Mobility Matters Daily #158 - Fix roads, the National Audit Office, and aid
With a fun spurious correlation for you
Good day my good friend.
No fuss and bother today. Straight to the news.
James
Want a big infrastructure investment that will benefit car drivers and not cost the planet? Fix roads
This post from Transportation for America on the impact of poor road maintenance in rural areas really struck a chord with me. This paragraph struck me particularly hard:
What’s worse, the jobs that come with road repair—good-paying blue-collar jobs that rural communities need—won’t be as abundant. Maintenance work produces more jobs per dollar than roadway expansion since a greater share is spent on labor thanks to the lack of costly right-of-way acquisition. And since maintenance is the big need in rural areas, instituting requiring that existing roads are fixed before new ones are created would ensure that not only is the money spent better, but it actually goes to the greatest needs, creating more jobs along the way.
Investing money in maintenance is an incredibly good value for money investment. It reduces the maintenance liability on public sector authorities, is more likely to support local businesses, and is a vote winner. Its a real no-brainer. Take some of the money away from enhancements, plough it into fixing what we have now.
Walking and cycling has an ally - the National Audit Office
If you don’t do it already, I highly recommend reading the reports of the UK’s National Audit Office. They are a mixture of depressing and inspiring, but more importantly they focus on the process of delivery (and usually how it fails) as opposed to the strategy and the budget. Recently, the National Audit Office produced a briefing note on walking and cycling ahead of a review of the government’s strategy. Some of the conclusions will ring true to many a transport planner:
Our work has found that place-based approaches (such as the Transforming Cities Fund), which aim to consider the wider context of a place in developing schemes to change outcomes, present an opportunity for progress to be made across multiple government objectives.
Our work has identified several factors which limit the effectiveness of cross-government working. These include:
a weak understanding of local service delivery and the interactions between service areas across different departments;
inconsistent goals and messaging across departments;
a lack of influencing power when strategic direction and funding are provided by different departments;
inclusion of projects in programmes without specified objectives related to the programme. This can lead to difficulties monitoring outcomes across multiple departments’ objectives; and
fragmented accountabilities
Their recent studies on improving bus services in England outside London, lessons learned from major programmes, and reducing emissions from cars are especially good reads.
Who gets the help affects how it is spent, including on transport services
Here’s a thought for you. Some people require financial aid, for various reasons. So what impact do you think who it is given to in a household, and how it is given, has? A study by the World Bank in Burkino Faso gives an interesting example of direct cash transfers, and randomising between mothers and fathers. Simply, mothers are more likely to spend that money on home maintenance, including children’s education, and fathers more likely to spend on means to sustain the family. The use of cash transfers as aid has also shown that people are more likely to start a skilled trade or start a business.
What does this have to do with transport planning? Well, its more people in the labour market over the longer term, and increased health visits that are shown to be just two of the longer term impacts of people receiving direct aid. Literally how you give money people affects how they travel. Now that is a profound impact.
Something interesting
The always-fun spurious correlations showed this somewhat morbid one. Apparently, the number of Japanese cars sold in the US correlates very closely with the number of suicides in motor vehicle crashes. I never knew Nissan had such an impact.
If you do nothing else today, do this…
Read this study about how transport is linked with dementia.