by Greg Marsden
The INFUZE response to the Integrated National Transport Strategy is now available. Drawing on our Call to Action which engaged around 500 citizens in Leeds, we have provided some reflections on what an integrated transport strategy should deliver.
Defining success
Of course, there are lots of day-to-day experiences of things that don’t work well. Better bus and train stations, lighting, shelter, joined up bike routes – the kinds of bread and butter issues which we have known about for decades and which we hope a new approach can foreground in prioritising improvements.
However, an Integrated National Transport Strategy has to be about more than getting from A to B if it is to help make people’s lives better in a more meaningful way. People told us that they want more of a sense of community, for transport to enable stronger social networks, to provide space for more local greenspaces as well opportunities to visit nature elsewhere. Diversity and a sense of authenticity and heritage also matter. This might all sound a bit away from making bus reregulation and Great British Rail work better – but it is a further reminder that integrating transport is not about connecting journeys on a blank canvas – it is about real experiences in real places.
One of the implications of the initial survey work, which we will continue to develop is that these kinds of issues suggest a much broader pallet of ‘success’ or evaluation criteria in deciding what good looks like. It could mean loosening the centralised appraisal framework for more place-oriented developments. One question that the Integrated National Transport Strategy could ask is which parts of the system national government needs to retain substantive common oversight for in how funding is spent and what should it be open to letting go of.
The role of technology
The questions on data and technology were challenging to answer. They are not generally at the forefront of the responses we received. People were much more impassioned by the lack of services to get across the city or about the lack of service delivery reliability. Some mentioned that on-demand ride hailing services were a technology that was plugging the gap of a failing service that used to be available. One reading is that the basics need to be better and technology is just window dressing. If the option for making a two mile journey across the edge of a city is to make two lots of four mile journeys into and back out of the city centre then better information is not a game changer. That said, understanding what the patterns of travel are in our towns cities are and working out how to better service them would seem to align well. 30% of our survey respondents expressed concerns about technology – and so the case for what technology enables rather than on what technology it is seems much more important.
If you want to find out a bit more about our response then you can download it here. We will be sharing more findings about our Call to Action and the forthcoming Citizen Panels on our website …..