Centre for Cities in partnership with TUC Wales show how increasing public transport use in Wales will help Welsh Government boost economic growth and reach net zero.
Different parts of Wales will have very different roles to play in helping the Welsh Government hit its ambitious transport targets.
The Welsh Government is aiming for an ambitious but laudable target of 45 per cent of journeys by public or active transport by 2040. This comes at a time when Welsh public transport is facing lower ridership levels, higher fares, and Transport for Wales (TfW) stating that pre-pandemic timetabling “just isn’t working”.
To reach the target, policy must recognise that different parts of Wales have different levels of potential public transport ridership. Our latest report Fare outcomes: Understanding Public Transport in Wales’s Cities shows the disproportionate role that cities, especially Cardiff, will need to play if Wales is to reach its target.
Cardiff has a greater role to play in helping reach the 45 per cent target by 2040 because it has a much higher share of jobs in its city centre, and because congestion is higher in Cardiff than in other cities. As shown in Figure 1, over 25 per cent of its jobs are in its city centre. This is important because public transport is more suited to serving commutes that run to one destination than commutes that run to many points.
Source: ONS, BRES. City centres are defined based on all the LSOAs within 0.5 miles from the pre-determined city centre point. Wrexham city centre is considered the central LSOA (Wrexham 011B).
In Newport, Swansea and Wrexham, employment is much more dispersed and spread over different business and industrial parks. Connecting numerous employment sites is a much more difficult task for a public transport network and they are much more easily served by the car as a result.
Cardiff’s congestion is also another reason why it will be easier to shift drivers onto public transport. Currently, Cardiff is one of the most congested cities in the UK, as shown in Figure 2. These levels of congestion provide an opportunity to encourage a modal shift towards public transport.
Source: ONS, BRES. City centres are defined based on all the LSOAs within 0.5 miles from the predetermined city centre point. Wrexham city centre is considered the central LSOA (Wrexham 011B).
The performance of public transport is governed by two factors: the size of the network and how many people live within the catchment area. The big challenge for Cardiff is that its network is too small and too few people live within the catchment area.
Cardiff’s network, unlike Newport and Wrexham, is smaller than the average of other comparable UK cities as shown in Figure 3. The South Wales Metro and Cardiff Crossrail and Circle lines will go some way in improving this.
Even given this, Figure 4 shows that the number of residents living within the best-connected areas of Cardiff is below the average for other comparable UK cities. The differences are even greater when comparing Cardiff to Nantes, a similar sized European city. The network size in both is similar relatively similar, but the residential density of the catchment area is one third less dense in Cardiff. This means if Cardiff is going to play a large role in meeting the Welsh 45 per cent target, then network expansion is not enough, and more homes around stations will be needed.
Source: ONS (UK Travel Area Isochrones (Nov/Dec 2022) by Public Transport and Walking) and Census 2021 (Scottish cities, Census 2011).
Source: ONS (UK Travel Area Isochrones (Nov/Dec 2022) by Public Transport and Walking) and Census 2021 (Scottish cities, Census 2011).
Putting policies in place that recognise that different parts of Wales have a very different level of potential public transport ridership will be central to the Welsh Government’s ambitions to reduce car usage.
Cardiff should make the largest contribution to incentivising Wales’s use of public and active transport because employment and residents are more concentrated. Policy should focus on:
In Swansea, Newport and Wrexham, as employment is more dispersed, policy should focus on:
You can read more of the report’s findings on our landing page.
Centre for Cities in partnership with TUC Wales show how increasing public transport use in Wales will help Welsh Government boost economic growth and reach net zero.
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