4 - Public transport and the journey to work

Summary

Studies of public transport range from straightforward descriptive accounts of the history of particular railway, tramway or bus companies, or of transport provision in particular towns, to attempts to understand why public transport was provided at all, and to explore the motivations of different transport entrepreneurs, especially the reasons for local government intervention in the provision of intra-urban services. Authors of the latter are anxious to dispel any naive technological determinism of the kind that divorces invention from its economic and cultural context, and assumes that adoption is an inevitable consequence of innovation. Once intra-urban transport exists, and especially once there is competition between rival railway companies, or between independent bus, tram and waggonette operators, it is reasonable to argue that innovations are adopted in anticipation of greater profits, or to prevent the erosion of profits by competitors. But to explain initial investment in public transport we have to understand why investors put their money into something new, rather than something proven. We may quickly arrive at the same conclusion as Daniels and Warnes: ‘given that most entrepreneurs could not provide a transport service ahead of demand it seems reasonable to suggest that changes in urban structure preceded transport improvements’. The implication is that transport services facilitated urban growth and change, they permitted suburbanisation, segregation, and the separation of residence and workplace beyond walking distance, but they did not initiate change.