Transport Disadvantage and Social Exclusion

Exclusionary Mechanisms in Transport in Urban Scotland

Julian Hine, Fiona Mitchell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351877756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Transportation Industry
• Index: Business

There is currently much interest in the role that transport plays in promoting, or alleviating 'social exclusion'. Exclusionary processes are, of course, multi-dimensional and a mixture of physical barriers, financial constraints, time budgets, access difficulties and psychological aspects such as fear, all combine in various ways to prevent the use of transport facilities. In order to be able to understand more accurately the relationship between transport and social exclusion, a fuller understanding is required. Data gathered from households to examine the problems experienced by women, the elderly, and disabled, and public transport users in accessing key facilities and influences on lifestyle. Interviews of policymakers and public transport providers provides insights into the problems of providing public transport to meet social inclusion objectives. This book illustrates the nature of these exclusionary processes and indicates how policy and practice could be developed to counter these effects.

Chapter 1

A Forgotten Transport Problem?

Introduction

The link between transport and social exclusion has until recently been widely ignored by policy makers and governments. The importance of this link has been highlighted by a number of recent studies (DETR, 2000a; Hine and Mitchell, 2001a; Church et al., 2000; Lucas et al., 2001). The traditional concern of transport policy makers with car dependence and the journey to work has inevitably resulted in a policy focus that by its very nature ignores poverty and the consequences of non-car ownership in terms of access to new employment centres, retail facilities (now invariably located at out of town or peripheral locations) and educational facilities. In the mid- and late 1990s it was possible to state that, although the existence of a link between transport and social exclusion had been widely recognised, it could also be concluded that there was a lack of clear and reliable data (Barry, 1998; Pacione, 1995). As recently as 1999 it was concluded in a study of transport and social exclusion in London that the paucity of data on the issue meant that the relationship between transport and social exclusion could not be fully appreciated (Church etal., 1999, 2000).

Social exclusion reflects the existence of these barriers which make it difficult or impossible for people to participate fully in society (Social Exclusion Unit, 1998). Studies have identified a number of factors that are seen to contribute to social exclusion, including differentials in education and training opportunity and attainment, socioeconomic circumstances, local environment, peer group, as well as access to information and physical accessibility to a wide range of opportunities including employment, shopping and recreation. Access to an adequate transport system is central to all of these.

In the UK the focus of the debate has been concerned with the gap between poor neighbourhoods and the ‘rest’ where social and economic changes have resulted in mass joblessness, as a consequence of the decline of manufacturing industry and the need for new skills; concentration of vulnerable people in deprived neighbourhoods; family breakdown; poor core public services and public service failure; declining popularity of social housing. The problem in these areas has been compounded by a lack of attention to links between poor neighbourhoods and local and regional economies, and poor links between planning and economic development which can accentuate the barriers to work, education and child care (Social Exclusion Unit, 2001; Hine and Mitchell, 2001a).

UK transport policy is now seeking to address the transport-related dimensions of social exclusion. The recent UK Transport White Paper produced in 1998 stated transport helps to make a ‘fairer society’ (DETR, 1998a, p. 9). This has placed a new importance and urgency on identifying the nature of the linkage between transport disadvantage and social exclusion, and the mechanisms by which an integrated transport system can reduce levels of exclusion. In the UK this debate about transport and social exclusion has been accorded a lower priority at a time when a series of new interventions in the local transport market have been proposed and incorporated in new Transport Acts for England and Wales, and Scotland. It can be argued that these interventions that include the development of Quality Partnerships, Quality Contracts and charging mechanisms such as road pricing and the Work Place Parking Levy are essentially targeted at modal shift from private car to public transport and the encouragement of more environmentally friendly modes of transport such as walking and cycling. This issue will be discussed in more detail later in this volume. The paradox here is that in communities where walking accounts for a significant proportion of trips public transport is seen to be ineffective and a failure by users. In these areas, which are important markets for public transport providers in terms of their market share, car access is shared with family and friends.

Increasingly poorer communities can lose services due to the restructuring of bus routes into areas of new employment and those housing areas where those live who possess the new skills vital for the new service economy. The irony is that it is these areas where car ownership is relatively higher and rising. The modal shift argument favoured by policy makers is credible for these areas but not for those urban areas where car ownership is low and deprivation high. For rural areas similar arguments have been made. Evidence from Scotland, the northeast of England, London and New Deal areas in the DETR study highlight this problem (Hine and Mitchell, 2001a; DETR, 2001 ; www.goneat.org.uk; Farrington et al., 1998).

Central to this volume are a number of key questions that relate to the direction of UK transport policy (that is what transport policy currently is and also what it can become), its delivery and the very nature of social exclusion. These are:

• how is the link between transport and social exclusion characterised;
• given this characterisation, what policy mechanisms and practices are appropriate in different circumstances;
• what are the implications of the social exclusion debate for the delivery and organisation of transport policy?

Forgotten Problem?

The process of social exclusion and the relationship with transport is little understood by local authorities, and it is these authorities who regularly intervene in the local transport market to subsidise public transport services that are socially necessary (Sinclair et al., 2001; Hine and Mitchell, 2001a). Exclusion is about non-participation of individuals across a range of life shaping activities including employment, education and leisure. A number of authors (Burchardt et al., 1999; Lee and Mûrie, 1999; Church et al., 2001) have identified dimensional frameworks to illustrate the problem and also focus research activity (discussed later in this chapter). From a transport viewpoint, access and mobility are key to all these activities. It is access to transport – or, in many cases, the lack of it – that shapes lives and confines certain groups in certain locations to particular labour markets and opportunities. Due to historical patterns of investment in the transport system and land use planning decisions, these activities may now increasingly be further away, for reasons associated with economies of scale, and as a consequence located at points not well served by public transport and readily accessible by private car.

Scatters and Clusters

Other issues arise for the policy maker when deciding how to deal with social excluded groups in terms of delivering transport and other goods and services. This is the small matter of ‘scatters’ and ‘clusters’ (Grieco, Turner and Hine, 2000). Socially excluded groups are not only found clustered in particular areas; they can also be found in scatters as a consequence of life circumstance. For example, older people living in many affluent urban and suburban areas provide an example of a scatter. This represents a fundamentally different problem for policy makers than a cluster does. It has been argued that, indeed, the scatter of socially excluded individuals and households can be better served through new information technologies. In the recent Scottish Executive study of transport and social inclusion (Hine and Mitchell, 2001a), 40 per cent of households were found to have a PC. The next step of access to information technology via this route may not be far away in lower income areas. It is access to information via either a PC or telephone that may mitigate against poor and infrequent transport services and even allow community transport or other transport providers to provide services such as taxis, that are a bookable resource. The problem here may be that, for commercial operators, such services are not viable and, for local authorities, they may involve a substantial reshaping of spending patterns on local authority transport. A common problem within local authorities is the difficulty of negotiating shared transport schemes between different local authority departments, for example between education and social services.

For clusters of the socially excluded it may be relatively easier to provide services and they may offer a better fit with existing bus routes and schedules. That is not say to that clusters are not without their problems. In circumstances where subsidised services are offered at particular times of the day to help people access job opportunities in other areas, the services may be well used initially but then operators experience a decline in patronage as these passengers become more established in the work force and begin to be able to share transport with colleagues or even, over a period of time, purchase a car. The problem of the transient cluster in transport terms needs to be recognised and more thought is required to deal with this problem, as it can affect the viability of a whole route in the long run. Service withdrawal and the alignment of services on profitable corridors is not unheard off and there are plenty of examples around the UK.

A New Policy?

As highlighted earlier at the start of this chapter, a fear is that current policy as enshrined in the new Transport Acts for England, Wales and Scotland will be more effective in dealing with the modal shift question rather than poverty reduction and creating transport opportunities for socially excluded groups. It is clear that the legislation provides transport authorities with policy tools that could be responsible for creating effective public transport systems and encourage modal shift, but they may also inadvertently promote a realignment of public transport services on corridors away from and towards the edge of areas where socially excluded groups reside.

New public transport markets are deemed to exist among the wealthier car commuter households, who favour more frequent services that are quicker and more direct. In planning routes operators must also strike a balance with their core business amongst their regular users who have lower levels of access to the private car. To protect their business, public transport operators will reshape their networks to meet the needs of changing local economies. The skills and qualifications demanded by these new local economies are such that excluded groups may be increasingly marginalised unless transport services or arrangements can be found that can allow access to areas where new opportunities exist. These market trends, aimed at the car commuter, could work against those in lower income areas who do not own cars and who rely on public transport to get them to work. Those who rely on their local bus network could very well find that it will take longer, operate less frequently and not fit with the new patterns (shift work) or the location of their employment. Instead, bus-based public transport services will be concentrated on quality partnership routes that guarantee a larger market share and afford the operator the opporunity to run services at a greater frequency for longer periods during the day. The concern arises where communities and particular user groups are located considerable distances from these main corridors which are being made increasingly important by state intervention in partnership with public transport operators. The realisation that local public transport links are vital to the sustainability of communities has recently been recognised by central government with the extension of the Bus Challenge Scheme to urban areas over the period 2001 to 2004 (Social Exclusion Unit, 2001; DLTR, 2001).

How can Social Exclusion be Conceptualised?

The debate about social exclusion has origins in earlier debates in the literature on poverty, deprivation and the underclass. Social exclusion has come to be accepted as a term that refers to the loss of ‘ability (by people or households) to both literally and metaphorically connect with many of the jobs, services and facilities that they need to participate fully in society’ (Church and Frost, 1999, p. 3). Poverty and deprivation, on the other hand, refer to a lack of access to material welfare, and material and social deprivation (Folwell, 1999). In a transport policy and land use planning setting the notion of exclusion as an explanation has certain attractions; it is a process whereby households and individuals experience a progressive isolation or lack of connectivity to jobs, goods and services. This process results in a deterioration in participation across a number of areas (Church et al., 1999; McCormick and Leicester, 1998; De Haan, 1999).

In transport terms the argument can be made that a lack of access to effective transport can impact on the extent to which individuals can access health facilities, local job markets and leisure activities. According to Gaffron, Hine and Mitchell (2001) there is broad agreement in the literature that social exclusion represents a conceptual shift away from the traditional forms of explanation and should not be considered equivalent to older terms and definitions previously applied to individuals, groups and processes considered to exist and operate outside a certain social norm – such as poverty, deprivation and the underclass (Bhalla and Lapeyre, 1997; Lee and Murie, 1999). It is enough at this point, and for our purposes in this volume, to note this. In transport terms the links between poverty and transport disadvantage have been known for some time: social exclusion provides an added dimension in terms of the process and dynamic. It also raises a number of questions about policy delivery, as we have seen in relation to the earlier discussion about scatters and clusters.

Despite there being no common definition of social exclusion, there was also found to be no common definition of the dimensions and factors involved in it. But in both cases, the approaches taken by various authors, though different in detail, broadly overlap (Gaffron, Hine and Mitchell, 2001). Lee and Murie (1999) identified eight areas under which social exclusion could be discussed and examined. These were: labour markets and employment; welfare markets and poverty traps; exclusion from financial circuits and public utilities; education; health; housing markets; neighbourhoods and social networks. In another study Burchardt et al. (1999) developed a dimensional framework to identify not only areas and activities that social exclusion could impact upon but also how the effect of exclusion could potentially be measured across these areas of activities. This framework included:

• consumption activity – the ability to consume at least to a certain level the goods and services considered normal for the society;
• savings activity – the ability to accumulate savings and pension entitlements and/or to own property, both as way of fulfilling individual and social aspirations (such as home ownership) and to provide security for periods outside the labour market;
• production activity – the ability to engage in an economically and/or socially valued activity (including paid work, education, training, retirement over state pension age or looking after a family), which helps the individual to gain or maintain self-respect for being engaged in an activity valued by others and makes a direct or indirect economic contribution to society;
• political activity – the ability to engage in some collective effort to improve or protect the immediate or wider social and physical environment (including voting, membership of political parties and or campaigning groups);
• social activity – the ability to engage in significant social interaction with family or friends and identifying with a cultural group or community (social isolation and denial of cultural rights are considered significant factors in social exclusion).

Burchardt et al. also recognised that the ability of a group or individual to participate across these dimensions could be affected by a number of factors. These include the individual’s own characteristics, life events, characteristics of the area resided in and social, civil and political institutions of society. Church et al. (1999,2000) identified categories of exclusion that are connected to transport and proposed three types of processes that influence this relationship between exclusion and transport. They were: 1) the nature of time-space organisation in households; 2) the nature of the transport system; and 3) the nature of time/space organisation of the facilities and opportunities individuals are seeking to access. The nature of these will differ according to gender, age, cultural background, level of ability and economic circumstances. The seven categories of exclusion connected to transport suggested by Church et al. are:

• physical exclusion – where physical barriers inhibit the accessibility of services, which could be experienced by mothers with children, elderly or frail, those encumbered by heavy loads or those who do not speak the dominant language of the society;
• geographical exclusion – where poor transport provision and resulting inaccessibility can create exclusion not just in rural areas but also in areas on the urban fringe;
• exclusion from facilities – the dist...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1 A Forgotten Transport Problem?
• 2 Patterns and Practices
• 3 Circumstance and Policy Context: Leith, Castlemilk and Coatbridge
• 4 Transport Choices and Disadvantage
• 5 Access to Local Services and Journey Time
• 6 Local Authority Response and the Public Transport Network
• 7 Where Next?
• 8 Annex
• References
• Index