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Planning transport for the most vulnerable people in society

By: 

TfSE

Transport is the one public service that each of us use every day. Yet for much of the history of transport, it has been planned from the perspective of one specific group in mind: that of a relatively well off, white male. In reality, the users of our transport systems have a variety of complex needs, and in order to plan for these complex needs, we need to make special effort to engage with people whose needs we often do not think of.

As part of the development of our new Transport Strategy, we wanted to understand the needs of those people who are often considered to be socially excluded. To start with you need a definition, and the traditional definition are groups with protected characteristics as defined by the Equality Act 2010, which are:


  • age

  • disability

  • gender reassignment

  • marriage or civil partnership

  • pregnancy and maternity

  • race

  • religion or belief

  • sex

  • sexual orientation


In the course of our work, we realised that while the above formed a useful basis on which to understand socially excluded groups, there are several other aspects of social exclusion and transport that we needed to consider:


  • Neurodiversity - describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways;

  • Mental health - a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the different aspects of life;

  • Digital exclusion - where some sections of the population have continuing unequal access and capacity to use Information and Communications Technologies (ICT);

  • Socio-economic disadvantage – refers to the lack of social and economic resources and opportunities that affect a person’s well-being and participation in society;

  • Poor transport access - refers to a lack of adequate transport services necessary to access general services and work, or to the inability to pay for these transport services.


In reality, these characteristics interface in different ways, and with an individuals personal circumstances. For example, a woman with a mobility impairment may have their travel choices affected by both these facts, such as avoiding routes with lots of steps and avoiding areas where they may be harassed by men. This is commonly referred to as intersectionality, and as you can imagine this has all kinds of impacts on how people get around.


We set about our work by exploring two things. The first was existing data on transport and social exclusion. The second is understanding the needs of socially excluded groups by talking to them, and asking them what they would put in a strategy.


For the former, a data source that we found useful was data from Transport for the North on Transport-Related Social Exclusion (TRSE). This is the idea that, in some contexts, transport can be a leading factor in whether people face exclusion or not. Based upon the Indices of Multiple Deprivation and Journey Times to key destinations like doctors surgeries, a percentage of the population in each District of the South East that is at risk of TRSE can be determined.


What this analysis found was TRSE was particularly acute around the coastal areas of the South East, especially around Thanet, North Kent, the Sussex Coast, Gosport, and the Isle of Wight. Hastings, for example, has the highest percentage of residents at risk of TRSE of any district in the whole of England.


When we delved into other data sources such as the 2021 Census, this revealed yet more insights. For example, those reporting health issues and the elderly were found to more concentrated around the coastal areas compared to other groups, while younger people (aged 19 years old or younger) were a higher proportion of the population in areas closer to London. The region’s LGTBQ+ population are highly concentrated in major urban areas and often with substantial student populations, particularly Brighton, Southampton, Reading, and Canterbury.


But even these trends hide significant variations at a local level. Lets take three examples from our report of Kent, Brighton and East Berkshire / North Surrey. We found that across the coastal areas of Kent, there were high levels of deprivation, and a higher proportion of the population who are elderly and have some kind of physical disability. This broadly translated into higher levels of TRSE, particularly in Thanet, Lydd, Camber, and Romney Marsh.


Contrast this with the experience of Brighton. Brighton generally has good levels of public transport across much of the city, which translates to relatively low levels of TRSE compared to other areas. However, across all areas of Brighton the percentage of the population identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or other is over 10%, compared to a South East average of 4%. There also is a high concentration of young people in certain areas of the city, with some areas having over 40% of the population aged under 19 years old, and others less than 10%. For the latter, this is particularly concentrated around the sea front, while the former is concentrated around Falmer.


Across East Berkshire and North Surrey, especially high concentrations of people belonging to Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups are found. In some areas of Slough, for instance, over 40% of the population identify as BAME, compared to the regional average of below 5%. Additionally, this area of the South East reports relatively low levels of disabilities. Most areas report less than 20% of the population being disabled, compared to a region-wide average of nearly 25%.


Recognising this diversity across the region, we then proceeded to engage with a variety of socially excluded groups across the South East, using a co-creation approach called a Double Diamond. Through two workshops, we developed with them what an ideal transport strategy would look like from their perspective.


In the first workshop, called Discovery and Definition, we got participants to identify barriers and issues to an equitable transport system, distilled into a series of challenge statements. The participants identified 19 challenge statements in all, grouped into a number of thematic areas.


Affordability came across as a very common theme. With many participants stating that they could not afford essential journeys due to the cost of travelling. This was particularly noted to be an intersectional issue, with participants stating that their existing exclusion issues were made worse by transport being unaffordable.


Physical accessibility was identified to be a much bigger barrier than lack of step free access to infrastructure, though this is still an issue. The physical layout of stations, for example, can cause issues for those who are neurodivergent through making for an over-stimulating and confusing environment. Meanwhile, physically being able to access staff can have an impact on subjective safety of participants.


Access to information is not just a matter of timetables not being available, but also being difficult to read. There were also concerns raised about a digital-first approach to providing information being exclusionary to those with relatively poor digital skills.


Availability was not discussed as much as many practitioners may expect, but participants did raise this being a particular issue in rural areas. Poor reliability of public transport also led to a perception among those who we spoke to about buses and trains being effectively unavailable.


Psychological safety proved to be a significant barrier to our participants using public transport. Many groups avoided public transport due to the fear of discrimination or harassment.


In a further workshop called Develop and Do, we then asked participants to take these challenges and turn them into policies and initiatives to deliver. Using a variation of the Policy Canvass from the UK Government’s Policy Lab, the participants identified 38 different policy proposals. Notable short term policy ideas included:


  • More visible staff preference

  • Unified concessionary fares initiatives across the South East

  • Safe spaces at transport hubs

  • Equitable infrastructure design

  • Better training for public transport staff


While the delivery of such ideas is outside the remit of TfSE, they are possible to be delivered by transport service providers and local authorities. Through the infrastructure and services they delivered.

More directly for the transport strategy, we also asked the participants to identify missions for the strategy relating to inclusion. With almost no effort they helped us to identify 3 missions, one relating to fares and journey planning, one on customer centricity, and a final one on universal accessibility.


Did these make it into the transport strategy? Well, you will have to wait for when we publish our Draft Transport Strategy to find that out.


Doing this work has proven invaluable to us as we have developed the refreshed transport strategy. There are a great number of simple things that we can do as practitioners to make life much easier for those who face exclusion, including subsidised fares and providing good quality public transport connections. But most of us practitioners know that already.


What our approach showed is that if you give socially excluded groups the chance to meaningfully design policy solutions with your guidance, they flourish in doing so. You may not be able to deliver everything they want – and its very important to make that clear to them at the beginning – but they can contribute significantly to your strategy development process. So long as you make the time and effort for it to happen.


It also showed us a lot of gaps, particularly when it came to data. While the TRSE data is very useful, for other aspects of exclusion there is a notable lack of data. For example, there is no data on the number of trips taken by a lot of groups with protected characteristics, such as members of the LGTBQ+ community and those who are neurodiverse. More research is needed for these groups.

This is where the value of engagement with these groups is invaluable – to provide clues on these matters where data is lacking. Our engagement with these groups is influencing what the priorities are in our strategy. While we cannot solve every problem, it has gone a long way to show where TfSE could play a role in making life better for socially excluded groups.


Our report will be published when the Draft Transport Strategy is released for public consultation, currently anticipated to be December 2024. In the meantime, if you want to know more, please feel free to contact us.

James Gleave is the Transport Strategy Manager at Transport for the South East, and is the author of this blog.


The team that undertook this work includes Matthew Smith, Molly Heywood, Freddie Bennet, and Jo Bacon of AtkinRealis, and Mark Valleley of Transport for the South East.


The project team would like to thank all of the participants who took part in the workshops for kindly dedicating their time and knowledge to this work. It would not have been possible without you!


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