“We actually don’t know what is going to be at the end of all this,” Lord McLoughlin – who was Secretary of State from 2012 to 2016 – told a webinar discussion last week.

“I think the desire to travel will continue,” he said. “But whether it will continue in the same way or whether we will want to be that bit more secure in our own cars is an interesting dimension. I very much hope that we can see our railways go back.”

He emphasised the importance of giving people choice in how they are able to travel and added that, while the pandemic has presented a range of new problems for the sector, “some of them were existing problems and transport has got to adapt to what is going to be a changing world and changing society”.

In particular, he told the event organised by the Independent Transport Commission, the next 20 years will see “dramatic change” with the automation of cars and increasing focus on environmental concerns. “That gives us opportunities and challenges”.

Lord McLoughlin also welcomed the Government’s recent announcement of £137M in investment to upgrade capacity and improve connectivity on the Hope Valley Line between Sheffield and Manchester.

Regarding future demand for rail travel, Network Rail principal policy lead James Angus told the event it is not yet clear how people will respond when given the option to return to commuting, but he warned that passenger numbers could fall by between 20 and 50%.

“There is a lot of reassuring that needs doing,” he said. “We have not really yet tested what happens to people’s tolerance for crowding on services,” he added, and said the industry is preparing to trial more flexible ticketing options in expectation of a shift away from five days a week commuting.

Transport Select Committee member Chris Loder – Conservative MP for West Dorset – also addressed the event. “We are in a really tricky place with the railways,” he said. “Do we take urgent action now to better match demand with capacity, or do we keep the capacity going as it always has and it costs a lot more money?”

He said a key theme coming through in Parliament is around the need for the transport sector to be more agile with its interventions to respond to current demand, rather than focusing so heavily on long term strategies.

“At this point I think we have to be very careful not to continue the message about ‘jam tomorrow’,” he warned. “We have done that for years and we in Parliament are now particularly interested in what action can we take to make our railways sustainable.

“It is as problematic in terms of the environment to be carrying around 12 carriages of hot air with nobody in them as it is to have a few more cars on the road,” he said.

James Angus of Network Rail agreed that there are “no benefits at all to carting around fresh air” and said: “There are some interesting calculations to be done on what is the break even point in the post pandemic world. How many people do you need to make a train more carbon efficient than an electric car? That’s the kind of question we need to be willing to face up to.”

Picking up on Chris Loder’s point about moving away from a ‘jam tomorrow’ approach, Highways England’s executive director of strategy Elliot Shaw said: “I think there are a variety of factors that are likely to push a lot of transport operators to do interventions that are a little bit more agile in nature.”

For example he suggested “everyone is going to think twice” before building large civil engineering schemes, which are often carbon intensive and take a long time to plan. Increasing focus is likely to be placed instead on operational interventions, using technology to get the most out of the network and encouraging behavioural change, he said.

Also addressing the event, Mott MacDonald’s managing director of transportation Steve Canadine predicted that Covid will not lead to the death of cities. “It is very difficult to imagine we will be in a world where the concept of a successful city is going to be abandoned just because of the pandemic,” he said.

“There will be changes in how we plan but I’m not sure cities and our need to meet will disappear.”

Independent Transport Commission trustee Sarah Kendall chaired the session.

(Photograph: Office of Rail & Road and licenced for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)