Mobility Matters Daily #101 - Equity and gender-sensitive budgeting
Plus read the story of a New York city bus driver
Good morning friend.
Some days, the old life is missed. I must say that whilst working from home over the last year has done wonders for my productivity and my mental health, I do miss riding on the trains regularly. This is such a stark contrast to this time last year, where the first lockdown led to a huge amount of reflection on whether the new normal could last, and whether the system change so desired could be shocked into life by a virus.
Turns out, it seems that there was some things about the old life that were enjoyable, and valued by people. Our lives, for all of their troubles and impacts on the world, may not be that bad on the whole.
Anyway, this is going to be a short one today, as i have a lot of writing to do.
Canadian transport planners start taking equality seriously
When they are not baking in a huge heatwave, Canadian transport planners are looking to mainstream equitable outcomes into transport planning. With the University of Toronto spearheading a project to do just this. I am particularly fascinated by the commitment to merge top-down planning with bottom-up approaches to community planning, using their insight to create meaningful plans.
This is a challenge that seems to have evaded the intellectual rigour of even the best transport planners. Transport operates at a number of levels, many of which conflict with one another. For example, do you prioritise long distance trains over the local stopping service? This has often been got around by simply copying and pasting bits of documents into each other, to show they have ‘due regard’ to other plans. But this is about the approach, not the content.
Could gender-sensitive budgeting lead to more equitable outcomes?
This is an interesting initiative by the city of Lyon in France. Simply, the city authority is trialling a method where the city budget is assessed so that its impacts on men and women are equal, including the transport budget. This is to ensure that the needs of women are more actively considered through the work of the city authority. And there is a logic to this. If you want to see what influences transport, follow the money.
Stat of the day
More countries are banning the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines. Norway is leading the way with banning their sale in 2025, and there has been rapid progress in countries banning their sales. But as this map from the ICCT shows, its a very euro-centric phenomenon.
Data source: ICCT
If you don’t do anything else today, do this
Read this story on the brilliant Humans of New York blog about how a city bus driver dealt with the loneliness of a lack of passengers on city buses.