The new normal
Does the car still have a place in a changing world, in which public transport is shunned? Possibly more than ever, writes Ed Wiseman
Alot has changed since September 2019, when I wrote an article about cars to mark the introduction of the 69 registration plate. I think it was about electric vehicles (EVS), the impact of Brexit and other simple worries of the day. Now, as we prepare to usher in the 70 registration on Sept 1, we’re midway through a global pandemic, traumatised by a year defined largely by calamity and uncertain whether we will still have employment – or indeed an economy – at Christmas.
People have tried to find positives in the situation, to discover any faint silver linings around the threatening cumulonimbus of Covid-19. Some of us have more leisure time, thanks to furlough or remote working. Some of us have spent more time with our families than we ever would have done before. Some of us have discovered new hobbies and developed new skills; some of us have had time to re-evaluate what we want to do with our precious years alive. The skies are bluer; the roads are quieter; you can clearly hear peals of birdsong in hitherto teeming parts of our cities.
But the area where progress has been most abruptly clear-cut is travel. Commercial air traffic, responsible for a great deal of the world’s carbon emissions, was all but paused for a number of weeks, and remains at a historic low. The morning commute was halted across Europe while offices and businesses closed, reducing the number of journeys and practically eliminating the “rush hour” for several months – again, a first.
Even now, as restrictions ease, the buses and trains that 12 months ago were standing-room-only still run half-empty, with just a few masked faces in the windows. And while traffic begins to return to its precoronavirus levels, it’s still not as busy as it was in September 2019.
Our newfound reliance on mail order deliveries has manifested as a newfound reliance on delivery vehicles, many of which are electric – your Saturday night pizza might now be delivered on an electric motorcycle, and your unnecessary online shopping might be dropped off in an electric van. Thousands of e-scooters, some of dubious origin and legality, now whirr around Britain’s streets, alongside bicycles and motorbikes. E-bikes, a
The area where progress has been most abruptly clear-cut is travel
The motorbike is enjoying a bit of a renaissance as people begin to appreciate the most socially distanced of motorised travel
distant descendant of the original 20thcentury pedal-and-pop mopeds still found in large numbers across France, are also soaring in popularity. A lot of these changes were inevitable, but coronavirus has surely sped them up.
Those electric scooters – the dinky kind with small wheels and T-shaped handlebars – aren’t yet legal outside a handful of pilot rental schemes, but they’re readily available online and already fairly ubiquitous in towns and cities across the country. Whether these machines will be officially deemed roadworthy (and indeed whether they should) is still a point of discussion, but for now they’re a growing part of the country’s transportation mosaic and should be filed under “potential future solutions” to the clean mobility conundrum. We obviously can’t recommend that you buy one yet, but perhaps by September 2021 we’ll have a special pull-out supplement on those, too.
E-bikes, on the other hand, are already “legit”, provided they fall within certain parameters. Offering gentle motorised assistance to the casual cyclist (thus extending the viable range of his or her pedal power) the electric bicycle is flourishing in the Covid-19 era. E-bikes can be almost as expensive as a used car – a four-figure price is the norm – and they still come with most of the risks and vulnerabilities of a normal bicycle, but are a good compromise for the commuter who would find a non-assisted 20 or 30-mile round trip daunting.
And it’s no real surprise that manufacturers of petrol and electric motorbikes and mopeds have reported an unprecedented spike in interest over the past few months, largely among people who had never previously considered the prospect. Cheap to buy and run, easy to ride through traffic and capable of far longer commutes than scooters and bicycles, the motorbike is enjoying something of a renaissance; Britain’s traditional lack of interest in powered twowheelers stems from a number of cultural and meteorological factors, but this trend could be starting to reverse as people begin to appreciate the most socially distanced of motorised private travel.
And then, of course, there’s walking. Pedestrians and wheelchair users are the people for whom our public realm should be designed, but they are sometimes overlooked – cycle lanes, electric car charging stations and high-speed rail are all more glamorous facets of sustainable mobility, and tend to
Most people will be more wedded to their automobiles than before, because the car ticks a lot of boxes for Covid-conscious travellers
command more attention than the provision of safe pedestrian areas. Now, helped a great deal by 2020’s warm summer, walking is back “in” – and should surely be considered the cleanest transport of them all.
So where does this leave the car? It’s been Britain’s primary form of transport for decades, with the vast majority of the country reliant on it for getting to work, to school and to leisure or healthcare facilities. The carcentric way that the UK has been designed over the past hundred or so years means that motorised personal transport is fundamentally woven into the fabric of our society. Houses exist without safe pedestrian access; villages exist without bus or train routes. British life, especially British family life, exists in orbit around the car.
And that’s something that is unlikely to change as a result of coronavirus. The emergence of a deadly and highly transmissible disease was never likely to encourage people away from the perceived safety of their private motor vehicles, and despite the development of new cycle routes – which I hope will have at least a small effect on car ownership and car over-reliance, especially in our suburbs – most people will be even more firmly wedded to their automobiles than before.
This is because the car ticks a lot of boxes for Covid-conscious travellers. A family of five can get around in comfort and safety, without interacting with anyone except each other. The interior of a car can be cleaned quite effectively, and if only one household uses it the chances of infection are extremely low. You can travel locally, further afield or even internationally without worrying about the person sitting next to you wearing their mask below their nose, or about the dozen or so people who have touched the armrest before you. In a car, you even get to choose your own music.
For urban commuters, the advantages are similarly clear-cut. In September 2019 a lot of us were in each others’ armpits on crowded, fogged-up buses, coughing and spluttering and generally being unhygienic. Or we were packed into trains with barely a foot between us, never mind the recommended two metres. It was rarely particularly pleasant, and never at all healthy, so despite the car’s not inconsiderable downsides we’re beginning to understand the appeal of a slow but socially distant commute by car.
I’ve long been a proponent of walking and cycling, and am lucky that I can make so many trips by foot and by bike. But my circumstances are, while not exactly rare, specific to my life in a modern city and there are many, many millions of Britons who are decades away from being able to give up their cars.
Coronavirus is an enormous opportunity for change – and those who can make positive environmental steps as a result of their new lifestyle should definitely do so – but it’s also a time for clear-headed rationalism. And for a lot of us, that means buying a nice, boring, possibly electric, car.
So claims of a transport revolution are, as usual, somewhat exaggerated. The private car – for all its many faults – still has a few miles in it yet.