Mobility Matters Extra - On transport poverty
We really don't care much about it, do we?
In Friday’s newsletter, I posted the latest statistics relating to the costs of transport over time. This shows that in terms of the absolute spend on transport by households, total spend has increased since 2006. Although much of the change in total spend appears to have been driven by an increase in spend on air travel.
When this spending is adjusted for inflation, the overall costs of motoring can be seen to have decreased since 2006, while the overall costs of other transport services has increased. This confirms the results of the RAC Foundation’s Transport Price Index, that shows that the price of non-car modes of transport, especially public transport, have been rising significantly over the last 15 years in the UK.
This all matters, whatever you think of the justice and logic behind the changes in prices of different modes of transport. It matters because transport is an area of spend that households prioritise above most things. Even heating and lighting come in second compared to spending on getting to and from work. Additionally, transport poverty is not often recognised as a policy problem to be tackled by, well, anyone really.
If you would like a comprehensive review of all the aspects of transport poverty, I highly recommend this article by Giulio Mattioli, Karen Lucas, and Greg Marsden. What I will attempt to do here is try and develop an understanding of how this issue manifests itself as a policy issue. As this is not just a matter of income, and in fact income has a rather peverse impact on poverty.
It is well known that those on lower incomes are more likely to use public transport, especially buses. But as indicated by work by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this in turn acts as a constraint upon people’s life opportunities. People can only seek work or go out where the buses go, which in turn take a long time to go anywhere and are increasingly expensive. So we are in a rather peverse situation where, rather than enabling better life opportunities, buses may actually be limiting them. An example of the dynamic of poverty and transport in action.
It should also be noted that the total spend figure outlined before is a somewhat crude measure of transport poverty. Poverty is often defined as relative to income, for example the RAC Foundation have previously defined transport poverty as being 10% of household income being spent on transport services (ignoring the fact that the average has exceeded this for some time). So whilst the total spend can increase on average, this can be dragged up by higher spend on transport services by those on higher incomes, who are more likely to fly, travel by train, and own and run expensive cars.
Another aspect of this work is that we do not truly know how transport poverty manifests itself spatially. Often, those who study it describe how transport poverty can be highly subjective an experience. For example, is someone on a low income in a major city with good and affordable public transport in poverty, compared to a lower middle income person running a clapped out old banger that costs a fortune because there is no bus?
Many years ago (though sadly no longer online), Sustrans mapped transport poverty as a proxy of the issues of access to services, family income, and the distance to the nearest bus stop or train station. This is at least an attempt to overcome a key barrier to policy making. In a world where policy is driven by evidence, despite there being significant evidence of the relationship between poverty and transport, understanding where this issue is likely to be most prevalent is crucial.
As policy makers, we have a good idea of who is most significantly affected by poverty and the link to transport. We have a good understanding of its impacts on people and their lives, including their lived experience. We even are aware of numerous policy initiatives, and I daresay as human beings we have an instinctive feeling that doing things for the most vulnerable is a good things to do. We even have an instinctive understanding that there is some sort of spatial link, or at least spatial variation in the issue.
But despite this, we still don’t quite grasp it. Nor grasp the significant impact that it has on people’s lives. Poverty is not an abstract issue, or even one that can be well-defined by statistics (although the Indicies of Multiple Deprivation does a pretty good job of it). So it makes it hard to make the connection in policy makers minds.
To end with, I feel it is important for a personal anecdote, and to give a reason why I hope to cover this and Net Zero more in these newsletters next year. Until my father lucked upon a well-paying job when I was 12, I lived much of my formative years living month to month. Not that my parents did not work hard, but our life was hard, and it was a struggle to live within our means. More than once, my parents had to go without meals for an extended period to feed me and my sisters, and rely on handouts from my grandmothers (meager) pension.
This experience taught me this. When you are in poverty, it pervades everything. Every aspect of your life becomes a balancing act. Take the kids to the beach on Sunday or a night out on Wednesday? Take the train or the bus? Pay the gas bill, or get a hot meal? It is draining, soul destroying, and miserable. And we as transport planners play a huge role in it. Maybe we should start taking it seriously?
This is the last Extra newsletter of the year. Thank you so much for your support and kind words over the last few months. Writing these Extra posts each week I enjoy greatly, and I hope that you find them useful and informative.
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