Wales on the Move II: How do we move around in Wales?

Accessibility for the disabled

There have been improvements to this in the last few years. Since January 2020, rail operators have had to comply with disability accessibility laws (and all of the new trains and tram trains ordered by Transport for Wales will have level boarding as far as I’m aware). Similar requirements have been placed on bus operators since 2015. It’s not only physical accessibility either. Sensory adaptations which are fairly straightforward can make a big difference – such as audio and visual announcements on buses and trains.

While the vehicles themselves may be less of a problem, there are associated issues such as suitable access to railway stations and station platforms (in 2020, the Equalities & Human Rights Commission (pdf) said that around half of Welsh stations are not fully accessible to disabled people), overcrowding and unavailability of DDA-compliant taxis.

Centralisation of acute health services is also likely to either motivate people with certain medical conditions to drive because of poor public transport links to hospitals or medical centres. Where public transport is used, some illnesses may make travelling for long periods, with frequent stops along the way, uncomfortable.

Cost of running and maintaining a car

There are several costs associated with car ownership: the cost of the car itself (sometimes bought on finance), depreciation, fuel (always variable), insurance, servicing/MOTs, breakdown cover, vehicle excise duty (“car tax”) and associated fees (i.e. parking permits, tolls, fines and parking charges).

In 2023, one estimate¹ suggests the average cost of learning to drive has increased by up to £100 since 2020 to around £871. Meanwhile, the total cost of running a small car² is estimated at up to £1,200 a year. Obviously the figures will be different for works vehicles/vans and larger cars.

If you were unkind you could make the case that the cost of car insurance for younger drivers (under-25s) verges on extortion – averaging anything between £800-£2,000 a year. Though this is justified by accident statistics that show that drivers under the age of 25 are more likely to be involved in an accident, with young men in particular more likely to “write off” a car in the process³.

It’s, therefore, no coincidence that the proportion of under-20s in England holding a driving licence has fallen from 32% in 2002 to 21% in 2021. While that may be encouraging to supporters of sustainable transport, the uncomfortable fact that will see their smiles disappear is that only around 20-30% of over-20s don’t have a driving licence⁴.

The planning system & car dependency

This is mainly anecdotal, though there’s no doubt some serious academic work on how the design of our local communities has resulted in “induced demand” – increasing the supply of something (convenient road networks) which increases consumption (car travel).

I’ve mentioned before that planning is a legal process, meaning planning officers and developers work within the boundaries of the law and government planning policies. They can’t decide to turn down a planning application because “they don’t like it”. If a proposed development is within the rules and doesn’t get approval it can be challenged, sometimes in court.

Although the Welsh Government talks the talk on this, in reality, the planning system and economic policies have induced demand for car travel and led to some communities becoming wholly car-dependent. Things such as:

• It often being an unofficial job requirement to have a driving licence and/or access to a car.
• Opposition to new road safety measures that may benefit pedestrians, cyclists or public transport (i.e. lower speed limits, new bus lanes, cycle infrastructure) at the expense of car drivers because drivers may be used to being (and expect to be) at the top of the transport hierarchy by sheer weight of numbers.
  
• The push during the 1980s-2010s for out-of-town retail developments with large free car parks.
• Development taking place before social (i.e. schools, health centres, shops), public transport and active travel infrastructure is put in place.
• Section 106 agreements can only be applied within the immediate area of new developments, with knock-on impacts a bit further away (i.e. a pinch-point junction along a key arterial road) not being addressed at the right time.
• Some newer suburban estates are not regularly served by scheduled public transport services.
• Most modern houses on newer estates have private drives or space for multiple vehicles.
• Walking & cycling routes that are incomplete, improperly phased or don’t follow natural “desire lines”.

Safety

There are going to be different safety concerns depending on who you are.

For drivers and vehicle passengers, the main safety concern will be other traffic; 61% of people involved in accidents on Welsh roads in 2021 were car, taxi or minibus users⁵. Motorcyclists are proportionally more likely to be killed or seriously injured compared to their share of road accident victims overall.

For pedestrians and cyclists, the main safety concern will be drivers; in 2021, 25% of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents in Wales were pedestrians or cyclists whilst both groups also made up 20% of all casualties.

Males are more likely to be a casualty in a road accident by a ratio of around 3:1 to females. Though women would be particularly vulnerable to crime and harassment on public transport, when travelling alone or after dark.

Attitudes and stereotypes associated with different forms of transport

This was touched on in the previous section, but it’s important in determining why people prefer specific forms of transport for reasons other than cost.

Driving a car is often the most convenient means of point-to-point transport in terms of comfort, speed, ease of access, the ability to carry small loads and in meeting social expectations. You don’t need to change modes multiple times or wait for connecting services. Even if people use their cars less often (in terms of mileage) than they might think, having access to a car has more utility than public transport or active travel.

There’s also a “sunken cost”. To justify the expense of having a vehicle, you need to use it regularly – even for short journeys that might be better suited to walking or cycling, or longer journeys by train or bus/coach.

There are different social attitudes towards different forms of public transport too. As mentioned in How Wales Works: Bus Services – Funding & Future, there’s that quote often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, “A man that finds himself on a bus past the age of 25 is a failure” or something along those lines.

So buses (outside Greater London at least) get pigeonholed as a “transport means of last resort” for people who can’t afford to drive or are no longer able to (i.e. retirees with free bus passes). By contrast, rail travel – despite being far less flexible and far more expensive than buses – is the public transport of choice for white-collar commuters so is held in higher esteem.

So there’s often more political pressure to solve problems with rail services – or build new lines, or reintroduce light rail – than there is to sustain and develop perfectly reasonable and massively overlooked bus services, which carry more passengers than trains and trams each year.

On top of this, there are militant anti-cycling views that often cross into conspiracy theory territory (i.e. some of the nonsense about 15-minute cities or low-traffic neighbourhoods) or are stereotypes based partially on fact (i.e. “MAMILs” and cyclists not always obeying the highway code).

Service cuts

In the year to March 2022, there were up to 11% fewer bus drivers compared to a year earlier and – more anecdotally – several local authorities have withdrawn subsidies for bus services since 2010.

Research from WISERD in 2022⁶ suggested that between August 2019 and August 2021 (so the period immediately before and during the Covid-19 pandemic), around 15% of bus routes in Wales were lost and 3% of bus stops became redundant.

There were estimates that the withdrawal of a final tranche (worth £28million) of pandemic-related emergency funding for bus services in July 2023 would have led to the further loss of up to 15% of all bus routes in Wales. A few weeks before that “cliff edge”, additional funding was found to bridge the gap between the emergency funding ending and a new funding system being put in place which will protect most routes (at least in the short-term).

Rail has, by contrast, appeared to recover reasonably quickly from the financial impact of the pandemic – thanks largely in part to UK Government bailouts. The main issues there are reliability, industrial action or (particularly on parts of the Wales & Borders network) long-term closures for engineering works.

Air travel has been particularly hard hit. Several operators – such as low-cost carrier, Wizz Air – have withdrawn services from Cardiff Airport.

Service reliability

It’s become common for bus services to be cancelled at short notice, particularly if they run extremely late or there are driver shortages.

Rail punctuality in Wales isn’t great either. While in 2022, 4% of scheduled train services in Wales were cancelled (4% isn’t a big number by itself, but it works out at more than 10,000 services) only 67% of train services arrived either on time or no more than a minute late⁷.

Rail service efficiency peaked during the pandemic, with few cancellations and more than 80% of services being on time. So when it comes to rail travel, you could conclude that the more services you run along the same infrastructure the less reliable it becomes, meaning it can’t be seen as the be all and end all when it comes to public transport unless the infrastructure capacity is increased (i.e. doubling or quadrupling track, improving signal headways).

Commercial fare structures & transport poverty

The traditional way by which transport operators cover holes in their budget is to increase fares. Although bus fares in Wales haven’t increased to the same extent as they have across Great Britain as a whole, fares were 74% higher in 2022 than in 2005 and 174% higher than in 1995.

Subsidies aside, bus fares aren’t regulated – but some rail fares are (i.e. season tickets). There have been estimates that, on average, rail fares have increased by more than 20% since privatisation in the 1990s.

While passengers can get reasonable deals on rail fares booked in advance, “turn up and go” fares on some longer-distance routes verge on extortion – especially when compared to rail operators (often, but not always, publicly-owned) in the rest of Europe.

Together with the costs of running a car discussed earlier, public transport and taxi fares add to the growing problem of “transport poverty”. Evidence given to a Senedd inquiry in October 2022⁸ revealed that more than half of households in Wales were spending 10% or more of their income on transport.

Even if you have money, some public transport fare structures – particularly bus services and taxis – can be confusing. Meanwhile, rail fares aren’t based on distance. So it can be cheaper to travel in one direction and more expensive to travel a shorter distance in the other direction (from Bridgend, for example, a single ticket to Port Talbot is more expensive than to Cardiff).

Some operators have (or are moving to) contactless and digital payments, but that might not be suitable for everyone.

1. Marmalade (19th January 2023). “The cost of learning to drive”. https://www.wearemarmalade.co.uk/driver-hub/news/the-cost-of-learning-to-drive
2. Estimated at Money Helper using the vehicle registration of a petrol Fiat 500 listed on Auto Trader: https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/everyday-money/buying-and-running-a-car/use-our-car-costs-calculator
3. Direct Line (26th May 2017). “Gone in 90 seconds: one car written off every minute-and-a-half in the UK”. Available at: https://www.directlinegroup.co.uk/en/news/brand-news/2017/gone-in-90-seconds–one-car-written-off-every-minute-and-a-half-.html
4. UK Department of Transport (15th December 2022). “Full car driving licence holders by age and sex aged 17 and over: England since 1975”. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/nts02-driving-licence-holders
5. Welsh Government (20th July 2022). “Reported road casualties: 2021”. Available at: https://www.gov.wales/reported-road-casualties-2021
6. Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research & Data (8th April 2022). “Deprived areas hit hardest by changes in access to bus services during the pandemic”. Available at: https://wiserd.ac.uk/blog/deprived-areas-hit-hardest-by-changes-in-access-to-bus-services-during-the-pandemic/
7. Welsh Government, Statistics & Research. “Rail transport: April 2021 to March 2022”. Available at: https://www.gov.wales/rail-transport-april-2021-march-2022
8. Senedd Cymru; Climate Change, Environment & Infrastructure Committee (October 2022). “The future of bus and rail in Wales”. Available at: https://senedd.wales/media/bpalfjzn/cr-ld15371-e.pdf