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count: 3,420
Working with communities: transport and
social exclusion in the north east of
Margaret
Grieco,
Professor
of Transport and Society,
and
Stephen
Little, Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Management, Open University,
and
Len
Holmes, Acting Director, Management Research Centre, London Metropolitan
University
Abstract:
This short paper provides an evaluation of current policy
developments in the field of transport and social exclusion from the
perspective of expressed community needs in low income communities in the North
East of England. It notes that transport issues have been separated off from
urban regeneration issues in current Government policy forums and documents and
argues that this gap in policy thinking should be corrected. There is a policy
tension between cost reduction and efficiency drives at the national level and
sustained local accessibility to services in low income communities. If low
income areas are no longer to be protected in their access to vital services
through the pooling of costs and taxes at a national level, then there is a
need for new forms of transport and service organisation to be developed which
involve communities directly in their operation. New forms of communication
technology make possible new forms of community involvement and service
delivery which as of yet have received little explicit or widespread
consideration by Government in its exploration of the relationship between
transport and social exclusion/inclusion.
1.
Participant management, grass roots and service delivery: a lesson from the
developing world.
"Community
participation is a key factor in delivering a sustainable urban renaissance.
The Urban White Paper's vision for towns and cities to be 'Places for People' means that local people must
have a voice in the decisions affecting the future of their communities.
Participation is about more than
consultation." Office of the Deputy Prime Minister web site
('captured' on ODPM web site,
"Every
time we open our mouths to complain to operators about poor bus
services we lose another bus route..." Community group members,
The international institutions such as the World Bank
and UN agencies have recognised the importance of the direct involvement of
communities in the management and delivery of the infrastructure services they
use. The classic example is the new found involvement of women in developing
countries in water user associations (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/ruralinclusion.html).
'Participant management' of development
projects and of services in the developing world invites a new approach to
utilities operation in the developed world. The active involvement of user
groups in the delivery of public services whether these be privately or
publicly owned could do much to guard against existing recorded public
transport failure in low income communities.
Indeed, the language of 'partnership' which has been
adopted by the current government in respect of regeneration projects (http://www.urban.odpm.gov.uk/ Urban
Policy Unit -on line resources for regeneration) can be viewed as movement in
the direction of participant management but this movement has not extended
substantially into the domain of public
transport or community transport services. It can be argued that the absence of
transport from the community 'partnership' approach to the regeneration of
deprived and disadvantages areas represents a major gap in policy in a context
where dominant policy pressures are to further centralise key services such as
health in the shape of large hospitals and communications in the shape of
reductions in the number of post offices.
To give an indication of the scale of this gap,
transport does not feature as a major category within the Urban Policy Forum (http://www.urbanforum.org.uk) nor does
it feature as a topic within the Knowledge Exchange activities of the major
Government Agency for the North East - One North East (http://www.onenortheast.co.uk).
2. New
technology, raising voices and straight talking: community input into transport
needs.
Partnership structures are predominantly responsive
to Government's initiatives rather than the Government being responsive to
communities' expressed needs: this has historically been an outcome of the
balance of communication resources. 'Voices' required substantial funding and
complex organisations to exist, to articulate view points and engage with
Government as evidenced by old political party structures: these old political
structures are rarely responsive to local communities especially when in
Government (the requirement that councillors obey the party whip happens even
on the most local of issues and often to the detriment of poorly served
communities) and as these structures exhibit their inherent constraints in
terms of the representation of local needs, new mechanisms for communication
and representation are becoming available to local communities. New information
communication technologies not only enable local communities to directly voice
their needs and describe their experiences within a global public domain but
they also provide the necessary administrative and organisational tools for
communities to manage the delivery of services themselves or in electronic
conjunction with others.
In the absence of appropriate developments in
transport and increased mobility for low income communities, low income
communities can harness regeneration resources to increase their accessibility
to services within their own communities. And this harnessing of regeneration
resources can be greatly aided by access to new information communication
technology. New information communication technology can substitute for many
search journeys and attendance at time and resource expensive meetings.
Increasingly tool kits on how to apply for Government
resources for regeneration within a partnership framework have been placed on
line and are thus accessible in a convenient and low cost format. In
Mobility is required where there is low accessibility
locally to services: increased accessibility of services reduces mobility
needs. The frequently expressed Government commitment to reducing mobility for
reasons of congestion reduction and of environment and health must be met by
increased accessibility to services locally in low income communities if
reductions in mobility are not to lead to heightened inequities and increased
social exclusion.
An on line Government forum to discuss transport
needs of low income communities and to explore how these needs are impacted by
major policy initiatives such as health service initiatives or postal service
reorganisation would enable a more transparent assessment of transport service
performance. Currently letters of complaint to transport regulators or to
transport operators remain buried within these agencies without any systematic
analysis of complaints and their post codes being conducted.
Community involvement in route designs is minimal:
community groups talk of consultations with operators where the senior operator
management had little knowledge of the geography of the area and were mistaken in
their perceptions of the catchment areas of the routes as a consequence of
assuming that places with similar names were served by the same route when they
were not and indeed lay a number of miles apart.
Similarly, new developments. such as shopping malls, in their accessibility assessments identify
the distance from the development to the nearest bus stop: within our work in
the North East with community groups we have come across examples of this
measure being used when a bus stop was still in place but no longer was
serviced by any route. The presence of a
bus stop is no guarantee that it is still serviced or that it is frequently
serviced.
At a technical level, local operators, Government
Agencies and NGOs if they are involved in the partnership mode of planning and
regeneration need to be active in conducting proper mapping exercises of
routes, their catchments and the services which they provide accessibility to
or do not provide accessibility to. These mapping exercises need to be
systematically undertaken in conjunction with communities. Each service change,
if social exclusion is to be properly addressed, needs to be accompanied by
such a mapping.
Within the North East communities, in the period we
have been working there (2001-2003), we have seen changes in bus routes which
have even further deprived older persons of mobility and thus accessibility to
the range of services and activities regarded as normal and suitable for a
citizen in a modern democracy. The community involved waged an active campaign
for the restoration of the route without success. Community group action to
improve routes, restore routes or preserve routes seems to meet with little
success: indeed, operators often undertake the consultation exercise with
groups who are not located within the section of a route which is to be excised
or removed. The appearance of consultation is given without the opportunity for
the mapping of real need to appear.
Community mapping of accessibility and mobility needs
using the new information communication technologies (http://www.anzlic.org.au/icsm/geodesy/geodesy_summary_sheet.pdf
-
for information on cutting edge approaches in Australia to new information
communication technology 'mapping' possibilities ) provides a path for
Government to identify real needs and indeed to identify for the first time the
level of suppressed journeys as a measure of the relationsip between transport and social exclusion. Such mapping could be
used as a way of opening up a discourse on alternative transport organisation
and its potential role in regeneration.
3.
Community infrastructure and social capital: the implications of insensitive
public sector roll backs.
Public sector roll backs reduce the subsidies which
historically ensured acceptable levels of accessibility (and mobility where
services were at a distance from locality) in low income communities.
Historically, whilst these large public sector arrangements provided a social
safety net for low income communities in respect of access to the range of key
civic activities, they provided little space for members of low income
communities to participate in decision making.
The rank and file of political parties and the
ordinary member of a low income community had little control under these arrangements
over social decisions about transport routes, educational arrangements, housing
estate social composition, local industrial policy, leisure facility rules and
regulations or other matters which affected their day to day existence. Those
on higher income routinely experience greater control over the operation and
maintenance of the facilities which they use and which are central to their way
of life.
The decision making space of those with income
resources and those without have a different scale and dimension. The larger
the decision making space, the greater the ground for the development of what
has come to be termed 'social capital'. Space
for participation - and participation has been historically tied to ownership
more strongly than any other characteristic - generates the space for social
capital development - this is the contemporary Government orthodoxy as revealed
in Partnership Programmes and other regeneration documents.
Rolling back the traditional public sector has been
viewed as an opportunity to enhance the ground for participation and
partnership: it has been viewed as an opportunity to create new forms of social
ownership which have greater opportunities for community participation. This
social inclusion agenda has much to recommend it but there are some very clear
downsides which need to be addressed.
Partnership initiatives have largely been a
competitive business. It is not the quality of a community case which
determines whether it obtains the partnership funds it bids for or not but
rather it is the outcome of a competition where the determination of what
characteristics will ensure the victory is an uncertain business. The
consequence of this competition framework is that many communities must place
resources into their bids which will not be rewarded by the outcome of the
process. A further consequence is that communities must make many claims on
existing social capital to make bids but when these bids are not successful
face the loss, exhaustion and attrition of the social capital used in the bid.
This aspect of social capital destruction seems to
have received no policy attention whatsoever. In our period of work in the
North East of England we have watched communities make bids for Government
transport resources within such frameworks, witnessed them lose the bids after
great levels of community activity to try and secure the bid and observed the
despondency which follows.
A true partnership approach would be more available
under provisions where Government allocated certain budgets to localities but
encouraged local involvement in determining precisely how such budgets would be
utilised. The local mapping of mobility and accessibility needs would provide a
better indicator of the budgetary requirements in respect of social
exclusion/inclusion issues than do partnership competitions and trully local
participation in the use of budgets would provide a better fit between
transport needs and transport plans than do present party line and party whip
local authority budgetary decision making arrangements.
New information communication technologies can be
used to ensure the greatest community coverage in the expression of views and
needs: geographical positioning systems, the Internet and many other information
technologies permit levels of interoperability which allows a community/
governmental interface never previously possible and there is indeed evidence
that both in developing countries and in developed countries such as Australia
such approaches are now on the agenda.
4.
Alternative approaches to transport provision: budgets, audits and
accountabilities.
In order to view the merits of alternative approaches
to transport provision, it is important to pose the question: does the
reduction in mobility adversely affect social inclusion in respect of low
income communities? In a context, where accessibility to key civic services is
increasingly impaired by the centralising consequences of cost cutting and
efficiency in large public and private sector organisations, clearly, the
answer must be that a reduction in the mobility of low income individuals and
communities is detrimental.
This invites the question of: what is the gap between
low income access and higher income access to universal services such as health
as a consequence of transport failure? Currently, transport provision and
health provision are administered without basic reference to one another or to
the integration of policies. There is no good technical source or mapping of
the relationship between these two fundamental public services within
Evidence based policy in health if accurately audited
would provide us with evidence of the consequences of poor transport on health.
Currently, evidence based policy on the link between transport and health has
only been undertaken in respect of the negative health impacts of congestion
and the negative health impacts of lack of exercise. Research which examines
health outcomes in relation to hospital journey times is scant on the ground.
An evidence based approach to health and transport
could be used as the basis for the development of alternative transport
organisation to service low income communities. Currently, some
The use of new information communication technologies
to integrate fleets of emergency vehicles, volunteer vehicles and flexible use
vehicles could provide low income communities with more dignified and social
access to health services. Working with communities in the North East we heard
many accounts of the difficulties imposed upon family members wishing to be
with sick relatives during visiting hours by hospital bus services which ceased
operating before visiting hours were over. Scheduling transport services to
meet hospital visiting hours is not rocket science but all too frequently this
gap appears to occur in British public transport provision or more accurately
transport
failure.
An internet facility in a hospital inner concourse
such as the one in
Given the current crisis about the care of accident
and emergency patients in the National Health Service, a pilot project which
focused on the very real the health and transport need of the ill to be
accompanied by the able bodied in accessing health services would be an
appropriate move. Similarly, an audit of hospital access arrangements should
reveal the gaps in public transport service provision in respect of all parts
of the respective catchment areas and there should be accountability where no
such provision is available.
Ensuring that transport budgets are available where
market arrangements fail to meet the measured civic need is important:
currently, the pressure is on overstretched local authorities to make good the
deficits and not surprisingly such local authorities have in the main been
reluctant to provide an accurate chart of the existing need or to insist that
the market providers make such services available as such an insistence
increases the subsidy bill for local authorities.
In this way, the transport dimension of social
exclusion gets buried in the institutional interaction between the supposedly
accountable authorities and to the detriment of poorly serviced communities. Community
transport could provide local authorities with a way out of the 'subsidy trap':
the development of community transport forms where vehicles are owned and
operated by communities with an agency of last resort to back them up could
provide a model for those low income areas with low car ownership statistics
and poor public transport levels.
Community transport forms using new information
communication technology could operate on a demand responsive transport model.
Instead of scheduled services, community members could book rides both on an
advanced booking model and upon a 'spot' ride model. These journeys could be
organised in such a way as to integrate with real time mainstream fast
transport options reducing the delay experienced by passengers at points of
interchange.
Budget, audits and accountabilities need to be
revisited in terms of present public transport performance in low income
communities and the alternative organisation of public transport needs
consideration. It may very well be that even with existing budgets great improvements
could be made but it is probably the case that the tackling of social exclusion
in respect of low income areas requires a renewed assessment of the level of
accessibility or, in its place, mobility
required.
To date, transport and social exclusion research has
not been conducted within the parameters of such a radical remit: the existing
focus on transport failure within the more preferenced regions and modes of
transport may increase the chances of the exploration of more radical options
in transport overall and in this context accessibility and transport failure in
the low income, low car ownership, low public transport service levels areas of
Britain may indeed receive the appropriate attention on budgets, audits and
accountabilities.
5. Conclusion:
rethinking transport management.
The thrust of this short paper has been to suggest
that the time to rethink transport management has come. The time has come
because new information technologies with their extensive interoperabilities
open up the prospect of the participant management of transport for the very
first time in the modern era; the time has come because the old transport
structures have failed at every level of hierarchy and they fail the least
advantaged most dramatically; the time has come because there is a growing
volume of civic voice in the form of transport protest web sites and
involvement in partnership schemes for change in the way services are
delivered.
Pilot research into new forms of transport
organisation which meet these new influences in the policy environment is
critical. It is key that such research involve communities in mapping their
needs, enhance not destroy community resources and be constructed in such a way
as to enable its maximum visibility within the
References:
See http://www.icsm.gov.au
- for information on cutting edge
approaches in
See http://www.urban.odpm.gov.uk/
- Urban Policy Unit - for on line resourcces for regeneration.
See http://www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/publications/reports/html/transportfinal/index.html - for Social Exclusion Unit report on
Transport and Social Exclusion, 2003
[1] This
community group in