Paper to be published in Local Work, 2000. Also available on http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/newvision.html
Margaret Grieco,
Professor of Transport and Society,
Transport Research Institute,
Napier University.
e-mail: m.grieco@napier.ac.uk
Jeff Turner,
Research Fellow,
Department of Planning,
Manchester University
e-mail: jeff.turner@man.ac.uk
Dr Julian Hine,
Senior Lecturer,
Transport Research Institute,
Napier University
e-mail: j.hine@napier.ac.uk
Introduction: a policy issue with a limited budget.
'Transport and social exclusion/inclusion' is rapidly emerging as a major policy issue and has become a highly visible item of the 'joined up government' agenda of New Labour Britain. This visibility, however, has operated more strongly at the level of rhetoric or language than in the commissioning of substantial research into the relationship between transport and social exclusion or in the commissioning of on the ground projects designed to improve the transport circumstances of the disadvantaged.
As a process, the relationship between transport and social exclusion is little understood by local authorities who are struggling to target resources e.g.subsidised travel. For example, public transport service provision is not explicitly mapped and planned in terms of servicing identified areas or zones of deprivation: bus routes frequently by-pass the areas of greatest deprivation and social exclusion methodologies which chart the relationship between these two attributes are thin on the ground. As an academic area, the field is fragmented and the rush to generate an analytic literature which matches the policy priority of social exclusion in relation to transport has been haphazard in its ground clearing and generated an unnecessarily weak literature.Indeed, the recent DETR study on social exclusion and public transport(DETR 2000; http://www.mobility-unit.detr.gov.uk/socialex/)adds little to the understanding of the debate: it is essentially a qualitative piece of work with a loose methodology, revisits existing literatures and concepts and can give little guidance to local authorities and national planning authorities engaged in the practice and policies of social transport provision.
In order to engage with the relationship between social exclusion and transport in a manner useful to local authorities, there is need to begin to chart the structural dimensions of the relationship.The exclusion of the needs of low-income populations in transport policy and the exclusion of deprived localities from expenditure and service in the transport sector is structural. In much the same way that transport planners have been gender biased, they are also social exclusion-biased. They concentrate on certain work journeys to certain locations (city centres), they view some transport problems (congestion) more seriously than others (lack of access to health services and fresh food). 'Social exclusion' requires formal inclusion in transport planning strategies for transport services and operations. There is an expectation that local authorities and related local agencies move rapidly on the transport and social exclusion agenda without a suitable policy budget, framework, literature or operational tools being available. The two transport and social exclusion studies funded currently by government have been conducted below a collective budget of £200,000. A new round of studies have been commissioned but no substantial resources have yet been invested in the investigation of the precise relationship between transport and social exclusion.
The weakness of policy activity in the transport and social exclusion area is best demonstrated perhaps by viewing the methodology used for constructing the government's own Indices of local deprivation (http://www.regeneration.detr.gov.uk/rs/03100/index.htm). The accessibility data incorporated in these indices is not related to either public transport service levels nor to car or vehicle ownership statistics: it is a straight "as the crow flies" measure of geographical distance from some very basic services such as primary school and general practitioners' surgeries. Presently, parents in Bermondsey in South London are holding their children out of secondary school and attempting to form a local school of their own because the secondary school facilities available to these parents and children is eight miles away, involves two bus changes and a journey of one and a half hours in either direction (http://www.simonhughesmp.org.uk/article8.html). The present indices of local deprivation would not capture this severe failure of public service availability. Poverty or social exclusion is not simply a matter of household income, it is also strongly related to the quality of public service availability.
Worryingly. the studies which have been conducted have had no remit to investigate the extent to which the new information technologies can be utilised to overcome the accessibility and mobility disadvantages of the socially excluded. The use of information technology by parents in Bermondsey could assist in the viable and sustainable provision of a local 'charter' school: technology could provide an alternative to 'journey' and provide the skilling through e-technology necessary for the future employment of youth (Turner et al., 2000). Substitution of physical journeys by electronic journeys requires consideration within an overall transport framework - for employment, for education, for health, for household financial managements and social welfare provision.
Transport circumstances are not only a reflection of social exclusion but they operate to compound and contribute to further social exclusion (Grieco, 1995). Deprivation in physical communication infrastructure can be mirrored by deprivation in telecommunication structure if policy intervention is not undertaken: transport and social exclusion ought properly to be viewed within the overall framework of communication and social exclusion. In this short paper, and in opposition to the recently published DETR report on Transport and Social Exclusion (DETR 2000; http://www.mobility-unit.detr.gov.uk/socialex/), we argue that the information requirements of the socially excluded in respect of transport is greater than that of socially advantaged and that the areas of transport information and 'intelligent' transport provision (Hine et al, 2000) need to be incorporated in government attempts to address the 'digital divide'.
In discussing transport and social exclusion, there has been relatively little discussion to date of the extent to which new information technologies can enable the 'excluded' to participate in decisionmaking and planning of public transport services. Exclusion has not only been about the exclusion from the use of services but also from the governance of those services. A larger part for the socially excluded in the planning and governance of public transport services will enable a better fit between the needs of the socially excluded in respect of transport whether these be health, employment, or education related.
Why 'social exclusion'?
The term 'social exclusion' has been developed and utilised by New Labour to signify the restricted participation in a range of 'normal' social functions experienced by substantial numbers of citizens. The term 'social exclusion' has been used to focus attention on the role played by social processes and institutional structures in excluding individuals and communities from full participation in civic life. Whilst direct or formal exclusion is relatively straightforward to identify and the removal of formal barriers is relatively transparent and rapidly accomplishable through law, the removal of indirect or social exclusion is more difficult to accomplish.
The processes and institutions through which social exclusion is effected are more 'sticky' to address and correct. Whilst social exclusion is measurable and evident from outcomes, identifying the processes which produce the outcomes is a more difficult task. The discussion of social exclusion has recognised the compound nature of the problem with social exclusion being understood in terms of the clusters of characteristics which chart together: low educational attainment, high unemployments, residence in high crime environments, child poverty. Inside of this complex policy area, and most particularly in the relationship of transport to social exclusion, there has been a degree of professional naivety about the lived circumstances of the socially excluded. Transport as a profession and perspective has had an engineering focus which has failed to identify the user needs of deprived communities and to incorporate feed back mechanisms and the integration of the excluded into governance structures which would keep services on track. Social policy as a profession and perspective has been time/space naive: analyses of the scheduling difficulties experienced by low income individuals and communities in a social and national context where there has been a substantial lessening of accessibility to primary services without adequate improvements in low income mobility have been very few on the ground.
The need for new 'transport and social exclusion' methodologies and operational tools.
For many local policy makers, the social exclusion discussion is a new and confusing one. The auditing capabilities of new technology enable a rapid charting of 'social exclusion' in terms of the indices of local deprivation, indices which as we have already seen are not fine tuned in terms of transport functions, but the mechanisms by which such measured social exclusion can be corrected are not clear.
There is a past literature on transport disadvantage but in the main it is fragmented and very limited in respect of gender, ethnicity, older person, disabled and single parent household needs and provision. Recently, under the auspices of the DETR, Professor Kerry Hamilton of the University of East London undertook the important and necessary task of integrating the available UK and international materials available on gender and transport into an on-line facility within the scope of the DETR funded Gender Audit of Transport Provision (Hamilton, 2000; http://www.women-and-transport.net/; http://www.mobility-unit.detr.gov.uk/gender/). The outcome of this exercise is that local planners can quickly scan the literature in their search for improvements in transport practices which can reduce social exclusion, at least in respect of gender. Professor Hamilton's work has built a base upon which further activities of the DETR in respect of gender and transport can build (see the latest gender and transport checklist - http://www.mobility-unit.detr.gov.uk/check/index.htm).
A similar excercise could usefully be performed in respect of the range of social exclusion categories. Jeff Turner has developed a Transport and Social Exclusion Toolkit on the University of Manchester transport web site (http://www.art.man.ac.uk/transres/socexclu0.htm); Margaret Grieco and colleagues have used geocities.com to build a Transport and Society on line network to begin the online structuring of a social exclusion and transport literature (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society); Nottingham University has started an online transport and social exclusion bibliography (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/planbiblios/bibs/sustrav/refs/10a.html). Each of these resources has usefulness in a field where the policy pressure for action is intense but where the fundamental ground clearing on terms and the realities they chart has only just begun, however, the need for substantial resources to be invested in a literature and best practice toolkit that local authorities, transport operators and community organisations can make use of in the real planning context is critical - the gender audit provides the evidence for the utiltiy of such an approach. The three on line resources on transport and social exclusion identified here, taken together, represent an emergent data base on transport and social exclusion, including its relationship to employment, providing both a mapping of existing knowledge and a resource for best practice - there remains, however, a major task for a larger policy agency to undertake in expanding and maintaining these on line resoures - the role played by the World Bank in knowledge management in the field of social issues and the developing world provides an appropriate example.(http://www.worldbank.org). Such 'knowledge management' sites are not constrained simply to be locations of 'expert' knowledge but can provide locations for grass root perspectives on and feedback about transport and social exclusion initiatives, experiments and policies.
Patterns of compound disadvantage require new methodologies for measurement and the adoption of front of the field information technologies for their resolution. In Germany an individual can punch in their post code to a national travel information system and the post code of their destination and obtain a travel and scheduling map for the whole of their desired journey.
For low income citizens with limited search budgets and and highly constrained circumstances for experimentation with journeys, a similar system available at a public library or in a shopping mall could be used for guiding their journeys to work, to hospitals, to training locations. Presently, in Nottingham, travel plans are prepared and printed out for work seekers in a small, face to face counselling experiment. Practically, such facilities could readily be made available directly on line to large numbers of work seekers or visitors to and patients of health establishments. The German experiment proves the possibility: in the absence of an integrated transport and social exclusion on line facility the prospect of on-line travel guidance and its implications for the reduction of social exclusion may remain disguised from the British transport planner and transport using public.
Social exclusion: clusters and scatters
Much of the focus on social exclusion and transport has been at the areal or zonal level -indeed, the indices of local deprivation are precisely an areal or zonal measure. There is, however, a dimension of social exclusion and transport which requires the policy maker, planner and reasearcher to think beyond the areal or neighbourhood perspective. The socially excluded are not only clustered together in areas or zones where transport is particularly bad or particularly inappropriate but are also scattered as a consequence of life circumstance. Think, for example, about older persons living in relatively affluent areas or zones who have no kin and who have limited mobility and income. Such older persons not only have limited direct accessibility to services and facilities but also have limited indirect accessibility (Grieco, 1995) - low income households often compensate for the lack of income to buy services by making use of relational resources (friends, kin) to assist in meeting their survival needs. Work undertaken in Liverpool (Grieco, 1995) revealed a high incidence of the borrowing of time between households with neighbours assisting one another in shopping and child care tasks. The socially isolated, whether by disability, age, marital circumstance, ethnicity, can not easily obtain assistance in accessing resources - illness may mean that key shopping can not be done or medication obtained or escorts obtained for making journeys through dangerous spaces.
By identifying the difference between direct and indirect accessibility it becomes clear that different categories of the socially excluded will have different transport needs. Servicing the transport needs of the socially excluded who are clustered in a particular neighbourhood, zone or area is a different prospect to servicing the transport needs of the socially excluded who are also socially isolated in terms of their immediate neighbourhood.
Where the socially excluded are clustered a better fit between bus routes, bus times and vehicle types and measured areas of deprivation can accomplish much. Where the socially excluded are scattered or dispersed, new information technologies can play an important part in lessening the negative impacts of their reduced physical accessibilities by providing on line services such as home working, home banking, shopping and the ordering of medication to be delivered and also in improving their mobility by the utilisation of information technology to provide transport on demand. New information technologies can readily collect together information on persons with low mobility wishing to make similar journeys, provide a booking system or intelligent reservation system which permits the pick up and drop off at home and organise this in a way which is cost effective at the community level. Passengers moving towards buses was a irremovable feature of a past technical ages, buses routing around the needs of low mobility passengers is an existing capability of the new information age.
The same technologies which could be used to accommodate the needs of the least mobile can be used in ensuring that work seekers receive appropriate transport support to maintain and sustain their space in the workplace. Routing 'intelligent reservation' vehicles so as to enable youth to arrive at work on time would be a useful addition to the new deal.
In reflecting on the difficulties experienced by those on low income and those with restricted mobility in accessing civic resources, it is important to reflect on the extent to which this is the outcome of modern urban design - design which in the attempt to cut costs through increases in scale placed critical services outside of local neighbourhoods. Employment was one of the casualties of the pressure to upscale: new technologies with their distributed characteristics enable activities that previously could only have been accomplished in large scale premises to be undertaken once again within the local domain. Rethinking the fit between scale, travel and communications in the age of congestion must certainly be on the agenda.
There is then a difference between mass and responsive transport provisions, however, ICT technology can cut across old boundaries even in respect of the interface between mass and responsive tranport systems. For example, mass transport has very clear peaks and troughs within the duration of a day: removing vehicles which are operating at under capacity in the mass system during the troughs would enable such vehicles to be used as full load vehicles in a responsive mode. The use of such vehicles for unsocial work shift journeys provides one example of a viable 'transport and social exclusion' tool.
Thinking of transport in terms of achieving a real time match between available fleets of vehicles and the travel purposes of the socially excluded through the capabilities of the new information technologies provided a very different perspective on what is possible within existing budget constraints.
Responsive transport is very important in the context of crisis journeys. Crisis might be a job interview event or a sickness event or some other non routine journey which has to be made. Learning the journey path in circumstances of crisis is expensive and risky - the hospital appointment is missed or the job lost. The new information technologies open up the prospect of the integration of public, private and voluntary sector transport resources in providing assistance to citizen's in crisis transport circumstances.
The new information technologies are well suited for installation in the domestic environment: networked terminals, web access through the domestic television set, web capability mobile telephones. This information capability in the domestic environment opens up new scheduling capabilities and can restore local information in the neighborhood environment (Grieco, 2000). A new relationship between accessibility, mobility and the previously socially excluded is possible.
A new relationship between, accessibility, mobility and the socially excluded? the employment implications
There are important employment implications of the new information communication technologies both of themselves and in their annexation to transport technology and transport organisation. In this short section, we wish to provide a number of pointers to the potential for developments which improve the employment circumstances of the socially excluded.
Firstly, the e-form (electronic communication) enables the setting up of electronic employment exchanges. These have the potential to simplify and reduce the search and transaction costs encountered by the work seekers both in the local neighbourhood and in the wider geographical area. This has important consequences for travel to search for employment patterns.
Secondly, the e-form can enable even the homeless to have a base at which they can be reliably contacted. This can enable those who have experienced the most fragmented social profiles to develop and project reliability characteristics which assure employers and enable employers who wish to make a contribution to reducing social exclusion to make contact with the work seekers. This has the capability of removing or lowering the need for the expensive middle class professional worker in servicing the socially excluded.
Thirdly, the e-form can enable those with restricted income to more easily pool their transport resources in the journey to employment. There are good reasons why government agencies should be exploring the potential for pooled transport in general, most particularly the choking of British cities by congestion levels. The pooling of transport requires a well organised information environment.
Fourthly, there is a need to scope the opportunities for telework and community business in socially excluded neighbourhoods. Reducing journeys reduces travel costs and travel costs with real benefits for low income household budgets. The distributed character of the new information technologies enables the relocation of e-business and e-work activity to both the inner city and the remote location. This new potential for altered work organisation can be utilised to assist single mothers participate in economic activity - through new technology available in the home, single mothers could obtain increments of work in a manner which fits their child care schedules. The new technologies can be used to reduce the time poverty of women with dependent children by reducing their search and journey times in accessing key economic resources.
We have already talked of the way in which intelligent reservation systems could be used to assist the socially excluded make employment journeys within the framework of a public transport system. These five areas of potential improvement are all worthy of serious policy consideration by both local and national government agencies.
Conclusion: social inclusion as direct participation in governance of neighbourhood functioning.
Our argument is that the characteristics of 'socially excluded' are generated out of exclusion from participation. Exclusion from services is a consequence of the exclusion from participation. Not only is service provision and service functioning in need of improvement but the redesign of governance is required. Exclusion is about participation or the lack of participation the inclusion of 'social exclusion' in transport strategies therefore needs to be more widely adopted than it currently is.
Following the arguments presented here the reduction of social exclusion through transport mechanisms is likely to occur on a revenue rather than a capital investment basis (the provision of information services, scheduling and booking systems rather than the development of physical infrastructure): present government policy precludes revenue assistance to the various local agencies in their quest for the reduction of social exclusion. Technology could allow residents to become more effective, active advocates for their area. It would allow them perhaps not to have to negotiate or understand the sheer fragmentation in responsibility and delivery that characterises transport policy. It could allow them to ‘watch’ the work of variety of agencies and demand co-ordination from those agencies. It could allow them to more easily monitor performance of agencies and benchmark their own experience against that of other areas. It could also allow the agencies or professional ‘advocates’ themselves to be better co-ordinated. But whether it does depends on a change in government policy - to better join the citizen to governance through the use of new technology.
Bibliography:
Carter, C. and Grieco, M.(2000) New deals, no wheels: social exclusion, tele-options and electronic ontology' in Urban Studies, Vol 37 No 10 pp 1735-1748
Grieco, M. (1995)'Time pressures and low income families:The implication for 'social' transport policy in Europe' in Community Development Journal, Vol 30 No 4, 1995
Grieco, M. (2000) 'Intelligent urban development: the emergence of wired government and administration' in Urban Studies, Vol 37 No 10 pp 1719-1722
Hine, J., Swan, D., Scott, J., Binnie, D. and Sharp, J. (2000) 'Using technology to overcome the tyranny of space: information provision and wayfinding' in Vol 37 No 10 pp 11757-1770
Turner, J., Holmes, L. and Hodgson, F. (2000)'Intelligent urban development: an introduction to a participatory approach' in Vol 37 No 10 pp 1723-1734
On line references:
East Midlands Development Agency http://www.emda.org.uk/cgi-bin/search.cgi
The Roskild symposiumhttp://www.unesco.org/most/besseng.htm
Summary of DETR report on Transport and Social Exclusion http://www.mobility-unit.detr.gov.uk/socialex
Index of local deprivation http://www.regeneration.detr.gov.uk/98ild/index.htm
Indices of deprivation 2000 http://www.regeneration.detr.gov.uk/rs/03100/index.htm
Social exclusion in Scotland http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library/documents1/socexcl.htm
Education provision in Bermondsey http://www.simonhughesmp.org.uk/article8.html