The case for road rationing

Here’s the quandary. How in future can we make the kind of rapid advances we have made during the Covid crisis without waiting for a lethal pandemic — or worse — to force our hand?

We have, after all, made exceptional non-medical discoveries in the past few months. By being forced to adapt simultaneously, we have discovered better forms of collective behaviour which might never have emerged independently. I was an early convert to video-conferencing, yet even I was astounded at the extent to which the world can function remotely. We may soon look back upon commuting and the endless slew of physical meetings in the same way we view the practice of dressing for dinner in the 19th century: a time-consuming and costly potlatch ritual undertaken in the bizarre belief that the world would end if people no longer performed it.

I now routinely attend ten meetings on five continents in the same week. Equally important, I talk more to people all over the UK — no longer biasing time towards people in Londonor the south-east. Indeed it is worth remembering, if only as a thought experiment, that had Zoom existed in 1962, Decca would have signed the Beatles. In the event, they chose the Dagenham-based Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, in large part because they feared a Liverpool band would be too costly to manage in rail fares and accommodation, while Brian and a Tremelo or two could pop into town on an all-day Travelcard.

Yet something else has been discovered too, which we must not forget when the pandemic ends. For six months, the UK has suddenly been blessed with an extraordinarily good road network — for free — simply by reducing unimportant travel.