Tackling transport injustice

Dr Tom Cohen, Reader in Transport Policy at the University of Westminster, outlines the importance of equal access to transport, and how local authorities can help.

What is transport justice?  Put simply, it is the idea that the opportunities and impacts of transport are distributed fairly. In the most obvious sense, we’re asking whether people have equal capacity to get to the places that matter to them. This may be a matter of whether the journeys are feasible; it may be about cost and/or time - and it doesn’t take much reflection to see that these things aren’t distributed fairly at all. For instance, those with access to a car can typically reach a wider variety of destinations and travel more quickly than those who depend on other forms of transport. They may also travel more cheaply, therefore enjoying an advantage.

This is a concern in itself but it’s more worrying when we reflect that capacity to move is related to other aspects of life. If you can reach more destinations in a given journey time, you have access to a larger number of opportunities. This may mean you can get a better-paid job or buy lower-priced groceries. At its worst, a lack of transport opportunities can be associated with not being able to enjoy a full life, often described as social exclusion. Transport for the North has adopted the term “transport-related social exclusion” and over the last couple of years has published sobering data concerning the number and locations of people in this predicament.  

Low income is a primary cause but it often goes hand in hand with being disabled, female, non-white and so on.

We tend to see that people who are already facing social disadvantage are, in effect, hit a second time because of their limited transport options. We also see that the negative effects of transport (e.g. poor road safety and poor air quality) are disproportionately experienced by people facing disadvantage. We at the University of Westminster believe this situation is unacceptable and we know that many people in local government feel the same.

What to do about it? We’ve published a simple guide that sets out four steps:

1. Understand: Use existing data and consider collecting additional data that will shed light on who faces what barriers and why. The Regional Prosperity Framework for Edinburgh and South-East Scotland uses a Workforce Mobility Deprivation Index based on publicly available data on deprivation.
2. Set goals: Agree where you are trying to get to.  Assuming you want to help those who face the greatest barriers, can you say what level of improvement you want to achieve for them? Transport for the North’s transport strategy sets specific targets for 2050, including “reducing the number of people in the North living in areas with a high risk of TRSE by 1,000,00.
3. Develop policies/projects that tackle injustice: This should follow quite naturally from the first two steps but a simple appraisal process should help you to identify which policies/projects can be expected to achieve the greatest gains for a given outlay. For example, Bath and North-East Somerset Council employed principles of transport justice in specifying the WESTlink demand-responsive transport service operating in more rural parts of the authority.
4. Evaluate: Having implemented one or more interventions, check whether the expected impacts have happened.  In addition to enabling better policy-making in future, this can help persuade stakeholders of the value of this work. For example, an evaluation of Workwise in the West Midlands showed its contribution to people finding and retaining work as well as the financial savings it had achieved.

We know that local government is already facing massive challenges. Asking members and officers to think about transport justice on top of everything else may seem just too much. Our response is simple: justice matters most when times are hard.  When there is not much to go around, it matters even more who gets it. And what we describe implies a somewhat different approach to planning transport, not a swathe of new work. We hope readers will agree!

Dr Tom Cohen spoke at the APSE Vehicle Maintenance and Transport Advisory Group. His presentation is available via the APSE website. The full guidance report, ‘Tackling transport injustice - practical advice for local authorities’ can be downloaded here.