Coaches, parking and car pooling are policy levers overlooked by transport strategies. Why is that, and how could it change?
The coach is never invited to the party when we talk about better public transport in England
Some things just don’t count in transport policy. They barely get a mention in transport strategies – national or sub-national. Even though they could contribute to cutting traffic and boosting public transport use, and even when that’s what these policies are achieving across the channel. For the purposes of this piece, I will home in on coaches (which could fill gaps in the English rail network), parking (arguably the easiest form of traffic restraint) and car pooling (booming in France, ignored in the UK). Later I’ll explore why they are sidelined, and how that could change, but let’s start first with coaches.
Coaches
Want to quickly improve connectivity between towns and cities? Well the coach would be a green and quick way to fill in the gaps in the rail network – plugging left behind places into the rail network and making the long distance public transport network more dense with connections. But it is not something that we ever talk about in England. Indeed, each of the four nations of the UK does something completely different on coaches. And here I should say that I’m
taking a broad and regular Brit’s definition of a coach service – which is that it’s better than a normal bus and it isn’t a short distance stopping service.
So, Northern Ireland has a network of Goldline express coaches run by a state-owned corporation (Translink), which is part of the wider state-owned and integrated public transport network. Wales has the TrawsCymru network (and I realise I am stretching my definition of what a coach service is to breaking point given the network is primarily provided by buses). TrawsCymru does a good job in making the connections which the rail network doesn’t, and is a creature of a state-owned transport authority (Transport for Wales). Scotland has Citylink, an express coach network run on a commercial basis, which competes with rail as well as providing some links that rail doesn’t. England has commercial coach companies running on trunk routes (often in competition with rail) as well as various express bus services (some filling gaps in the rail network) that are provided on all sorts of different basis and to different extents in different areas. Competition has recently expanded with more operators battling it out on core corridors.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting that many countries (such as South and Latin America) the coach is long distance public transport – with rail playing a minimal role – or no role at all. In many of the countries where rail plays a minimal role the coach is also the premium option – faster, more regular, more reliable, more comfortable, and more expensive. Rail is the distress purchase – it’s slow, infrequent and unreliable… but cheap. In other words the relative social status of coach compared with train is opposite to that in England. In England coaches are the downmarket choice only used by the time rich and cash poor – and foreign backpackers. If many English motorists wouldn’t be seen dead on a train then many English rail travellers wouldn’t be seen dead on a coach. Meanwhile, globally, the coach is also taking on more of a role on overnight travel (including luxury sleeper coaches in mainland Europe). In parts of the world it can also provide services like parcel pick up and delivery (something which rail in Britain withdrew from years ago).
Given the potential of these policy tools surely its time to drag them out of the shadows and get a debate started
So is there any hope of England following the Wales and Northern Ireland approach of filling in the gaps in the rail network with an integrated long distance bus/coach services? Not sure. England’s much bigger and there is significant devolution going on within it – which is not happening in the other three nations. You could also argue that the city regions pursuing franchising are in a good position to rethink and expand the role of express buses as part of their franchising plans. There’s also the danger that as soon as you start talking coaches in Whitehall its terribly clever inhabitants will say ‘why don’t we use them to replace rail services or as a reason to ditch of rail re-openings’ (although one way round this is what the Netherlands does – which is that by and large buses are not allowed to duplicate rail services).
Despite all this, the fundamental point remains that the coach is never invited to the party when we talk about better public transport in England. So much to offer – but stuck in the policy crawler lane.
Parking
Car parking can get people very exercised (if you do something to the parking outside their house). But wider car parking policy – not so much. Even the transport planning world can hardly stifle a yawn when parking comes up. Yet if you think about it parking is a very effective form of traffic restraint. If you can’t park there, there is no point in driving there. However, parking has none of the technocratic nobility of road pricing which gets the economists going. Nor does it stimulate the rush of righteous indignation about who gets to hold the paint brush when road space is divided up between the modes. But as the celebrated city planner Jan Gehl said: “In Copenhagen, we have reduced the number of parking spaces by 2% to 3% every year for 40 years. People haven’t noticed because we’ve given them something better in return: more space for people, more cafes, and more life.”
There are also some practical reasons for the lack of interest in parking as an instrument of wider transport policy. In many places parking doesn’t sit with transport planning within local authorities. It’s in another silo. Often with the objective of generating more income – rather than more bus trips. In the larger urban areas parking doesn’t even sit in the same building as the public transport planners. Public transport is at the city region level with parking at the district level. And parking is messy – and worse, its messy in different ways in different places. The split between privately and publicly-owned car parks can be very different – as can the proportion of off to on-street parking – and that’s before you get to ‘grey parking’ – where empty lots transmute into rough and ready cheap parking on a somewhat shadowy basis.
Although parking may be complicated and resolutely unsexy, it’s still one of the most subtly effective tools on traffic restraint there is. It’s time this particular Cinderella came to the ball.
Car pooling
Whilst Britain’s largest carpool operator (Zipcar, with 600,000 members) was closing down in the UK, car pooling is going from strength to strength in France. Whilst the Brits exclude it from transport policy, the French have systematically encouraged carpooling with grants, tax incentives and campaigns. For example, in Paris 900,000 people now carpool every day to go to work. Measures they’ve taken to get there include making a lane of the orbital ‘Périphérique’ motorway lane car share and public transport only. There are also four routes (serving 18 municipalities) in Paris where app-based car share provides a fixed stop service. In effect it’s like a demand responsive (but fixed route and stops) bus service. In addition, there is licensing of car share service providers which sets requirements on vehicle standards, emissions and customer service.
Some may well argue that carpool could abstract from public transport. My view is that cars dominate journey share so much that in many places even doubling public transport use (and good luck with that by the way) wouldn’t make much of a dent in car use. To cut traffic and traffic congestion we also need to raise car occupancy rates. And that’s what car pooling does – or it could do if it was considered as legitimate transport policy.
As we’ve seen part of the reason why these policy tools aren’t considered is that they don’t really live anywhere within the transport planning functions of sub-national transport authorities. Meanwhile, the Department for Transport is happy to let certain dogs lie and put its energies elsewhere – especially where invigorating new policy areas might come with calls for a new line in the departmental budget.
Prioritise everything and you prioritise nothing. But given the potential of these policy tools surely its time to drag them out of the shadows and get a debate started on how they could be better utilised than they are? The integrated transport strategy would be the right place to do this. We shall see
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: For decades Jonathan Bray has been at the forefront of making progressive change happen on transport – from stopping the national roads programme in its tracks in the 1990s to getting buses back under public control in the 2020s. He is an advisor to the Welsh Government on bus franchising and an independent advisor. www.jonathan-bray.com
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Three policies stuck in the crawler lane
by Passenger Transport on Feb 2, 2026 • 11:30 am No CommentsCoaches, parking and car pooling are policy levers overlooked by transport strategies. Why is that, and how could it change?
Some things just don’t count in transport policy. They barely get a mention in transport strategies – national or sub-national. Even though they could contribute to cutting traffic and boosting public transport use, and even when that’s what these policies are achieving across the channel. For the purposes of this piece, I will home in on coaches (which could fill gaps in the English rail network), parking (arguably the easiest form of traffic restraint) and car pooling (booming in France, ignored in the UK). Later I’ll explore why they are sidelined, and how that could change, but let’s start first with coaches.
Coaches
Want to quickly improve connectivity between towns and cities? Well the coach would be a green and quick way to fill in the gaps in the rail network – plugging left behind places into the rail network and making the long distance public transport network more dense with connections. But it is not something that we ever talk about in England. Indeed, each of the four nations of the UK does something completely different on coaches. And here I should say that I’m
taking a broad and regular Brit’s definition of a coach service – which is that it’s better than a normal bus and it isn’t a short distance stopping service.
So, Northern Ireland has a network of Goldline express coaches run by a state-owned corporation (Translink), which is part of the wider state-owned and integrated public transport network. Wales has the TrawsCymru network (and I realise I am stretching my definition of what a coach service is to breaking point given the network is primarily provided by buses). TrawsCymru does a good job in making the connections which the rail network doesn’t, and is a creature of a state-owned transport authority (Transport for Wales). Scotland has Citylink, an express coach network run on a commercial basis, which competes with rail as well as providing some links that rail doesn’t. England has commercial coach companies running on trunk routes (often in competition with rail) as well as various express bus services (some filling gaps in the rail network) that are provided on all sorts of different basis and to different extents in different areas. Competition has recently expanded with more operators battling it out on core corridors.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting that many countries (such as South and Latin America) the coach is long distance public transport – with rail playing a minimal role – or no role at all. In many of the countries where rail plays a minimal role the coach is also the premium option – faster, more regular, more reliable, more comfortable, and more expensive. Rail is the distress purchase – it’s slow, infrequent and unreliable… but cheap. In other words the relative social status of coach compared with train is opposite to that in England. In England coaches are the downmarket choice only used by the time rich and cash poor – and foreign backpackers. If many English motorists wouldn’t be seen dead on a train then many English rail travellers wouldn’t be seen dead on a coach. Meanwhile, globally, the coach is also taking on more of a role on overnight travel (including luxury sleeper coaches in mainland Europe). In parts of the world it can also provide services like parcel pick up and delivery (something which rail in Britain withdrew from years ago).
So is there any hope of England following the Wales and Northern Ireland approach of filling in the gaps in the rail network with an integrated long distance bus/coach services? Not sure. England’s much bigger and there is significant devolution going on within it – which is not happening in the other three nations. You could also argue that the city regions pursuing franchising are in a good position to rethink and expand the role of express buses as part of their franchising plans. There’s also the danger that as soon as you start talking coaches in Whitehall its terribly clever inhabitants will say ‘why don’t we use them to replace rail services or as a reason to ditch of rail re-openings’ (although one way round this is what the Netherlands does – which is that by and large buses are not allowed to duplicate rail services).
Despite all this, the fundamental point remains that the coach is never invited to the party when we talk about better public transport in England. So much to offer – but stuck in the policy crawler lane.
Parking
Car parking can get people very exercised (if you do something to the parking outside their house). But wider car parking policy – not so much. Even the transport planning world can hardly stifle a yawn when parking comes up. Yet if you think about it parking is a very effective form of traffic restraint. If you can’t park there, there is no point in driving there. However, parking has none of the technocratic nobility of road pricing which gets the economists going. Nor does it stimulate the rush of righteous indignation about who gets to hold the paint brush when road space is divided up between the modes. But as the celebrated city planner Jan Gehl said: “In Copenhagen, we have reduced the number of parking spaces by 2% to 3% every year for 40 years. People haven’t noticed because we’ve given them something better in return: more space for people, more cafes, and more life.”
There are also some practical reasons for the lack of interest in parking as an instrument of wider transport policy. In many places parking doesn’t sit with transport planning within local authorities. It’s in another silo. Often with the objective of generating more income – rather than more bus trips. In the larger urban areas parking doesn’t even sit in the same building as the public transport planners. Public transport is at the city region level with parking at the district level. And parking is messy – and worse, its messy in different ways in different places. The split between privately and publicly-owned car parks can be very different – as can the proportion of off to on-street parking – and that’s before you get to ‘grey parking’ – where empty lots transmute into rough and ready cheap parking on a somewhat shadowy basis.
Although parking may be complicated and resolutely unsexy, it’s still one of the most subtly effective tools on traffic restraint there is. It’s time this particular Cinderella came to the ball.
Car pooling
Whilst Britain’s largest carpool operator (Zipcar, with 600,000 members) was closing down in the UK, car pooling is going from strength to strength in France. Whilst the Brits exclude it from transport policy, the French have systematically encouraged carpooling with grants, tax incentives and campaigns. For example, in Paris 900,000 people now carpool every day to go to work. Measures they’ve taken to get there include making a lane of the orbital ‘Périphérique’ motorway lane car share and public transport only. There are also four routes (serving 18 municipalities) in Paris where app-based car share provides a fixed stop service. In effect it’s like a demand responsive (but fixed route and stops) bus service. In addition, there is licensing of car share service providers which sets requirements on vehicle standards, emissions and customer service.
Some may well argue that carpool could abstract from public transport. My view is that cars dominate journey share so much that in many places even doubling public transport use (and good luck with that by the way) wouldn’t make much of a dent in car use. To cut traffic and traffic congestion we also need to raise car occupancy rates. And that’s what car pooling does – or it could do if it was considered as legitimate transport policy.
As we’ve seen part of the reason why these policy tools aren’t considered is that they don’t really live anywhere within the transport planning functions of sub-national transport authorities. Meanwhile, the Department for Transport is happy to let certain dogs lie and put its energies elsewhere – especially where invigorating new policy areas might come with calls for a new line in the departmental budget.
Prioritise everything and you prioritise nothing. But given the potential of these policy tools surely its time to drag them out of the shadows and get a debate started on how they could be better utilised than they are? The integrated transport strategy would be the right place to do this. We shall see
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: For decades Jonathan Bray has been at the forefront of making progressive change happen on transport – from stopping the national roads programme in its tracks in the 1990s to getting buses back under public control in the 2020s. He is an advisor to the Welsh Government on bus franchising and an independent advisor. www.jonathan-bray.com
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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