Why do we commute?
Created | Updated Oct 27, 2005
As I stand crushed into carriage waiting clearance to London Bridge I start to wonder how we ended up in such a state.
The problems:
Disruptions to trains damages the economy, even when they are working there are too many people trying to use too few trains. As trains are a vital service the companies and employees can hold the country to ransom.
Why are we all using trains?
1. Travel to work
2. Travel for pleasure
3. Not wanting to use a car
4. Buses take too long, are unreliable and lack information
5. It is too far to walk
I would be interested in any other reason.
The explanation
Lets tackle why do people travel to work. Business tend group into one place to leverage economies. There are three major economies; your suppliers are close at hand, skilled potential employees are close, and this is where your customers are. Manufacturing has already moved out of the city, and services have moved in. A lot of services businesses do not need to be closed to there suppliers or their customers. A business based in the city of London would not expect its work force to be based in London. They might expect to hirer people based in Brighton and Cambridge. An employee will want to maximise the quality of life, remember a higher take home pay packet can improve the quality of life. Business benefit from a larger pool of candidate employees - the central location being the hub for transport system gives them this. To summaries: the business are in their current location because a large amount of people are willing to travel to that position.
Why don’t people use other forms of transport? The access roads to the city centres are clogged, there is no spare capacity for increasing the amount of people. People use buses for short journeys, but not to go a significant distances as this requires changing buses. The problem is the commuter cannot judge how long their journey will be, and it becomes less accurate with each change. When a commuter is standing at a bus stop the have no idea when the next bus is due, only a few have electronic message boards. It is unlikely that these will spread due to acts of vandalism. There are some long distance coaches, these only travel between a few locations and only at peek times. Riverboats glide effortless into many city centres, but they only travel in the central area and are more expensive than trains.
This is all well and good, and may explain why people travel to work and why they use trains, but what changes can be made to reduce the train problems. Increasing the subsidies will increase the quality of trains, improve the track and generally allow more people to use them. Obvious really? The problem is that this will just exasperate the situation, metaphorically feeding the fire. This will subsidise firms based in the central hub to the detriment of firms based closer to the employee’s residence, there are even more candidate employees willing to travel. To follow this logically we really require a cut in the subsidy to force firms to relocate, or to uncap train ticket prices
Will taxing or banning cars help, as not all buses and coaches have lanes for there own use. To what extent does the congestion decreases the effect buses. How will the car commuter get to work? Some will take the train, but trains are already beyond their maximum capacity. Others will take buses and coaches. Say that on the whole it allows more to travel to the city centre. Again it would just mean more employees are willing to travel, effectively helping the firms at the centre to the detriment of others
If we slowly withdrew the subsidy from trains this would raise the ticket price, and make other forms of transport more attractive. There would be more demand on the cars, busses, coaches, and even riverboats may become viable. There would also be a more significant change, people would no longer want to commute. Companies wishing to access these people as customers and employees will have to relocate or allow for remote working and purchasing. The market at the moment is at a false equilibrium, we shouldn’t be working the way we are.
