What obstacles do Local Authorities need to overcome to secure a net zero mobility future?

The SCOPE is a podcast exploring climate change as a force on, and result of, the built environment.  Our guests are Monika Büscher, professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, and associate director in the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, Greg Marsden, professor of Transport Governance, Institute for Transport Studies, Keith Mitchell, director of Transport and Place, Stantec and Richard Wenham, chair, England’s Economic Heartland.

Following the launch of Bridging the Gap, an extensive report examining the most viable routes towards transport decarbonisation, the group discuss key takeaways for local authorities and the systemic, societal shifts needed in the years ahead.

Transcript

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Welcome everybody, and I'm delighted you're able to join us for this podcast, which is the latest in the Scope series, which explores the impact the built environment has on our climate. Today, we're looking to drive an informal and I'm sure informative discussion around a net zero mobility future and some of the challenges that stand in the way of this ambition. An area that we're looking at, particularly today are the challenges faced by local authorities who are, I think it's fair to say to a large extent the co-ordinators and facilitators if we are to make this future a reality. So to discuss this today, I'm really delighted to be joined by an esteemed and diverse panel of four skilled individuals in this field. But to kick this off, I'll just introduce myself as a starter. I’m Graham Hughes, who worked most of my professional life in local government. I've also worked a bit of time in consultancy, but the majority in local government and a good amount of assets, a senior leadership level. So I've been very much exposed to all of the sort of arguments around climate change, climate emergency net zero. And I've seen really firsthand some of the challenges, the pressures and the real issues. I will say personally, absolutely committed to changing the way that we do things. So so I'm really, really delighted to have been asked to chair this podcast and to discuss with with colleagues some of the key issues. So what I'll do now is invite our our full contributors to introduce themselves individually, and then we'll get into the discussion. So Greg could ask you to kick off, please. Thanks, Grant. I'm Greg Marsden. I'm a professor at the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. Recently been directing the the company network, which was focused on building a science place based decarbonization and thinking how the decarbonization transition was going to work in a range of different contexts. Excellent. Thanks for that, Greg. Really look forward to talking through some of those key issues. Can I invite Tom? Keith, can you just introduce yourself next, please? Yep, sure. My name's Keith Mitchell. I'm a director of transport and Place at Stantec, but I've worked for very nearly 40 years in transport land use planning in a way that seeks to support the delivery of new developments and new infrastructure. Alongside that, I've taken a really close interest in policy and research and professional development. I became chair of the Transport Planning Society in the early 2000 and around 2010. I was chair of the National Infrastructure Planning Association, and somewhere in between that I was Director of Gas Skills, which was responsible for delivering professional development and apprenticeship in the transport sector. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for that, Keith. And again, look forward to discussing the issues with you. Richard, can we move on to you next, please? Yes, thank you. Graham. So I'm Richard Wenham. Professionally, I'm a chartered engineer and I've worked in the development of new energy vehicles and also currently as a transportation consultant. Politically, I was recently leader of Central Bedfordshire Council and also privileged to be the chair of England's economic Heartland, which is our local subnational transport board responsible for the link between local authorities and the Department for Transport. Interestingly, England's economic heartland also took lead TV role for decarbonization. Excellent. Thank you, Richard. And finally, Monica, over to you. My name is Monica Bushell. I am Professor emerita at Lancaster University, and I have worked at the Center for Mobility Research for many years where I studied what mobility means to people, society and the planet, and how to address the contradictions, challenges opportunities in creative ways. Lovely, thanks. Ever so much, Monica. So thank you all for your introductions to offer some context, I think before we plow into the discussion, I think certainly from my perspective, it is certainly the case. There is no question the UK has made progress in addressing the challenge posed by climate change. But all of us around this table know we've got a lot of particular interest in transport and the transport sector is the largest remaining contributor to greenhouse gases in the UK and the Government's approach to reducing emissions as set out in its decarbonizing transport plan, focuses mainly on a transition to electric vehicles, which is of course well underway. And I think it's beyond dispute that that is an important part of the way forward. But I think really to sort of kick off this discussion, I think we should ask ourselves, do we need to do more than this to meet our net zero targets? And certainly I think central government support for the agenda is at best fragmented national policy, support for transport, decarbonization is is thin. And it would seem that at times there is little recognition of the scale and the pace of change that's required to meet the the net zero mobility goal. Sir Greg, I was just wondering if you could give us your thoughts just to kick us off on that. Yeah, Thanks, Graham. The Transport Decarbonization Plan July 2021. So just over two years ago acknowledged, although it was not particularly transparent, that we can't just get there with the transition to electric vehicles, we actually need some fundamental travel behavior change as well. So just to put that in context, new cars being bought today are likely to be scrapped in 2040. And so whilst we've got this really positive piece of legislation, the zero emission vehicle mandate, which which is phasing out sale of fossil fuel cars by 2035, we're still going to be selling millions of fossil fuel cars. So for the next decade that is going to be on our roads for years to come. Now, we estimated the size of the gap at the end of last year was something like 180 to 200 megatonnes. What does that mean to the listeners on this podcast? Well, in the year from 2019 to 2020, that's our worst pandemic year. We saw an overall reduction in surface transport emissions of about 21 megatonnes. It's almost like ten pandemics worth of behavior change that way that we're behind the curve. Probably the most concerning thing about it is that the government's really walked away from that part of the agenda. And the longer we leave it, the more difficult it becomes. Right? So, I mean, it's I think what you're really sketching out there, Greg, is I mean, it's a huge challenge, isn't it? As I said in the introduction, and you're you're indicating EVs alone are just not going to deal with that issue. I think at this point it's worth bringing Keith in because in 2021, Stantec embarked on a substantial research project alongside Decarbonize, to consider the challenges and what was necessary to move this forward. And the result of that study, which is now being published, Bridging the Gap assessed the size of that gap and started to indicate how we need to look at things differently to to move forward. So really I think the big question is what can we do about bridging that gap? And I think referring back, if we look at Stantec study, it found that people and place need to play a much, much bigger role in helping us achieve net zero mobility targets. So, Keith, can I bring you in now to just tell us a bit more about the study and where it really leaves us and what what it tells us for the future? Yeah, so Graeme and a bear in mind this was intended to look at the role of people in place. Doing something in a completely hypothetical vacuum seemed to us to be a very difficult thing to do. So. So we decided to identify a case study that we could work with and we were delighted to partner up with Barry Council Transport for Greater Manchester and Transport for the North, all of whom worked very closely with the study team to help us provide some local context about movement, travel patterns, carbon impacts and the like. And it's important that we say that because whilst we were not trying to sort of replicate actuality what was happening on the ground, what we were trying to do was to use an existing place to replicate the kind of challenges that there would be should you be setting a policy to try and meet net zero mobility future. So one of the first things that we did was using that local data was to ask Craig to use the work that he'd done looking at the carbon gap in a document that he produced called Reverse Gear, and to look at that more specifically in a local context and to come up with an estimate that we could use in our study work that would bring some sort of sense of reality to what it was that we were trying to achieve. And we did that looking at four different ways in which the future might develop that were based on transport for the North, what they call future travel scenarios and what we found from that was that none of those futures met in full. The carbon gap that was identified and that at the very best a 20% reduction in travel distance by car would be required in order to meet that net zero mobility pathway. And basically the findings were that there are really only plausibly two types of future that are likely to lead us towards a net zero mobility pathway, those being either a technology led pathway or an urban transit led pathway. So that gave us a target to consider about, you know, how would we in this local context of bury, create a set of travel patterns that would reduce the amount of travel distance by car in the local area by 20%? And how could we create a new development and new land uses that would support that transition? And so that was really the starting point for the study, which then went on to look at what you could do to try and bridge that gap, how you could reduce travel distance by car by 20% or more, which would be required. And we used the local travel data that was supplied by transport for the law to look in some detail about what would be possible. Because what we're finding more as we get into the study is how important local context is and people's travel behavior locally is. Because whilst it's very important to consider how we influence shorter journeys, so those journeys that can be replaced by active travel, that actually has a relatively small impact on carbon generation and that we would need to focus on journeys between five and 20 kilometers where the journey distances are longer and most frequent. And so, for example, those journeys might be to work or to school. There's much more detail which for anyone who wants to go back and read on the website, what becomes very clear is that really significant changes need to be made to certain types of travel, certain types of journeys in order to make the difference that needs to be made. And if that's going to happen, then investment needs to move away from what has been going on before, i.e. building more capacity for cars in order to to deal with congestion and delay. But actually produce a road network that supports both the transition towards electric vehicles and the provision for alternative loads in these areas where journeys can successfully be transitioned away from car use. And whilst this is sort of a theoretical model that we're building, what it's telling us is that it's very different from a future that Decarbonizing Transport was envisaging in which everybody's travel habits continued as they were and could then be transitioned onto an electric vehicle. That's about as quick as I can sort of summarize what what was about 18 months worth of study. But what it led to was this realization of the significance of the challenge and think and consideration of what we would need to do in order to bring society along with us, in order to provide local authorities with the tools and skills that they would need in order to be able to lead this new future and to prepare developers and investors with a different way of bringing forward land use and infrastructure into this environment in a way that could create the catalyst for change. Thanks. Thanks for that, Keith. I mean, she says a hugely complicated subject to summarize in just a couple of minutes, but I really think we can all get a clear picture of what this study has done and concluded. So thank you. So I just wanted now to bring in Monica, if I can, because I think, Keith, I mean, you sort of touched on it when you talked about societal changes, but Monica, one of the concepts I think that you've developed and very much we've included as part of this work is that of societal readiness, because you've termed it So could you tell us a little bit more about the concept and how that plays into this, this whole area of work? Yes, sure. so when we're talking about change on that scale, so the IPCC, for example, talks about 40 to 70% of the change of net zero having to come from behavior change. What is it that we're asking people to do? Mobility means to people. It's freedom, social connection, social mobility. It's really a massive part of their lives. And so asking for demand reduction and people to stop using their cars so much is a must ask. And at the same time, we have lots of experts like yourself and Keith and Richard and Greg working on trying to find solutions for that. And we are very focused on trying to find ways of how we can help people to switch to smart mobility. So limited mobility on demand or electric vehicles, the whole discussion is very much framed by this idea of technology readiness assessment or market readiness. So we look at are these technologies, are these solutions ready logically and rationally? Do they have good business models? Do they work? Do they function? And oftentimes the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, they they work. So electric vehicles live, for example, that business model for on demand transport. And yet there are multi billion projects, many of them that have failed. And so for us, it's often very easy to say, well, people are just not ready for change on that scale because they are so attached to their cars. And what our research has shown is that actually people are very much locked into auto mobility systems where work school leisure activities are all a drive away and to just expect them to change how they get there isn't a really fair ask when oftentimes the solutions that we make are not designed with the practicalities and the attention to the values that people have in mind. So we set up a societal readiness assessment methodology that this is four dimensions. The first is actually the decarbonizing efficacy. So how much of a difference does having electric vehicles actually make when you consider everything including embodied emissions and also where the batteries come from? And then think about social justice who is able to afford an electric vehicle, who can't, and where do they charge it? What is the supply and the ethics of the supply chain? And also on a wider frame, the social good. How good is it for society to just replace an auto mobility system that's actually producing a lot of congestion and pollution with electric vehicles? And then the fourth dimension is on how fit these solutions for whole decarbonized future mobility systems. And so when we got into discussion with Keith and Barry Council, we actually decided to experiment with the methodology and assess the vision of urban transit for technology led solutions for Barry using that methodology. So getting people to school visions in terms of the decarbonizing efficacy and social justice, social good and the fit for a decarbonized society. And we did that in a creative workshop with residents and non-governmental agencies, and that produced really interesting discussions about do people who live in Bury who appreciate the landscape around and the kind of semi-rural way of life. How would they envisage a more urbanized form of transit? And it wasn't so much to assess the visions, but to really evaluate them and to enable a broader set of perspectives to come into constructing these solutions, which is the way also of reducing and monitoring the conflicts that arise around, for example, ideas of the 15 minute city have produced huge controversy. So I've given you enough of an idea of what society is for and how it can be used. Monica, thank you for that. I mean, that's really fascinating. So it's I think you're painting a picture of it being more than just how prepared people also change. There's a lot more to it than just that. Is that is that a fair summary? Absolutely. We need to ask not just how ready are people to change, but also how ready are the solutions that we are providing them with for society, for people to adopt into their everyday lives and in a good way? So I mean, it's a really interesting way of looking at things. So so right now, if I can just turn to you, Richard. So obviously you're very, very well versed on the workings and decision making within local authorities. So maybe you can just just kick off. Just what are your kind of immediate feelings about the the Bridging the Gap report and what we've heard so far from a local authority perspective? So, I mean, the report is it is a hugely useful contribution of the debate and to be able to compare the baseline just about managing scenario to the to design outcomes of a net zero digitally distributed. I think so a major contribution signposting where we need to go. But the reality of where we are today in terms of the planning process and also the use of residents is that I think unfortunately that we're focused on short term goals. So the government housing framework, the housing numbers that we're required to produce. In the case of Central Bedfordshire, more than 2000 new dwellings every year and maintaining the five year land supply so that we can actually be masters to some extent to the planning destiny needs that We're continually thinking in terms of how we manage those short term targets. And that means that despite sustainability being a key elements of the piece, when it's balanced with all those other needs, I think it's inevitable that local authorities look to what they need to meet the more immediate government pressure. So to make this these changes we're talking about needs a much more fundamental rethink of where we are with with the on the balance of sustainability, with the decision making. And just to pick that up with some examples. So in a rural area, which is the area that I represent, a lot of planning applications of either the informal dwellings or for small parcels of land, perhaps 2200 dwellings on the edge of an existing settlement. Those settlements don't necessarily have very good public transport. Busses are intermittent, often not daily, and there really are no other alternatives to use use motor vehicles. And whilst active travel is case mentioned, can pick up some of that load, by its nature it doesn't have a huge impact on carbon emissions and because of the pressure we have to grant planning permission to meet our housing targets, then inevitably we end up with more of the same and that means these new developments are efficient around the car. It's not all bad news. When we've looked at town center developments, then we've granted permissions where the parking standards have been significantly relaxed, where they'd be much less than one car dwelling, whether it's good public transport near to a mainline station and good bus networks and those two things. Now coming along are being unoccupied. So be really interesting to see from a societal point of view, do those residents engage and use public transport as envisaged or to the pressures for them to outscore leads to areas that are perhaps not served by public transport means that they end up going back to the car and then then clogging up the town center. So the jury's out on that for a town development. See, in a city, of course, it's much easier because of the provision of public transport, the reliability, the frequency, the permanence. It's much more established. But we do also have an issue about public transport provision. Is it going to remain there over a period of time? So in a city environment, that's pretty much it. You give them in a mixture of market towns and small villages. Bus services can withdraw on a very short notice and persuading people that they should rely on public transport in those circumstances is is exceedingly difficult. We have a lot of evidence in Dunstable, Luton, where we have a guided bus way, and that's driven a huge increase in the use of public transport networks for commuting and other uses because it has some permanent feel to it. People feel they can rely on it into the future. So I think that's something that we need to consider about the future developments. Yeah, that's a really good, good point, Richard. I'm just going to sort of explore a couple of those points a little more. I mean, you've touched on both new developments and clearly the area that you represent is an area of significant pressure in terms of growth and development. But I'm just kind of interested how do we we've all of that together because I think it's something like 1 to 2% of the building stock is renewed each year. So each year that leaves 98, 99% of the existing built environment there. So so how do we kind of weave together from a local authority perspective, given all the challenges that you face, something for that vast majority of existing properties and people, you know, would you touch on public transport with it? But with the services and locations that they have, how can we sort of bring those those areas forward? Whereas at least theoretically you can plan for what goes into a new development and what sort of options there are available to people. So I think where we're considering the large urban extensions to developments, sort of 500,000 or more dwellings, then there's significant planning value uplift and that needs to be captured to remodel the way that the mobility is provided in these new developments. So moving much more towards a mixture, probably a blend of the digitally distributed. I know the net zero scenario is foreseen in bridging the gap. Well, then we have to look at how maybe a large additional settlement on the edge of a market town impacts on the existing transport network in the town and what can be done with new technology and modal shift to not overwhelm a town center with new activities and new people visiting the town center. So that clearly provision of different approaches to transport is vital and it's great to see some of the new trials occurring with autonomous semi-autonomous pots with not key university in in other places and certainly that's something that Keith and I looked at in the context of a large urban extension in Central Bedfordshire. And unless we can achieve that, then we're going to be continuing down the same road in five, ten years time wondering why we get the same result. And I think Monica touched on the important point, that this requires a very significant change in the way people view transport. We need to move away from the individual individually thought to agency as a service and much greater use of public transport. Absolutely. And I mean, on that point, we've talked about infrastructure, Richard. You've just talked there about mobility in the broader sense. And Greg, from your perspective, given all of the the kind of work that you've looked at over the years, and what do you think new mobility services that help to move this forward? What could they look like? What what are the options available to us? Well, I think we have to be realistic about how quickly we can deliver the kind of public sector infrastructure we've thought about in the past, you know, decades ago, a tram system up and running. It's just not quick enough for the climate emergency. So what are the things we can do quickly? Well, it probably not well known, but a third of cars don't move on any given day, and they're stationary for about 95% of the time. And yet we spend £58 billion a year as a country just on taxing, owning and maintaining vehicles, never mind moving them if we need to do things differently and if we know that it's going to be very difficult to service those through the kinds of traditional approaches we've had, then I think we need a more creative conversation with communities about, well, well, what could meet your mobility needs and how would that need to be organized? And I think part of the solution is not in being quite so individualized in how we're trying to to live our lives, but think about where we can have greater access to shared resources. And I think the data and technologies available, the questions we grapple with with Monica, is, you know, well, what do people want? How would that help them to live the lives they need to live? Is that actually a better way forward? I think just saying travel 20% less, you're taking stuff away from people. It's a negative conversation. I think we need positive conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that £58 billion figure that that really sort of brings into sharp relief, doesn't it, about how much money is being spent effectively, what those individuals were getting for it. Keith, Could can I just bring you in? Monica, I want to come to you on the societal readiness in just a second. But, Keith, you know, you talked about lengths of journeys and so on, and that's been looked at as part of the Bridging the Gap study, but which sort of journeys do you think could have that benefit from these different sort of options for mobility? I mean, is there are there certain target areas, certain target types of journey? I suppose the thing to say is that it's yes, there were in the study in relation to the place that we were looking at and you know, there isn't a, you know, a cookie cutter, one size fits all type of approach to this. But the first thing says it's really important you understand the local context, the local journeys and how people are moving around and what their local needs are. Because what we're not trying to do in creating these new futures is to detrimentally affect the quality of people's lives and their ability to prosper. What we're trying to find a way of is creating a system of mobility that allows them to achieve the same objectives, but without the same level of impact on carbon. In our particular circumstance, what we were seeing was that the journeys within the local area were incredibly dispersed, which for anybody who understands, you know, the delivery of public transport and mass transit along particular corridors, the one thing they find really hard to do is provide for very diverse and dispersed journey patterns. And so actually that makes consideration of alternatives really hard. And and in our particular circumstances, we could see the areas where we would have more opportunity to provide effective alternatives would be the journey to work and the journey to particularly secondary school, as well as providing places that allow people to substitute what would otherwise be long distance journeys. And so that brings in the importance of providing the right land, uses amenities and facilities and services locally so people don't need to travel so far. So it's really those two areas I think that we thought was important to focus on and not necessarily demonizing the car as a wave in the long term, people getting around because it's going to continue to be an important part of people's mobility future, but to perhaps find ways of them not needing a second car or being able to not have to do certain journeys so often or substitute work journeys for different types of mobility. So I think that that's the sort of area that our work began to help us focus on. Okay, Now, that's very interesting. KEITH Monica, can I can I just turn to you briefly? So I'm just kind of interested, if you could just say a little bit more about how the work you've been doing, you know, could in a practical level assist in authority such as Richard's that may want to try and make these changes. But there are all sorts of issues that they face. At a practical level, how could your research help make those decisions? And I'm probably going to use the use the words wrongly, but sort of help to try to persuade people about what needs to be done. I know that's not necessarily what the concept is about, but could you describe a bit about that, please? The discussion really highlights beautifully The jungle of options that local authorities are faced with. And in our work with local authorities, we found that they often find it very difficult to make procurement decisions that are right for net zero transport. So, for example, if you want to get people out of the individual cars and build the up, then which one do you procure? And the current ways of measuring and assessing potential candidates is very much focused on do they work that they have the right business model? So what we are experimenting with is using the societal readiness assessment framework to assess how much carbon do they actually save, how do they address the equity and justice issues. And it's a matter of the local authority themselves doing an assessment. So if they send out a tender, for example, they the companies that are providing solutions can make us a set societal readiness assessment themselves, but the local authority also will run through. And it's it's an online platform where you can go through the assessments, answering a set of 12 questions on these different dimensions. But it's also a non-governmental organization for community activist groups who can do this inside of it. An assessment and what you get from these different perspectives. Having engaged in the same process is a platform for a really constructive, creative, extensible but constructive discussion over for example, where to put the cost of where to pack all the cars and charge all the cars and exchange the cars, and what kind of ownership models should that be? So that be a company owning it, or should it be the community who owns it? So we're trying to support this sort of engagement that gets everybody clear on the fact that we're all in the same boat in a climate, climate emergency and we need to make difficult decisions, but we need to take everybody's needs into account. That's such an important concept, Monica, And it's really quite enlightening to sort of hear this way of looking at things. I'm just just keen to return just briefly back to the politics and Richard, if I turn to you. So us, as you said in your introduction, obviously have an experience of the kind of local authority level, but also at the subregional transport sort of body level. I just wonder if you could just give us a thought about where the real leadership, the real political leadership for these quite momentous changes that are potentially needed should come from is is it something that can be done at the individ tual local authority level or is it something at the much more strategic, you know, subregional transport bodies or similar? So what are your thoughts on that? Richard Well, obviously the subregional board is the link between individual local authorities and the transport and the conduit. Those ideas and I will see suggestions. So it plays a vital role in communicating that and also in carrying out research projects, both the local transport provision. So for example, in the economic heartland is a range of the connectivity studies. It's also done work on provision, things on TV, charging points and layout. And I'm sure that similar to other subnational transport ports as well, English national like Heartland also is the lead board for transport decarbonization that set the actual political leadership with these changes has to be carried out at a mix of governance level and local authority level, because those are the organizations where residents, voters get chance to have their say. And whilst there is public access to subnational board meetings, they're much more about the site transmission and generation of information. I don't think politicians can can avoid the responsibility either locally or nationally. It has to be led in both those domains. Absolutely. That makes complete sense to me. And I think what it what it says is we need right the way through the system, commitment, leadership and, you know, drive to to actually make the necessary changes. So thank you for that, Richard. I Think probably it's time to draw things together. I mean, it's been an absolutely fascinating debate and I think it is something that we could have talked about for many hours. I mean, we focused today on the issue of planning and place and the role that that has to play, and particularly rich with your perspectives, local authority, involvement. So I just in wrapping up, I'd just like to go around maybe if we can start with you, Greg, just to just give us just briefly one thing that you think local authorities could do to bring us a step closer to a net zero mobility future, what do you think would be the most important thing that they could do right now. If we recognize that that in politics that we're in, in talking about traffic reduction in the way we do, we've actually got to engage communities with positive alternative visions and try and have a debate about how we can do this rather than what we're taking away from people. Thank you. Thank you for that. Great. Keith, clearly you've looked at this a lot as part of the study and as your professional life. Yeah. What what's your view on the one thing that could be done by local authorities? I have a similar perspective to Greg in the local authorities have a development plan process that they have to work through, and an important part of that is understanding the vision of the area is and at that point we're not asking ourselves the question I don't think about know what that positive alternative vision for our place might be, nor are we being required to do that at a sort of national government level. And there's certainly no push for that from from the bottom up. So reinventing and refreshing what we think the vision is for our place, taking account of what the long term implications of the climate emergency are and how those are coincident with creating better places for people to live and work. You know that seems to me to be fundamentally where the change needs to take place. Okay. Thanks, Keith. I'm just turning to you, Richard. You're obviously very much at the sort of heart of political leadership and decision making in your in your area. What are your thoughts about what your other authorities could do? So I think we have to go back to the monarchies. We need to see a shift away from people being reliant on individual car ownership. And that's also a very difficult thing to do. And we have to do that by giving them alternatives, not by making life so difficult to own. It used cars that they have against the policy. Just say that they're going to continue with what they've been doing already and not consider any change. So what can local authorities do in the short term to do that? We've got to make it much easier to use alternatives. And for most of us, that means we've got to look at how we can make bus services in our areas more reliable, more frequent and more responsive to where people want them to go, and also make sure that they have a sense of permanence. They can't be withdrawn at very short notice by providers. We can build on what I think of the £2 journey, which I think has driven quite a significant increase in bus usage. And also I think it's going to require much more local authority involvement in the planning and provision of those services so that people could rely on them. As soon as I see a service change. This continues. How is change frequencies changed then for rural residents? It's straight back to the car. Yeah, absolutely. At that point, Richard, I think I think really what you're building is a picture of, you know, technology can play a part in autonomous vehicles and so on, may well offer a cheaper future, but actually placemaking is also vital to how those services are provided. So, yes, thank you. Thank you, Richard, for those perspectives. Monica, can I just just turn to you finally, just for your thoughts on the one thing that local authorities could do to get us to this future? Yes, I think we need democratic mechanisms for good collaborative evaluation of social and environmental value in the solutions that we're developing to resolve this emergency. And that could be using the ones that we have, but also new ones like suicide flood in the settlement. Thanks about that. I'm upset a couple of times, but I think the concept of societal readiness is a fascinating addition to this debate. Really just leaves me now to thank you all, gregg, keith, richard, monica, for your contributions. Really, really fascinating debate here. Very much the start of, I'm sure, much, much wider debate, challenging some of our preconceived thoughts, looking for different ways of achieving our objectives. So thank you very much for your your work on the subject. Thank you for your contributions today and look forward to seeing how this debate moves forward. So thank you, everybody. Thank you to.