As an invitation to tender for the South Wales Metro goes out and another metro appears on the transport horizon in Swansea Bay I felt the need to outline a different vision to one that can’t seem to escape the mass transit of people being a wanted, needed solution to our economic woes.

I and Indycube, the Community Benefit Society known for its coworking sites that I work for, have a 21st century vision of workplaces and communities that is rather new and radical, and one that I hope should make us stop and think about what we are currently doing. It’s not all about spending billions on big infrastructure to move people from point a to point b and back again. In a 21st century technological world is that what we aspire to? What we see as a solution to many of our problems? Perhaps we should consider that approach may be part of the problem?

Let’s not start off on the wrong foot, I’m all for improving infrastructure in Wales, the UK, wherever, the new Franchise for the Wales and Borders can only be an improvement. Wales and the Borders was clearly let down by the SRA in 2003 and we have had 15 years of paying for that.

I’ll go so far as to say I love a big engineering project, a bit of a geek about it, show me a new bridge or tunnel and I’m interested. The new Forth bridge in Scotland, how great is that? Crossrail in London is glorious – yes, we can argue the spend profile, the location, the lack of consequential but what a feat of engineering. I make my family drive around the Heads of the Valleys road just to see the A465 developing – been stuck in Brynmawr a few times lately which they "enjoy", but Clydach Gorge is going to be engineering exceptional.

I won’t delve into my background, it’s all available but I have years of experience in regeneration, place making and transport and understand a fair bit about it all and I like these sweeping visionary ideas. They are easy to support, whats not to like on the face of it? I also worked with - and liked - the old Transport Consortia approach - that had a lot of these plans, could certainly have come up with them if asked, but also knew the limited resources available. I’ll say losing them was a mistake, and as with many such things once gone they are hard to replace. One must wonder who is driving these plans forward without these transport professionals being in place?

But has anyone stopped and asked why we need all this additional mass Transport? I am putting my work hat on here, I work in a cooperative, coworking organisation called Indycube. When I came on board earlier this year remote working was just one aspect of what we do, important, but not the first on the list of the co working rationale despite having some great examples of how remote working works We host workers from across the UK and further afield and provide them with opportunity to work from where they live.

Isn’t that a great line, work from where you live. Pretty much how much of urban Wales has developed, places emerged as that’s where the raw materials where, so that was where the work was. Our original transport system wasn’t built to move people, it was to move resources, people were an afterthought. But things change, work has changed, and people have had to travel for that work.

That’s understandable, but let’s try looking at it things differently; all these fantastic transport ideas are about moving large numbers of people for work and home again. Isn’t it about time we asked why spend so much time and energy moving people around the country? Th''ts a UK wide question, but lest stay in Wales here.

Much of modern work, not all by any means, but much of the office based city centre work, is now done on a keyboard and a screen. My entire working career has pretty much been that, I could do it anywhere, but has mostly been Cardiff city centre based. Why are we moving people around the country, often to work in increasingly built up and harder to get to city centres to work at a screen they can have in their spare room (we’d prefer them in a coworking site obviously and there are reasons for that) but certainly in their home community.

Other roles are also under pressure and the role of the city is being looked at, it’s not going to simply be growth without question; read about that;









Isn’t that something we should start thinking about, why not instead of billions in high end engineering to move people, and here is the vision, why don’t we consider investing in the space infrastructure in our communities. Let’s get people working where they live again? Let’s get people walking to work? Or cycling - cycling to work was recently claimed to be the NHS magic pill;





Is that really that radical?

Let’s take one example, let’s make it one at the UK Governments expense to keep us in Wales happy, but you could take your pick of most of the new jobs in the Cardiff CBD. HMRC have just taken a lease for 25 years on wales most expensive real estate in central Cardiff attracted by a new build and an enterprise zone business rates relief programme. This city centre glass and steel edifice will house near 4000 staff, I’m being flexible with things here as I understand what they are doing and why and issues around security etc. But bear with me here.

Let’s look at it from another way, most of those 4000 are going to have to travel in, you will get some walkers, certainly some cyclists, but a lot are going to try continuing to try the car, I’m not a car hater – totally understand why people want that personal form of transport, and the move to electrification means a personal transport system is here to stay - and many are expected to use the new metro, be it bus or train. How many of those jobs need to be Cardiff city centre based? 10%?

Let’s consider how those people working in their communities could benefit from being able to work in the towns where the live.

CASH

Take a typical valleys town like Aberdare. Someone travelling into Cardiff daily could benefit in numerous ways, take the cost saving of a day ticket on the train, £11.60 a day. I know you can get weekly tickets but that’s nearly £60 a week. That’s a great saving. Yes, you may need one day a week with the wider organisation, the line manager, but that ticket saving adds up. (we could look at office space costs here too, but we'll come to that)

ENVIRONMENT

I’ll leave it to others to work this out but we all know less travel is better for the environment, how much carbon taking people off the Aberdare to Cardiff route I’ll leave to someone else, but we know it helps. Air quality, less travel improves that also, both locally and along the route of the journey. Less cars from Aberdare will be welcomed I’m sure in Mountain Ash, Abercynon, Ponty and North Cardiff. (Bit of a selfish one that but Galbalfa flyover is a nightmare and I’m all for anything improving that.) Trains and buses are better environmentally, but the same issue of carbon production and air quality stands, even with electrification. Less travelling is simply better for the environment.

Its not just better for the environment, its better for you;





TIME

Now let’s look at an area that hardly gets considered, but an area Indycube are looking to push for wards a lot more as the world of work is changing. Time. Time is incredibly important but rarely seen as such. We think that needs to change, and intend to work to change that. How much time would a Cardiff employee save by working locally and not in Cardiff, let’s say an hour a day each way in time, 2 hours a day. Even with a new improved transport system in the next ten years we are talking minutes of saving, hyperloop the mew metro is not. Over a week that’s 10 hours and that is just on the train. Time is crucial; time allows us to do many things. For me extra time means I can do the school drop or pick up more often, that’s important to me and I think it's important to society.

It allows more time for caring for those that need it, for me its childcare but increasingly as our populations gets older and frailer it will be society to pick up more and more of those caring responsibilities of our aging generation, removing the commute gives us some of that time.

This isn’t new or exciting and one of my editors brought up the work of Edgar Cahn. He speaks of re-defining the concept of work to include activities of huge value to society but which the market has little value for: community-building, place-making, caring for the elderly or child rearing. His time banking and time credit concepts re-fashion the provider/recipient relationship to something more participative and mutual; less competitive and more collaborative and co-operative. Sounds like something we need more of.





COMMUNITY

It’s not just about personal benefit that we are looking at this, much of the Indycube approach is to benefit communities where we are, we try to make sure we have office space in all our communities and not just as a City Centre tech hub. If we work in a community we spend in that community, the foundational economy benefits, the local hairdresser, the florist, local shops are all more likely to benefit from that lunchtime stroll or coffee – Aberadre has recently lost banks, more people there makes losing such services less likely.

I think more time also changes the way we shop, if you have time you shop differently, I do, the one big shop changes to the big shop with extras. I also look elsewhere for some of the quality I want locally, for me that’s bread, cheese and meat, if I have time it benefits the local producers. You benefit them you retain more in your community. We all know that’s good.

We can build brand new, but we would have an opportunity to reuse the buildings we already have in our communities. Often these historical, cultural assets have been left to decay, but perhaps they should be repurposed to house modern offices and workplaces, where we can Indycube try and do this now. This isn’t just an urban issue, although I have written as such, but its rural also. The Pryce Jones building in Newtowwn is an example of a prized historic asset that needs to be maintained and one Indycube are in and trying to repurpose now.

SUBSIDY

So why are we looking continually at these big transport projects that need massive capital inputs, borrowing, and require ongoing subsidy to keep them going? You don’t hear much about subsidy in the metro plans that are floating around, but let’s remember that we pay to move all these people around. A recent report suggested that each journey on welsh Rail had government support of £9.33. That was a little while ago, and it’s gone down, but the latest figures on km pence are here;





We talk about the metro being a two-way thing, taking people from the coastal plans to jobs in the valleys. Love this to be true, and for some it will be like that, but with current economic policy and approach I have my doubts. Even if does become two-way transport, why are we still moving so many people for jobs even if it’s a better direction.

THE VISION

So here it is, the big visionary idea, let us stop moving people around, let us look to invest in our communities and develop shared office space open to all sectors with the tech available to support all types of modern keyboard and screen based jobs. The public purse is paying through the nose in many areas here so why don’t they own these office complexes, or even community owned office complexes that can then be let out to office workers from all sectors, private, public and third. Coworking on a grand scale, but one which should also have many benefits. We do seem to have siloed our working practices and never the twain shall mix, but working from an office where they do mix, you can see benefits.

We don’t have to start big, let us look small scale first and then ramp up (Circuit of Wales chaps, there is an idea for you) If you have an office in Cardiff or the public, private or third sector and you have staff from elsewhere why not look to the likes of Indycube or other spare office sites and let staff work from them? For some it may not be as simple as that, but for many it really is and it’s just a culture change that’s needed. Indycube are looking for case studies to work with us on this, do let me know.

We will need transport links, we travel for more than work, and Welsh infrastructure needs to improve, but let’s fundamentally look at what it is for. If they are for moving people to jobs lets look again. The fanfare of the South West Metro was a thirty-minute journey between Cardiff and Swansea, why? If the state is paying billions and through a variety of projects they are; why not put some of that money in those localities, lets return old buildings in our town centres to former glories and develop new builds where needed.

What’s the HMRC costs again? £16 sq. foot for 265,000 feet of space, that’s pricey, most expensive floorspace in Wales and the public sector is paying it. You can use that elsewhere. That’s also going to a landlord that won’t retain that money in Wales, its gone.

Is this high-end idealism, no more so than that first metro plan. Is it so unrealistic to have a HMRC office worker from Aberdare staying in Aberdare to work. Let’s get that city region cash, or something from the Valleys Taskforce to develop a 300-person office complex in the town centre where they can be joined in work with people from the private sector, from our FTSE flag bearer in Admiral perhaps, the local freelancer Indycube knows so well, a few local voluntary sector people and maybe a few civil servants or local authority workers.

21st Century Workplace

The 21st century workplace has the tech to allow this to happen, what is stopping it? Let’s get that replicated across our towns in wales, from larger offices in larger towns to smaller offices in smaller ones. If you can work anywhere let’s make it so you can work anywhere?

Yes, they may all have to have a day a week elsewhere to see other colleagues (Skype is pretty good these days) make sure they retain trust of the employer, but is this in the 21st century unrealistic? Tech can allow an employer to see who has signed in, where, when, what they have done, even look at the office if need be. Trust in the employee should be there, but the tech allows it to be managed also.

We could go further, lets build these sites with community funding and rent stays locally?

Is this such a bad idea? Should it not be something we think a little harder about before we start spending big big money. The south west wales metro seems will have feasibility support in this week’s draft budget – I can guarantee now that if we continue to think like we do, and employ feasibility consultants who stand to benefit from such a scheme then the answer will be we fund it with all bells and whistles.

Our industrial communities were built on local employment, employment that retained wealth locally. They were built on people living and working in the same communities and those communities worked like that – if that is how they developed and thrived, surely, we should be looking to that as part of the future?



