Margaret Grieco, Professor of Transport and Society, Napier University and Member of the North East Action on Transport (N.E.A.T) team
Abstract:
Since the deregulation of British bus based public transport, low income communities outside of the main public transport "corridors" have experienced difficulties in obtaining the levels of public transport provision necessary to provide full participation in social, economic and political life. Communities in the North East of England have seen a pattern of reduction in and withdrawal of bus services. Service operators and local authorities in the area indicate that this pattern of the withdrawal of 'secured' services is likely to worsen as bus ridership levels in low income communities fall. Public service failure in the arena of transport has been accompanied by the closure of doctors' surgeries and other essential facilities in low income areas with communties as large as 10,000 having no doctor's surgery located within their vicinity. Low income residents have to travel to essential facilities on public transport modes which have poor reliabilities, inadequate frequencies and inappropriate routings. Professionals and policy makers have failed to adequately chart the experience of low income communities in respect of the interaction between public transport provision and access to full participation in society. Correspondingly, there has been a failure to investigate hybrid forms of public transport which could address this gap such as demand responsive community transport. In the North East of England, community groups, transport operators, councillors, local activists, council officers, the social exclusion unit of the British Cabinet Office and 'transport and society' professionals have come together in a set of activities and forums to monitor, discuss and improve policy and operations in respect of transport and social exclusion under the auspices of the North East Action for Transport initiative (NEAT). Community monitoring is a key tool in reshaping policy in respect of transport and social exclusion: this short presentation indicates the approach and activities undertaken by NEAT to date.
Introduction: public service failure and public monitoring
The attention of policy makers has begun to focus on the relationship between transport and social exclusion. For many communities the quality of public transport has declined over the last two decades and the extent of this decline can be explored in terms of 'public service failure'. Research into the relationship between transport and social exclusion has conventionally been undertaken for policy authorities by persons who neither belong to the areas researched nor have adequate resources to investigate fully the dynamics associated with transport and social exclusion.
In reponse to this, since April 2001, a number of communities in the North East of England in conjunction with transport professionals, councillors, concerned non-govcernmental organisations, transport operators and regulating authorities have been exploring the constraints experienced by those depending upon the public transport system. Communities have identified the withdrawal of routes and services within their area and a whole range of social groups have identified the various forms of failure attending operating services.
In the low income areas of the North East of England low car ownership is often partnered by low levels of public transport provision. Communities are clear that they are experiencing public service failure but petitions, consultations, letters of complaint, requests for more socially balanced services or bus designs which can accommodate young mothers with pushchairs, older persons with restricted mobility or disabled persons are not resulting in public transport improvement. The policy focus has become concentrated on getting motorists out of their cars rather than upon ensuring that either an adequate range of social and leisure services is available locally or that an adequate level of mobility is ensured for all in the accessing of services now located at considerable distances from low income residences.
Monitoring the public transport system has not been an activity which was regarded historically as a community competence. It was a job for professionals and professionals have rarely given the feedback to communities on the overall level of complaints or attempted to organise fora in which communities can hold operators and other associated bodies accountable. Complaints frequently disappeared into the dustbins of history with communities holding their own files on their own complaints without much remedial action and with little awareness of the actions or experiences of other communities.
The advent of the World Wide Web and the availability of new Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can enable communities to monitor public transport and other public service provision and performance and make transparent that performance beyond their local arena. Through the use of WAP phones, the development of WAP data bases, digital cameras, portable lap tops and the World Wide Web, communities can record and monitor the performance of public transport within their area at any point in time. Real time spot audits of public transport performance can be conducted by communities and the results they obtain can be immediately transmitted and broadcast globally. In Lemington, in the West End of Newcastle, on the 25th and 26th September, a real time community monitoring of the performance of the Stagecoach routes and services was undertaken. Stagecoach joined in with this community monitoring as did members of the Newcastle Disability Forum. The results of the exercise were displayed upon the web at the NEAT web site and 6,500 visits were paid to these web pages during the week of the exercise. It is we believe the first exercise of its kind in the United Kingdom. This exercise was undertaken after a series of Transport and Social Exclusion meetings (approximately forty)held with community groups within the Newcastle and North Tyneside area between April, 2001 and late September 2001 and was followed by a web cast on Transport and Social Exclusion from the Council Chamber of Newcastle City Council on the 5th October, 2001, at which community groups, transport operators, ngos and the Cabinet Office Social Exclusion Unit spoke.
The next community monitoring exercise will be conducted in the Moor Park area of North Tyneside and the transport operator in that area has agreed to join in with the monitoring exercise after the Lemington experience had been reported at the Transport and Social Exclusion web cast on 5th October from Newcastle City Council Chamber. On that day, British Telecom also expressed interest in joinîng in with real time on line community monitoring of public services under the auspices of the NEAT initiative. The involvement of information communication technology developers and operators is essential in the development of community monitoring systems: enabling public service users to interact easily with one another and to record their experiences with low transaction costs is critical in the development of user-based evidence in an overall context of evidence-led policy.