Mobility Matters Daily #98 - Wales does good things, and road user attitudes
The data also shows that we should not complain about public transport in Europe and North America
Good morning friend.
Needless to say that was a week that was needed. The world of transport failed to stop, but needless to say that yours truly needed to. Just having some peace and quiet for a while, as well as time to oneself, was just what was needed to recharge the batteries.
It also made me think of one thing that the original lockdown last year really brought home. Quite how noisy transport makes our world. Perhaps in our quest to make transport cleaner, greener, and more equal, we should also seek to make it quieter, and make the sounds of people and nature clearer as a result?
Wales cancels road-building
Wales has been home to some really good work on more sustainable and more just transport strategies. Last week, the Welsh Government announced that whilst a new roads review group reviews each project for its impacts on the climate, no road building projects would continue. A new bridge to Anglesey, a bypass of Llandeilo, and upgrading the A55 - all put on ice for the time being. This is not to say they won’t be built eventually, mind you.
The terms of reference of the roads review group will determine what happens next. But this is welcome news. Road building and declaring a climate emergency are fundamentally incompatible with one another, as road building results in more travel by car. What gives me confidence here is that it this is the latest in a long line of great things the Welsh Government has been doing. The Future Generation’s Commissioner’s Manifesto for the Future, the South East Wales Transport Commission recommending actual alternatives to car travel, and the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013. In the meantime, more places should be doing this.
The Welsh also want to help you kick-start your heart
Staying in Wales, I couldn’t help but notice that Transport for Wales, who run the passenger rail service in Wales, are installing 200 defibrillators across the Welsh rail network over the next 18 months. The rationale for this is very simple. When someone suffers cardiac arrest, seconds save lives, and the technology is now sufficiently advanced that these units can be used by almost anyone.
This (mostly) up-to-date map shows the locations of defibrillators in the UK. But this work shows that the work of transport planning is moving purely from safety - preventing collisions from occurring, for example - into a wider duty of care for the public. With streets and transport infrastructure being a significant public space (some detailed data on precise percentages in major world cities can be found in this report by UN-Habitat), our consideration of health and well being should be wider than collisions and traffic speed.
The Russians think like commuters
How do you assess the quality of the road user experience? It is something that we feel we have an intuitive understanding of. Recent research by Derya Azik et al shows how people judge the road user experience varies by mode (no shock there). But more interestingly, how people judge the quality of the road user experience varies significantly from place-to-place, and when understanding journey experience this is as important as mode.
This study is not without its flaws - the use of yes/no questions in particular tries to put absolutes on nuance. At the same time, I am not content with the traditional satisfaction surveys such as those by Transport Focus, which assume a base understanding of what is satisfactory to individuals. But this research shows that it is not in the confirmity of the journey experience that matters, but the variability of it. Too bad that makes it hard for policy makers trying to develop policies, eh?
Stat of the Day
The use of public transport is something we take for granted in the developed world. Us Brits have made complaining about the railways a national sport. But this data from the UN shows that we have easy access to public transport compared to others in the world. In this instance, easy access is within 500 metres of a bus stop or low capacity transport system, or within 1000m walking distance of a railway station or ferry terminal.
Data Source: UN SDG Indicators - Goal 11