More accessible and inclusive transport is needed across the North - Dr Tom Jarvis

We know there are areas that suffer from a lack of bus routes, delayed trains, high costs, and a lack of safe space for walking and cycling. These circumstances lead to transport-related social exclusion (TRSE) - being unable to access opportunities, key services and community life.

To help combat this, we and our partners across the North have developed our Connecting Communities Strategy – the first regional strategy for achieving a more effective, equal, and inclusive transport system for all.

It builds on the research published in September 2022 which revealed that 3.3 million people in the North of England live in areas with a high level of social exclusion because of issues with the transport system.

For those living in these areas, this not only means being unable to access the right opportunities, key services, and community life, but often also facing excessive impacts on their time, finances, and wellbeing from having to use the transport system. It also showed that people with disabilities, those on low incomes and in insecure work, and carers are much more likely to be affected, wherever they live. These issues hold the North’s residents and communities back – contributing to poverty, poor health, and a worse quality of life.

Our Connecting Communities Strategy provides a clear pathway to a transport system that works for all of the places and people of the North. It sets out how greater localisation of transport decision-making, co-producing local transport solutions with excluded communities, and reforming scheme appraisal processes can combine to maximise the benefits of investment for excluded communities and areas.

Empowered by our research, data, and local insights, this strategy sets an ambition to reduce the number of people in the North facing a high risk of TRSE by 1,000,000 by 2050. Achieving this ambition means eliminating the gap in transport provision and vulnerability to social exclusion between towns, cities and rural communities in the North.

This ambition comes at a challenging time – the impacts of the pandemic, high levels of inflation and declining real wage levels have affected everyday life for most, but they have disproportionately fallen on areas and communities least able to cope. A decade of decline in the local bus services prior to the pandemic and above-inflation increases in fares across public transport networks have added to this. But it also comes at a time of significant opportunity – with the vital transition to a zero-carbon transport system already requiring transformative change in everyday mobility.

The North’s strategic transport network needs to be designed and developed to be accessible, ensuring individuals have a choice of services and opportunities to access work and leisure. Transforming local public transport and active travel is a necessary part of seizing this opportunity. For too many in the North, car travel is the only option for balancing work, childcare, family responsibilities and an active social and community life.

This lack of choice and dependence on car travel is not only a major barrier to achieving our legally binding commitments on reducing carbon emissions but is a major social challenge.

The family getting into debt to pay for car repairs, the school-leaver unable to access good job opportunities without the car that they cannot afford, or the older person left isolated after giving up driving need the high-quality public transport and active travel options that are widely lacking.

We know that one of the biggest issues facing the North of England remains the need to address the decades of underinvestment in our transport network: poor and unreliable connectivity is holding our people and businesses back, constraining growth, and hampering accessibility and social mobility.

Over one in five people from this region are at risk of exclusion because of the limitations of transport options in their community.

That is millions of people, many of whom are those with specific needs who rely on public transport to get to work, to go to medical appointments or to see friends and family. This issue is holding the North back and must be addressed if we are to achieve our full potential.

Only by investing now will we make it easier to connect people and places with services and opportunities and address the barriers within our transport system that create inequalities in society.

Dr Tom Jarvis is principal social researcher at Transport for the North.