Information technology, community monitoring and demand responsive transport: a path to the reduction of social exclusion.
Margaret Grieco, Professor of Transport and Society, Napier University, Edinburgh and Visiting Fellow, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge
Introduction.
This talk provides an introduction to the ways in which new information communication technologies can enable the community monitoring of public transport provision and public service failure. These same technologies and the community mappings of transport need can be harnessed in the development of demand responsive transport systems. There is no good reason why demand responsive transport systems located in communities can not be developed as a mainstream part of the public transport system. Doing so would provide a path to the reduction of social exclusion.
There is a set of background papers available on the web which can usefully be read after this talk: these are found at
Information communication technologies and community information systems:
The new information communication technologies have brought the ability to receive and to generate global information right down to the level of the individual. The interactive capabilities of the new information communication technologies mean that households, groups, communities, localities and regions all now have the ability to collect together information and data on themselves that was previously the province of government or very large organisations. Communities can now monitor the accounts of their own circumstances provided by others and can now readily compare their own fortunes with the fortunes of others. Community information systems have begun to develop where communities make use of information and data developed, harnessed or accessed by others in the creation of local information bases. Communities can now record their own transport circumstances and build up archives on their transport experiences which can be globally transmitted. Arguments about whether the bus was on time can be radically altered by the use of realtime webcam-ing. Historically, complaints to operators frequently disappeared into a blackhole but in the present complaints can be recorded and archived by communities and displayed where the accounts of public service 'losers' are contested.
The distributed character of new information technology enables transport user groups to monitor the performance of transport operators and government or regulating agencies and such developments are already appearing in abundance on the web. Information communication technologies enable individual complaints and individual needs to be more readily aggregated into a community account of experience and such accounts are likely to create pressures for change in the public transport system.
The mapping of real transport need: community monitoring and community documentation
Research in low income communities indicates that public transport provision often does not meet the household survival needs of those communities. Sheltered accommodation in the UK is often left unsupplied in respect of public transport provision; dial a ride schemes are often oversubscribed and poorly organised. The Nexus care bus system in Newcastle for example does not permit the use of the care bus for hosptital appointments and disabled people talk of the many obstacles placed in the way of using the system.
Bus routes are typically 'planned' without reference to the location of health and other important facilities often following traditional routes which were appropriate in an ancient age but now have limited utility.
The emergence of new information communication technologies can be used by transport operators to receive important feedback from communities on the deficiencies of the existing systems: historically, customers' views were not well integrated into the planning of services such views having a low profile and operators' responses to feedback having a low transparency. Mapping real transport need in the present can be conducted at a high profile on a low budget through strategic use of the new information communication technologies and a high profile on the part of the community in respect of its feedback to operators enforces transparency upon the transport operators and government agencies responsible for transport.
Community information systems, community mapping and demand responsive transport:
With the new information communication technologies, communities can map their real needs and develop the information systems which record, archive and access the data necessary for developing demand responsive transport approaches. Community information systems can be used in the development of intelligent reservation systems which move demand responsive transport beyond the clumsy dial a ride version presently found in Britain. The demand responsive systems developed in communities may take a number of forms. Volunteer matching with hospital rides is one form of demand responsive transport system already found within the UK - this could be expanded through an intelligent reservation system. The expansion of volunteer demand responsive systems in the United Kingdom has not yet been a priority research area.
Community information systems could be used to interface with the public transport operators: wired communities already exist elsewhere in the UK and in the world where in home networked terminals enable the household to interface with a range of booking services, public transport is simply one more interface. Flexible public transport may be more effective at moving the public away from the privately owned vehicle or at least reducing its use than traditional fixed routes but its greatest importance is in the context where communities have low vehicle ownership levels and poor public service levels.
Demand responsive transport has now arrived on the british transport agenda. Lemington in Newcastle is about to receive a demand responsive transport service as the outcome of the Urban Bus Challenge call for funding: the mobility unit of the DTLR is now publicly expressing interest in Demand Responsive solutions to transport provision not only for 'excluded' groups but as a mainstream solution.
Whereas five years ago demand responsive transport in Britain had a low profile, now its profile is rapidly climbing. However, Britain remains fairly uncreative about the forms that demand responsive transport might take. Those communities which have historically been poorly served by public transport may in the present be invited to think about the prospect of developing community transport options based on intelligent reservations systems, low cost fleet management software, volunteer drivers, expanded car clubs anchored on the local authority as the guarantor. Expanding the idea of middle class car clubs to community vehicles rented from commercial companies and operating community transport provision in poorly accessed areas is now a prospect. Clearly, there is much scoping to do in envisaging such options but the prospect of the continuing withdrawal of transport services from communities which are already impoverished requires sustainable solutions and the greatest sustained aspect of the British transport story is the continued need for transport in communities which are forgotten.
Biography:
Margaret Grieco is Britain's first Professor of Transport and Society and Scotland's first female Professor of Transport. She holds her doctorate from the University of Oxford and worked at the Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford from 1986-1992. She has previously held professorships at the University of Ghana and the University of North London and worked for the World Bank. Her first University appointment was at the University of Aberdeen at the Institute for the Study of Sparsely Populated Areas in 1975. She has published extensively on transport and social policy issues and has consulted to a number of UN organisations.