
Roads policy is fully devolved to the Welsh Government, but professional practice and standards are rooted in a UK-wide ’predict and provide’ approach to highways planning that locks Wales into a British approach.
Responsibility for Welsh rail policy sits in Cardiff, but decisions on (under) investment and maintenance in the railways sits in London. Bus policy is devolved to Wales, but the bus system is underpinned by UK legislation that dictates a deregulated approach based on competition and commercial decision making which makes the policy intent of ‘integrated transport’ impossible to achieve in practice.
And ‘active transport’ has fallen entirely to local transport authorities that like the rest of the UK have tended to see walking and cycling as a leisure rather than a transport mode, and therefore often beneath their professional dignity to invest time or money in.
Integrated transport
Whereas car-use is designed to be an easy to use end-to-end system, sustainable alternatives are often hard work and inconvenient. Unsurprisingly most people don’t use public transport, in fact 50% of people never travel by bus.
The British public transport system is fragmented and uncoordinated which makes planning an integrated system almost impossible. The bus and rail systems were privatised in the 80s and 90s in the belief that free-market competition would increase choice and reduce inefficiencies. Instead the relative cost for passengers has increased, passengers numbers have decreased and bus routes have been cut. In short there has been market failure.
Transport for Wales (TfW) was set-up in 2017 as an arms-length body wholly owned by the Welsh Government to procure a rail franchise and has now evolved into a multi-modal transport organisation. In 2023 the TfW remit was amended to clarify its role as a multi-modal operator charged with delivering modal shift and is totally mode agnostic on how that is achieved.
I set out the vision for its evolution into Transport for Wales 2.0 in a speech to a major rail conference in April 2023 I made clear that TfW was a behaviour change organisation, and rail is just one way that is to be achieved. It needs to sit alongside bus, active travel and private transport:
“Lets stop thinking of the concept of ‘passengers’ and start thinking about people, their lives and their needs when we are designing and delivering transport services that will change behaviours.
A good rail offer is obviously an important part of getting people to use their cars less but very often it will be bus that is the right, and best value solution, to connect communities. It is not just about infrastructure, it is about changing hearts and minds, and infrastructure is one way of achieving it”.
The Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, are passing legislation in 2024 /5 to regulate the bus industry and introduce bus franchising. The plans give TfW a role as a ‘guiding mind’ to co-ordinate bus and rail services under the organising principle of ‘One network, one timetable, one ticket’.
These plans amount to a whole system shake-up and the most far-reaching reforms in the UK (going beyond the bus partnership approach in Manchester) and will finally reverse the fragmentation of bus and rail privatisation.
We are building a Billion-pound Metro system for the Cardiff City region, a project that the former Chair of London’s Crossrail, Terry Morgan, said was the most ambitious project on the UK railways today. Not only are we building a new railway on top of an existing railway whilst it is still operating, but we are innovating with departures from industry standards to allow bi-mode tram-trains to run on newly electrified lines, and through old tunnels.
Welsh passengers have become accustomed to being the runt of the litter when it comes to rolling stock. But not any more. We are spending £800 million on brand new trains – many of them assembled in Wales by CAF in Newport. But people won’t believe it until they see it. Passenger expectations are so low though that when our brand new Stadler trains arrived at Bargoed train station, at the top of the Rhymney valley, the passengers didn’t get on because they didn’t think the train was for them.
Active travel
In 2013 Wales set itself an ambitious goal: to make walking and cycling the most natural and normal way of getting about. The Active Travel (Wales) Act passed through Wales’ Parliament with unanimous support after a civil society led campaign to support its passage. The Act required the Welsh Government and local authorities to map and plan comprehensive networks of walking and cycling routes that would enable people to make their everyday journeys conveniently and safely on foot or by bike. It required continuous improvement of those networks and reporting of that progress. It called for the promotion of active travel and for the enhancement of facilities for active travellers when constructing or improving highways
The Act has been a mixed success as the independent report of the Senedd’s Cross-Party Group on Active Travel found in its review of the first ten years of its implementation
The report said:
Much of the friction between TfW and local authorities arises from the former’s insistence on adherence to the Active Travel Act Guidance design standards (probably the most important achievement of the Act) and the burden that increased accountability for active travel spend places on under-resourced local active travel teams. Whilst systems need to be improved, the real solution lies in investing in developing the capacity and expertise of those local teams, with increased funding and status for staff and a comprehensive training programme that also offers a greater understanding of active travel to other teams in the public, private and third sector.
For 70 years we’ve focused on making the car the easiest and most convenient way to get around. So that’s what people do.
To meet our legal carbon duties we need to reduce car use and achieve a shift in transport modes. If we want people to use alternatives, we need to make their use convenient and frictionless too. We need to make the right thing to do the easiest thing to do.
Wales has made three structural changes alter the underlying dynamics to make sustainable choices easier for people to make.
1. Integrated transport planning
2. Legislated for Highway Authorities to plan for Active travel provision
3. Lower speed limits where people and traffic mix
Delivery context
Responsibility for transport policy has been devolved to Wales since 1999, but Britain’s unwritten constitution is far from neat, and Welsh devolution has been characterised by ‘jagged edges’ along the interface between central and devolved Governments.
Roads policy is fully devolved to the Welsh Government, but professional practice and standards are rooted in a UK-wide ’predict and provide’ approach to highways planning that locks Wales into a British approach.
Responsibility for Welsh rail policy sits in Cardiff, but decisions on (under) investment and maintenance in the railways sits in London. Bus policy is devolved to Wales, but the bus system is underpinned by UK legislation that dictates a deregulated approach based on competition and commercial decision making which makes the policy intent of ‘integrated transport’ impossible to achieve in practice.
And ‘active transport’ has fallen entirely to local transport authorities that like the rest of the UK have tended to see walking and cycling as a leisure rather than a transport mode, and therefore often beneath their professional dignity to invest time or money in.
Integrated transport
Whereas car-use is designed to be an easy to use end-to-end system, sustainable alternatives are often hard work and inconvenient. Unsurprisingly most people don’t use public transport, in fact 50% of people never travel by bus.
The British public transport system is fragmented and uncoordinated which makes planning an integrated system almost impossible. The bus and rail systems were privatised in the 80s and 90s in the belief that free-market competition would increase choice and reduce inefficiencies. Instead the relative cost for passengers has increased, passengers numbers have decreased and bus routes have been cut. In short there has been market failure.
Transport for Wales (TfW) was set-up in 2017 as an arms-length body wholly owned by the Welsh Government to procure a rail franchise and has now evolved into a multi-modal transport organisation. In 2023 the TfW remit was amended to clarify its role as a multi-modal operator charged with delivering modal shift and is totally mode agnostic on how that is achieved.
I set out the vision for its evolution into Transport for Wales 2.0 in a speech to a major rail conference in April 2023 I made clear that TfW was a behaviour change organisation, and rail is just one way that is to be achieved. It needs to sit alongside bus, active travel and private transport:
“Lets stop thinking of the concept of ‘passengers’ and start thinking about people, their lives and their needs when we are designing and delivering transport services that will change behaviours.
A good rail offer is obviously an important part of getting people to use their cars less but very often it will be bus that is the right, and best value solution, to connect communities. It is not just about infrastructure, it is about changing hearts and minds, and infrastructure is one way of achieving it”.
The Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, are passing legislation in 2024 /5 to regulate the bus industry and introduce bus franchising. The plans give TfW a role as a ‘guiding mind’ to co-ordinate bus and rail services under the organising principle of ‘One network, one timetable, one ticket’.
These plans amount to a whole system shake-up and the most far-reaching reforms in the UK (going beyond the bus partnership approach in Manchester) and will finally reverse the fragmentation of bus and rail privatisation.
We are building a Billion-pound Metro system for the Cardiff City region, a project that the former Chair of London’s Crossrail, Terry Morgan, said was the most ambitious project on the UK railways today. Not only are we building a new railway on top of an existing railway whilst it is still operating, but we are innovating with departures from industry standards to allow bi-mode tram-trains to run on newly electrified lines, and through old tunnels.
Welsh passengers have become accustomed to being the runt of the litter when it comes to rolling stock. But not any more. We are spending £800 million on brand new trains – many of them assembled in Wales by CAF in Newport. But people won’t believe it until they see it. Passenger expectations are so low though that when our brand new Stadler trains arrived at Bargoed train station, at the top of the Rhymney valley, the passengers didn’t get on because they didn’t think the train was for them.
Active travel
In 2013 Wales set itself an ambitious goal: to make walking and cycling the most natural and normal way of getting about. The Active Travel (Wales) Act passed through Wales’ Parliament with unanimous support after a civil society led campaign to support its passage. The Act required the Welsh Government and local authorities to map and plan comprehensive networks of walking and cycling routes that would enable people to make their everyday journeys conveniently and safely on foot or by bike. It required continuous improvement of those networks and reporting of that progress. It called for the promotion of active travel and for the enhancement of facilities for active travellers when constructing or improving highways
The Act has been a mixed success as the independent report of the Senedd’s Cross-Party Group on Active Travel found in its review of the first ten years of its implementation
The report said:
Much of the friction between TfW and local authorities arises from the former’s insistence on adherence to the Active Travel Act Guidance design standards (probably the most important achievement of the Act) and the burden that increased accountability for active travel spend places on under-resourced local active travel teams. Whilst systems need to be improved, the real solution lies in investing in developing the capacity and expertise of those local teams, with increased funding and status for staff and a comprehensive training programme that also offers a greater understanding of active travel to other teams in the public, private and third sector.
Whilst that capacity and expertise is being developed, the gaps need to be filled by a central resource, with a strengthened active travel function within TfW and the creation of a number of expert delivery units to provide support and assistance to local authorities, learning from the experience gained by the Burns Delivery Unit. There has been a massive and very welcome increase in capital spend in the last few years, from around£12m in 2016 to £70m in the current year. However, we have a lot of ground to make up.
In 2024 Wales is more spending per head than any other part of the UK this year. A sharp contrast to England.
We are making roads safer and more welcoming for people to walk and cycle, and for children to play out, by setting speed limits on streets in built up areas to 20mph as a default – but giving Councils the ability to exempt roads that are best left at 30mph.
Vehicle speeds are one of the key reasons why people do not walk or cycle or do not allow their children to walk or cycle to school. The data shows that encouraging more people to swap short local car trips for a bike journey or a walking trip improves local air quality and boosts levels of physical activity - this too makes a contribution to our modal shift targets to get us to NetZero.
It is the biggest change in the rules of the road since wearing seat belts became compulsory in 1983. And just as with that change, there is push-back, but there’s no going back.
Streets for people
On most local roads the speed limit has been 30mph since 1935, but communities could make the case to lower speeds on individual streets to 20mph.
From September 17th 2023 we turned that on its head. Instead of having to make a case for reducing the speed limit in a built-up area we reversed the position.
The default speed limit on so-called ‘restricted roads’ (typically streets with lighting) was set to 20mph, and a case would need to be made to set it at 30mph. In other words, Wales moved from an opt-in, to an opt-out system of setting local speed limits.
Before the new law came into effect just 2% of roads by length in Wales were 20mph, it now stands at 37%. The proportion of 30mph roads has dropped from 37% to 3%.
The decisions on which roads to opt-out of the default speed limit and keep at 30mph are local ones. Councils remain the local Highway Authority and have the flexibility to set local speed limits ‘that are right for individual roads, reflecting local needs and considerations’.
The use of this discretion has varied between different Councils and we are working with them on a review of implementation and some minor changes to the guidance to encourage consistency in the way it is being interpreted.
“The significance of the change being made in Wales should not be underestimated. No country has previously chosen to reduce the default speed limit for urban areas to 20mph” according to the report of the independent Taskforce led by Phil Jones that advised the Welsh Government on its implementation.
The primary driver for this reform is road safety. It is estimated that the change could result – every year - in 40% fewer collisions, 6 to 10 lives saved, and between 1200 to 2000 people avoiding injury. Research by Edinburgh Napier University has estimated this will save some £92m in the first year alone - three times the initial cost of implementation.
The latest data covers the first six months of the new speed limit from January - March 2024 this year and compared police recorded road collisions to the same period the previous year:
- 55% fall in the number killed (from 11 to five)
- 26% drop in total number of casualties (from 510 to 377)
- 23% fall in killed and seriously injured has gone (from 101 to 78)
- 27% reduction in number of slight injuries (from 409 to 299)
It is still early days so we should be cautious and it is a small sample size, but the trend is encouraging and tallies with evidence from other places where speed limits have been introduced
In 2024 Wales is more spending per head than any other part of the UK this year. A sharp contrast to England.
We are making roads safer and more welcoming for people to walk and cycle, and for children to play out, by setting speed limits on streets in built up areas to 20mph as a default – but giving Councils the ability to exempt roads that are best left at 30mph.
Vehicle speeds are one of the key reasons why people do not walk or cycle or do not allow their children to walk or cycle to school. The data shows that encouraging more people to swap short local car trips for a bike journey or a walking trip improves local air quality and boosts levels of physical activity - this too makes a contribution to our modal shift targets to get us to NetZero.
It is the biggest change in the rules of the road since wearing seat belts became compulsory in 1983. And just as with that change, there is push-back, but there’s no going back.
Streets for people
On most local roads the speed limit has been 30mph since 1935, but communities could make the case to lower speeds on individual streets to 20mph.
From September 17th 2023 we turned that on its head. Instead of having to make a case for reducing the speed limit in a built-up area we reversed the position.
The default speed limit on so-called ‘restricted roads’ (typically streets with lighting) was set to 20mph, and a case would need to be made to set it at 30mph. In other words, Wales moved from an opt-in, to an opt-out system of setting local speed limits.
Before the new law came into effect just 2% of roads by length in Wales were 20mph, it now stands at 37%. The proportion of 30mph roads has dropped from 37% to 3%.
The decisions on which roads to opt-out of the default speed limit and keep at 30mph are local ones. Councils remain the local Highway Authority and have the flexibility to set local speed limits ‘that are right for individual roads, reflecting local needs and considerations’.
The use of this discretion has varied between different Councils and we are working with them on a review of implementation and some minor changes to the guidance to encourage consistency in the way it is being interpreted.
“The significance of the change being made in Wales should not be underestimated. No country has previously chosen to reduce the default speed limit for urban areas to 20mph” according to the report of the independent Taskforce led by Phil Jones that advised the Welsh Government on its implementation.
The primary driver for this reform is road safety. It is estimated that the change could result – every year - in 40% fewer collisions, 6 to 10 lives saved, and between 1200 to 2000 people avoiding injury. Research by Edinburgh Napier University has estimated this will save some £92m in the first year alone - three times the initial cost of implementation.
The latest data covers the first six months of the new speed limit from January - March 2024 this year and compared police recorded road collisions to the same period the previous year:
- 55% fall in the number killed (from 11 to five)
- 26% drop in total number of casualties (from 510 to 377)
- 23% fall in killed and seriously injured has gone (from 101 to 78)
- 27% reduction in number of slight injuries (from 409 to 299)
It is still early days so we should be cautious and it is a small sample size, but the trend is encouraging and tallies with evidence from other places where speed limits have been introduced
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