Consumer Response to Public Transport Improvements and Car Restraint: Some Practical Findings

Most local authorities in Britain are trying to help public transport. Priority use of the road system, fare subsidies and new innovatory services are all being used to encourage increased patronage. Positive discrimination, in the form of car restraint, is also being used to discourage car use. All this is being done with the blessing and encouragement of central government. Local authorities must belp buses to operate reliably and economically in the face of competing demands for road space. Comprehensive measures of traffic management … should give proper priority for the movement of buses and for restraining private car movements. Some initiatives have been and are being tried in urban areas with novel forms of transport, such as dial-abus…. These measures stand in stark contrast to the policies of the late 1960s. At that time the declared aim of most local authorities was to improve and extend the road system to achieve free-flow traffic conditions, although this was tempered by the thought that ‘… the measures required to deal with the full potential amounts of motor traffic in big cities are so formidable that society will have to ask itself seriously how far it is prepared to go with the motor vehicle….’