Net Zero targets ‘offer huge opportunities’

Transport analyst Chris Cheek sees opportunity for enormous growth as efforts to reduce car use prompt modal shift towards public transport

 
Each 1% of modal shift from car to bus could bring an 1.3 billion extra bus passenger journeys

 
Net Zero targets offer huge opportunities for bus operators from modal shift. That was the message from Chris Cheek to members of the Young Bus Managers Network at their meeting in Birmingham last week.

The transport analyst said that in 2019 534 billion kilometres were driven by cars, vans and taxis in Great Britain, and that equates, because of vehicle occupancy, to about 740 billion passenger kilometres. The UK Climate Change Act’s Sixth Carbon Budget assumes a 9% reduction in car miles by 2035 and 17% by 2050.

The reduction targets mean you have to strip 66 billion [car passenger] kilometres out by 2035, taking traffic back to 2001 levels, and 125 billion by 2050, taking it back to 1993 levels

“The reduction targets mean you have to strip 66 billion [car passenger] kilometres out by 2035, taking traffic back to 2001 levels, and 125 billion by 2050, taking it back to 1993 levels,” explained Cheek.

“So what would that mean for buses? A 9% switch [by 2035], which if it all came to bus – it won’t but it’s an interesting figure to mull over – would be a 203% [bus] patronage increase. If it’s a 17% switch [by 2050], it would be a 384% increase in bus demand. 

“I’ll leave you to think about where we get all the drivers to cover that. It is a huge challenge, but on the other hand, I think it’s a challenge we’d all rather have than the challenges of the last two or three years.”

Cheek added that each 1% of modal shift from car to bus could bring an 1.3 billion extra bus passenger journeys: “That’s the scale of the challenge and it’s the scale of the opportunity which might present itself to the industry over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Cheek said he was sure many were sceptical such a level of modal shift could be sustained, but he said the targets were enshrined in law meaning something would have to give.

There’s also growing public pressure to do something about [climate change], and I don’t just mean pressure from militant organisations like Just Stop Oil. It’s a generational thing, so the public pressure to do something proper to address Net Zero and the climate change emergency is growing

“There’s also growing public pressure to do something about [climate change], and I don’t just mean pressure from militant organisations like Just Stop Oil,” he added. “It’s a generational thing, so the public pressure to do something proper to address Net Zero and the climate change emergency is growing.”

However, he warned that at present there wasn’t any clear strategy from government to deliver the change that was needed. “There is also, I think, little public understanding of the scale of what we need to do to make this happen,” Cheek said.

“There is this continued portrayal about any of these measures that we need to take as a war on the motorist.”

 
This story appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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