Why Waste A Crisis (Crude Oil Edition)?
Key Takeaways
- Oil supply disruptions consistently expose how deeply car-dependent countries like Australia and the United States are.
- A crisis creates a rare window for bold policy action that would otherwise take years to gain public and political support.
- This blog, in partnership with Sam Sklar, debates the opportunities for bold reform.
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We start with bus services. Opportunities include:
- Dedicated bus lanes. One of the fastest tools available to make buses more reliable and competitive with the car, but only if they are properly enforced and run end-to-end along a corridor.
- Increasing bus frequency. During peak hours is largely off the table in the short term due to driver and vehicle shortages, but shoulder peaks and weekends represent a more realistic opportunity.
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However, these suggestions might be too ambitious. Instead, we should focus on:
- Better signal timing and flexible street design. These can improve conditions for existing buses without requiring new infrastructure or significant additional resources.
- Transportation demand management. Tools such as employer incentives to stagger working hours or subsidise alternatives to driving can reduce pressure on the network without major capital investment.
What Next?
Have you considered the opportunities for structural reform to our bus services that the crisis might make possible?
Introduction
This is not the first, nor will it likely be the last, time a conflict disrupts the OECD’s absolute reliance on crude oil for transport. Since at least 1960, when OPEC added “predictability” to global markets, each international conflict that involves oil suppliers or the Middle East gets governments scrambling for policies to respond as their populations feel the pain: high prices at the petrol (gas) stations, improbable and unreliable flight costs, and so, so much more (did you know that over 99% of plastics are refined from crude oil and natural gas?).
For large, geographically sprawling countries like Australia and the United States, where car dependence is baked into the built environment, the exposure is especially acute. Whilst governments are inevitably focused on managing the immediate pain, the crisis also makes structural reform to reduce our dependence on oil for transport easier. As Rahm Emanuel, former adviser to President Obama and Mayor of Chicago, put it bluntly: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Indeed.
That's the premise of what follows.
Over the coming weeks, I'll be working through six policy responses to the oil crisis alongside Sam Sklar, a planner, writer, and the voice behind the Exasperated Infrastructures newsletter, who brings over 15 years of experience working in New York City (and across the world). Rather than simply advocating for our own views, we'll be arguing sides, including, at times, positions we might personally question. Making the strongest possible case for a position you don't hold is a time-honoured way of testing ideas, and we'll employ it here.
The six areas we'll cover are:
- Improving bus services: How do you make the bus a genuinely attractive alternative to the car?
- Lower or free fares: Should public transport be free, and if so, when and for whom?
- Promoting cycling: What would it take to make cycling as appealing as driving?
- Fuel and gas taxes: Is a crisis the moment to hold the line on taxes, to cut them or even increase them?
- Carpooling: Should we encourage carpooling as an option instead of driving alone?
- Speed limits: Should we “lower” speed limits on our roads where we can to promote safe driving?
We're starting this week with buses, the workhorse of urban public transport, and arguably the policy lever with the most immediate potential.
Improving Bus Services
The case for improving bus services rests on a straightforward premise: better buses mean more people leave their cars at home, reducing fuel consumption and easing the pressure that transport costs place on household budgets.
Research consistently points to the same handful of factors that determine whether someone chooses the bus over other options: reliability, frequency, speed, convenience, personal safety, and cost. Shift any of these in the right direction, and ridership tends to follow.
A wide range of policy tools can move these levers. Dedicated bus lanes, smarter ticketing systems, revised timetables, improved policing and CCTV coverage, and reformed fare structures all have a role to play. The challenge is timing. Many of these interventions take months or years to bed in. New timetables must be planned and communicated, operational improvements require procurement and coordination, and meaningful changes to policing take time to resource and deploy.
That makes the question of immediate impact worth asking separately. Three interventions stand out for their ability to deliver results quickly: new bus lanes, stronger enforcement of existing lanes, and increased service frequency. The rest of this piece focuses on these, exploring what the evidence says and how they might be implemented effectively.
The Arguments In Favour (Russell)
Dedicated Bus Lanes
Dedicated bus lanes are among the most powerful tools for quickly improving bus services. By shielding buses from general traffic, they deliver faster, more reliable journeys, and the speed with which they can be implemented makes them particularly attractive in a crisis context. More people on buses means fewer cars on the road, easing congestion and cutting fuel consumption across the network.
The traditional objection to bus lanes is political: drivers resent losing road space. But the fuel crisis shifts this calculus considerably. When driving has become genuinely expensive, the argument for prioritising a mode that moves far more people per lane becomes much harder to dismiss, and public tolerance for the trade-off is likely higher than ever.
That said, a bus lane that doesn't work is worse than no bus lane at all. Two things are essential to getting them right.
The first is enforcement. A bus lane clogged with private vehicles offers none of the speed or reliability benefits that justify its existence. Given the speed of implementation, a short warning period for drivers may be reasonable, but once that window closes, penalties need to be significant enough to change behaviour and keep lanes clear.
The second is continuity. Research consistently shows that broken or intermittent bus lanes undermine the benefits dramatically. A bus that makes good progress along a dedicated lane, only to be trapped in general traffic where the lane ends, still suffers the delays that the lane was designed to prevent. Lanes need to run end-to-end along the relevant corridor to deliver their full effect.
For routes where a dedicated bus lane proves too politically contentious, a carpool lane offers a workable middle ground. Drivers carrying two or more passengers can use the lane alongside buses, reducing the perception that road space is simply being taken away. If carpooling uptake is high enough to crowd the lane, the threshold can be raised to three or more occupants. As with bus lanes, enforcement is non-negotiable.
Finally, bus lanes provide something beyond an immediate fix. As more people discover that the bus is fast and reliable, the political constituency for keeping lanes in place grows, making what starts as a crisis measure considerably easier to sustain over the long term.
Higher Frequencies
Increasing bus frequency during peak hours is largely off the table in the short term, as most operators simply don't have the spare drivers or vehicles to make it happen. But peak hours are not the only opportunity worth examining.
The shoulders of the peak, the hour or so before and after the morning and evening rush, are a more promising target. Since the pandemic, employers have become significantly more flexible about start and finish times, and many commuters now have genuine discretion over when they travel. If bus services are available and reasonably frequent during those shoulder periods, a meaningful number of people can shift their travel time and avoid the worst of the congestion, but only if the timetable gives them that option.
Weekends represent an even clearer gap. In many places, weekend bus services are sparse enough to be effectively unusable for anything other than very local trips. The standard justification is that demand is lower at weekends, but this is partly a self-fulfilling outcome. When services are infrequent and unpredictable, people make other arrangements and stop expecting the bus to be a viable option. The fuel crisis offers a genuine opening to break that cycle. Better weekend frequencies would allow people who currently feel they have no alternative to driving to leave the car at home, saving money and fuel in the process.
Bus lanes and higher off-peak frequencies address different parts of the same problem. Lanes make the bus faster and more reliable for people who already use it and those considering switching. Better frequencies during shoulder peaks and on weekends open up new journey possibilities that don't currently exist. Together, they make the bus a meaningfully better option across a wider range of trips, and if retained beyond the immediate crisis, they lay the groundwork for a more resilient and efficient transport network over the long term.
The Arguments Against (Sam)
Sam’s section can be found on his blog here.
Conclusion
Should we be improving bus services during an oil crisis?
On one hand, dedicated bus lanes and higher off-peak frequencies offer a genuine opportunity to make buses faster, more reliable, and more attractive to people who currently drive. A crisis shifts public tolerance for bold moves, and interventions that stick beyond the immediate emergency can lay the groundwork for a less car-dependent city over the long term.
On the other hand, more frequent services require drivers and vehicles that most operators simply don't have spare. And in cities where ridership doesn't yet justify new infrastructure, there may be smarter first steps: better signal timing, flexible street design, and demand management tools that improve conditions for the buses already running.
Should cities seize the crisis to make structural moves that would otherwise take years to get through? Or should they focus on getting the most out of what already exists?
We'd love to know what you think.