Social impacts and social equity issues in transportation

Principal investigator: Karen Lucas

Lead institution: University of Oxford (TSU)

The aim of this eighteen month scanning exercise is to ensure that in a post Eddington and Stern world, DfTs social objectives are factored into decision making and appropriately balanced against economic (and environmental) objectives. It achieves this by reviewing and synthesising state-of-the-art in social scientific understandings of transport and transport behaviours and how these map onto the delivery of current DfT and related departmental strategies, policies and programme. The study seeks to identify opportunities to strengthen the research base through future interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, policymakers and practitioners concerned with addressing various social factors in transport, improve data sources and capacity building. Outcomes from this study will improve the conceptual, theoretical and methodological basis for future basic, applied and policy research by ensuring that the drivers of, scale and scope of transport/ accessibility related exclusion are better understood, and how this might change in response to different policy levers and wider trends.

The initial framing event for this scanning exercise took place in Oxford on 14th and 15th September.

December 2010 - Workshop 1: Employment and Training - looked at the issue of transport and social exclusion from an employment and training perspective. It was led by Dr Anne Green, who is a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Employment Research (IER) at Warwick University. Dr Green has undertaken a number of studies on the access to employment of low-income groups including young people.

March 2011 - Workshop 2: Transport and Health - was led by Professor Tanja Pless-Mulloli and her colleagues at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, which addresses major research questions in the areas of public health, primary care and health services research.  For the flyer please click here. 

See below for details of further workshops

August 2011 - Workshop 3: Housing and Sustainable Communities - will take a predominantly urban focus and will build on the considerable research of Professor Anne Power and her team at the LSE in relation to low income communities. It will consider the accessibility impacts and transport needs of different populations within major urban renewal project areas, and how this can be integrated with the existing regeneration policies.

September 2011 - Workshop 4: Connectivity of Rural Communities - will provide a counter-balance to Workshop 3 by examining the enormous social challenges of transport planning and provision in rural areas and the impact of this on the exclusion of vulnerable groups. The seminar will held in Scotland, in Aberdeen University, led by Professor John Farringdon from the Institute of Transport and Rural Research.

December 2011: The Final Dissemination Event - will be held in London, offering all the workshop participants and others a final opportunity to identify policy issues and gaps in knowledge and to make recommendations for current practice and for further research and policy development.  A future programme of policy relevant research will be identified as one output of the process.