Quite a few years ago, the Welsh Government came to the conclusion that the best way to improve the job chances of people in areas like the south Wales Valleys was to beef up the public transport infrastructure so locals could travel to a city like Cardiff for work.
That was always the main selling point for developing the South Wales Metro system, which should improve connectivity considerably when it is up and running in 2024.
But the pandemic has changed the working dynamic for many of us, who now spend much of our time working from home.
This will have significant implications not just for transport, but also for the viability of town and city centres, which are likely to see fewer people working in them.
Earlier this week Lee Waters, the Welsh Government’s deputy minister for climate change, appeared on a BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme that looked at the implications of home working.
A passionate advocate for active travel, Mr Waters told the programme that fewer people will be engaging in the traditional daily commute, making it possible to accelerate decarbonisation.
He said: “This offers us an opportunity to pull some policy levers to help us in that aim.
“You look at the economic model that we’ve all developed for years – this agglomeration model where you suck economic activity into cities. It’s often at the expense of somewhere else.
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“So yes, the city centre may be thriving, but at the expense of smaller towns and cities that are really struggling.
“This allows us, I think, to level up, to distribute people to places they live nearby, reducing the harmful environmental impacts of that kind of behaviour, but also spreading wealth around.”
The Welsh Government has set a target of getting at least 40% of the population working from home for at least part of the week.
To prove its commitment to the cause, it has seen a drastic reduction in the number of staff going into its Cardiff headquarters to work. Of 2,000 employees it is quite normal to have only 200 working in the office at any one time.
It’s establishing a network of working hubs that enable people to do their work in smaller towns.
Mr Waters said: “This is a chance to drive footfall back into towns that are already struggling, so we’ve developed quite quickly some hubs where we’re going to try different approaches,
“For example, in Rhyl we’ve brought an old nightclub back into life, done it up and it’s now available. In Pontypridd we’ve opened up a big new office building for the public sector to come and use the facilities there rather than driving and commuting all the way into Cardiff.”
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Why, then, continue with the Metro?
A Welsh Government spokesman said: “Plans for a South Wales Metro are progressing well and it remains an integral part of our Transport Strategy for Wales.
“The strategy is clear: we need to change the way we travel in Wales. Firstly, by avoiding the need to travel where possible, secondly, through active travel and, thirdly, through increased use of public transport if we are to hit our climate change targets.”
Professor Mark Barry, who devised the South Wales Metro, fleshed out the argument.
He said: “People are saying this is the end of the Metro, because everyone’s going to work from home.
“I don’t think so. You’ve got to recognise that pre-Covid and even now, most transport mobility choices result in people using cars – 80% of movement is car-based.
“Irrespective of Covid, we’ve got a massive decarbonisation challenge, which means we’ve got to get out of our cars.
“We need to have far less car use. I worry about this electric vehicle lobby, where basically they are getting us to pay for their charging infrastructure and then sell bigger cars which require more energy to move, negating any benefits of a change from petrol.
“Covid has taught us that some of us can work from home, but I think most of us now know that we don’t want to do that all the time.
“The reality is that there’s an opportunity for a blended, balanced working system.”
Prof Barry highlighted the drawbacks of constant work meetings over the internet.
“A lot of what Zoom and Teams do is make the interchanges very transactional, very dry,” he said. “There’s no emotional content, there’s no body language, there’s no broader communication.
“The implication is that when you’re doing simple things – tick boxes and agreeing stuff – this works quite well. But when you say, ‘What do you think about this? What are we going to do about that? and, Who’s going to tell so-and-so about that thing they can’t do?’ we need to get much more nuanced and open questions up.
“And when you need to disagree robustly, this kind of interaction doesn’t work.
“So, for me, the opportunity when we get back to some sort of normality, maybe I’ll want to spend two days in the office, maybe I’ll want to work at home a day a week, and maybe a couple of days I’ll work in my remote workplace. And for different people, for different organisations, those ratios will change.
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“So I think the opportunity is there will hopefully be less peak-time one-direction commuting, where everyone gets to the car and heads off somewhere at 8.30am, which is particularly bad for public transport infrastructure because you’ve got to design it around a peak of movement that is disproportionate to the overall chronological demand.
“The reality is that even if there was 20 or 30% less demand on movement, that should be 20 or 30% less car use, not public transport use.
“The opportunity is not to say we don’t need a Metro. It’s actually we can use the Metro more efficiently because we can flatten the demand by getting people out of their cars.”
Prof Barry said the decarbonisation targets the Welsh Government has signed up to are “very stark” and that we’re going to need more flexible working, more public transport and more active travel.
“The real lesson is that, driven by decarbonisation, we need a lot less car use,” he said.
“When people tell me about e-vehicles, I say I’m all for technology and electric vehicles, but first of all let’s cut car use in half.
“We need more Metro and less cars.”
Reports of the Metro’s imminent demise appear to be way off beam.