Mobility Matters Daily #123 - Older populations, accessibility, and the courts
And a visualisation that really stinks
Good day friend.
I warn you now. There is about to be a big picture of me shown.
The other day when in Southend working I walked out to the end of the pier (its a long pier - over a mile) to grab an ice cream and a view. Only to see a line of container ships, queuing up to get into Tilbury on the high tide. That’s no surprise. The Port of London (of which Tilbury is a part) is one of the busiest freight ports in the UK. But watching a container ship sail past while trying not to have your ice cream blown away was an interesting experience. To the news.
James
Will the population getting bigger and older? Well…
How long will children born today actually get to live? Back in 2007, it was estimated that just over half of the babies born in the UK would live past 100 years old. The estimated biological hard limit of humans could be around 150 years. And futurists have long desired the ability to live indefinitely with biological hacks and new technologies. As we are building new infrastructure to cater for future generations, we may also be building it to cater for us when we get old.
Future planning assumptions for future populations, particularly when planning for new developments, rely on data from the Office for National Statistics. Interestingly, reviews of population projections from the 1970s to the 1990s (though sadly none i could find for the ONS) estimated that projections out to 20 years from the projection date had an error of less than 1%, with projections past that date being out because the population grew by less than estimated due to lower fertility rates. So if our estimates are accurate, how do we plan for this future?
DfT accessibility announcements are not good enough
Two things really vex me. One is the pointless announcement. Two is not doing anything to make transport - sod it, our world - more accessible. And the recent government announcements on improving transport accessibility do just that. Where government has committed to auditing all stations in the UK to see what accessibility issues there are, and require bus operators to have audio and visual accouncements on all buses.
These are not bad, I must say. Its just not good enough. Its no longer good enough. We passed the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, and the Equalities Act in 2000. In 2019, nearly 40% of UK rail stations didn’t have step-free access. Disabled persons face a huge variety of issues when it comes to accessing jobs and simply getting around for everyday life. We have come some way in the last 26 years, but the commitments are still not good enough. Study the problem more? No. To paraphrase something often said by athletes, there is no study, only do.
The courts have been busy with transport things
There have been a couple of big court cases in the UK recently that may be of interest. Campaigners against the planned tunnels at Stonehenge won a victory when a judge ruled that Grant Shapps’ decision to support it was unlawful. Meanwhile, the Transport Action Network - who claimed that the government’s planned road infrastructure improvements had not adequately considered climate change - lost their case against the Government.
As always, read the judgements first. The Stonehenge judgement can be found here, while the Transport Action Network judgment can be found here. Taking the latter first, the judgment highlights the complexity of ensuring that decision makers can take account of a variety of factors when coming to a decision. The judgment goes into technical details and critiques on different policy scenarios, the need for numerical data when assessing policy impacts, and what is counted as a significant impact. This is not, as has been sadly briefed by people who should know better, a judgment on climate change and government policy on it, but on process. As rightfully stated by Transport Action Network, to their credit.
For the Stonehenge project, the Court ruled that the Secretary of State had not been given sufficient briefing on the impact of the scheme on each heritage asset. More importantly, it was concluded that no assessment of the merits of alternative options to the tunnel were considered. A breach of process so obviously illegal that I wonder what those in Great Minster House were thinking.
But both projects ask a searching question - when facing a significant challenge like climate change and the environment, what kind of process is sufficient? Can there be one? We need evidence, but how do you decide what is significant? Just because there is a result that you don’t like, doesn’t mean that the process is bad. As is often the case, these judgments raise more questions than answers.
Visualisation of the day
The visualisations have been getting a bit strange, but this one might leave you flushed with embarrassment. This was partly inspired by a Councillor briefing I gave last week on improving buses, and it was mentioned that having access to places to do one’s business was an overlooked issue. But having access to toilets is a big issue for passengers and transport workers. So it was with great interest, and a strange bit of pride, that I came across the The Great British Public Toilet map. What a cr*p job that must have been to pull this together, but the result has a strange beauty, like the cistern chapel.
Source: The Great British Public Toilet map
I do not apologise for the amount of toilet puns in this post. I only wish I could have done more. Yep James, urine for it now.
If you do nothing else today, do this
Read this excellent report by MySociety on Councillor attitudes towards citizen participation. It will stand you in good stead for something that I will publish later this week.