There are more questions than answers

In my introduction to this volume, I suggested that a significant proportion of people living on low incomes in the UK and the US are effectively ‘locked out’ of the activities that enable a decent quality of life because of a lack of adequate transport. In the minds of myself and my fellow contributors to this volume, many of whom work on the frontline to assist such individuals, there is no doubt that this is the case.

The statistical evidence shows that people living on the lowest incomes, in both the UK and the US, spend a far greater (and often punitively high) proportion of their income to travel less often and over shorter distances than the average population. They also disproportionately suffer the disutility of our car-dominant transport systems. This is not only in terms of their over-exposure to noise, air pollution and accidents, but because of diminishing and increasingly unaffordable public transport services combined with a decline in local shops and amenities in the areas where they live. The effect of this ‘travel poverty’ is to significantly reduce their life chances because of a reduced opportunity to access a decent education, gainful employment, healthcare services and other amenities. In this way, the inequalities that are already evident within this sector of the population are reinforced.

In the past, transport policies have been blind to such issues because the theories and models that have informed them were more concerned with the efficient operation and maintenance of the system than meeting the accessibility needs of the people using it. Similarly, professionals concerning themselves with the antipoverty and social welfare agenda have failed to recognise and address the important and dynamic role of transportation in creating and reinforcing social and economic disadvantage. This situation is now changing on both sides of the Atlantic; new policy and legislative frameworks are being developed in both countries in an attempt to address this previous oversight.

Clearly, US policy and practice is more advanced in this respect and the UK policy makers and practitioners have much to learn from the experiences of their US counterparts.