This newsletter comes to you as I ride a Lumo train north from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh. Being a night owl myself, being up at some stupid hour in the morning to get a train really does not sit well with me. So forgive me if I am snappy.
Thank you to everyone who gave praise for last week’s essay, by the way. Based on that feedback I will write more of this kind of thing in the future, as you seemed to like it.
📕 I have co-authored a book on Mobility-as-a-Service, which is a comprehensive guide on this important new transport service. It is available from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and now Amazon.
💼 I am also available for freelance transport planning consultancy, through my own company Mobility Lab. You can check out what I do here.
🐮 Not all the same
As someone who is by most people’s definition a country boy (being born and raised in Devon, although according to my friends I was a townie as I lived in a place with more than 10 people living in it), I have a tendency to get somewhat vexed about rural transport issues. Notably the lack of understanding about them, but also about how many of these assumptions can be simply challenged by looking at easily accessible datasets.
In the grand scheme of things, the UK has some pretty decent data when it comes to understanding rural issues. And data that tends to show that rural transport issues are more complex than a first glance gives, and that communities within them can be just as rich and complex as that in any urban area. A very good example of this the Rural-Urban Classification for geographical areas, as used by the Office of National Statistics. This has divided up England and Wales into 50 metre by 50 metre grids, and by using data such as population density and travel time to the nearest built up area of at least 75,000 people it has been able to tease out different areas according to their spatial characteristics.
We can easily see how this classification looks in real life through the excellent Open Geography Portal. Looking at a part of the world that I know well – South East England – we can see the variance in different place typologies. For example, the High Weald is considered to be smaller rural that’s further from major urban areas, while some pockets around the M25 are similarly considered as rural, but just closer to a major urban area. It also leads to some interesting quirks, where the two national parks in the area (the New Forest and the South Downs) have a very different ‘rural’ character compared to, for example, the Lake District.
Map of Rural-Urban Classification across the South East of England (Source: Open Geography Portal)
Now, a ruralist – if that is the opposing word to urbanist – would say that even this does not capture the complexity of different rural places. A small hamlet can be very different to a small village, and even between settlement types there are very different transport needs. And I agree. As a Devon lad, I can tell you that while the likes of North Tawton and Hatherleigh have very similar populations, the nature of those places is very different indeed.
The challenge here is collecting data at a useful statistical scale. If the goal is to compare, for example, travel patterns between rural villages, the lower sample size means that the challenges associated with statistical noise are much greater in rural areas. In the last paragraph I mentioned North Tawton and Hatherleigh in Devon. They have populations of 1859 and 1729 respectively. These are large villages by Devon standards. Yet if we used the statistical sample size of the National Travel Survey (0.07%, though this is of households not population), those are sample sizes of 1. Even an excellent sample size of 30% is around 500 people, which can still be subject to variation. But I digress.
Even from the national data, we can understand variances in travel between different types of rural area. The National Travel Survey rather unhelpfully does not use the same Rural-Urban Classification as the ONS does. Regardless it can provide instructive insight into the sheer variances between rural areas.
For instance, for modes used, people residing in rural towns and urban fringes are significantly more likely to walk than those in rural villages to walk, taking 48% more trips. They are also less likely to be a car or van passenger than even people who live in cities.
Mode of travel by different rural-urban classification (Source: National Travel Survey 2023)
If you start playing around with the distance travelled by mode, it starts to get even weirder. For example, people living in remote rural villages travel further on London Buses and London Underground than all other place typologies other than, well, Londoners.
Whilst not perfect, even this brief glance at available statistical data on rural travel patterns and place typologies reveals a fair degree of nuance that is often missing in debates on rural transport. It points to a need to reframe such discussions away from a simple urban-rural axis, to one that recognises significant variances by place typologies. In the same way that not all urban areas are like London or Manchester, not all rural areas are like small villages in the Cotswolds or remote hamlets in the Highlands.
There has been much research already that has sought to shift the debate on rural transport on from its current form, and even identify the kinds of solutions that could work in different place types. Notable shout outs go to the SMARTA project and SRITC in doing this, and you should take the time to become familiar with their work.
To develop policies and ideas requires close engagement with communities, and in rural areas it is doubly valuable as it provides local intelligence that is simply not picked up in our current datasets. But our current datasets are useful in helping us to frame our questions about research necessary to inform good policy. It indicates that there are subtle variances between rural areas, and no two rural communities are the same even if they are similar.
Even having this basic understanding is a start, and will hopefully lead on a road to better transport planning for rural areas. Something that our current debates on rural and urban tends to forget.
👩🎓From academia
The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author – they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.
Inequitable inefficiency: A case study of rail transit fare policies
TL:DR – Trying to understand if public transport subsidies are progressive is a much trickier proposition than we think it it, as the concept of the spatial dimension is often missing.
TL:DR – Informal development plays a more significant role in the development of urban areas than we give it credit for. As much informal development is necessary.
Gender gap in travel time and trip Purpose: Pre-, during and post Covid19 evidence
TL:DR – Based on research in South Africa, the gender travel time gap has grown since COVID-19.
Car use, mobility and transport satisfaction of older adults in Czechia: A gender perspective
TL:DR – Older women in Czechia tend to use public transport more, while older men drive more.
🙂 Positive News
After the tsunami of excrement that was the local elections last week, consider this to be your stiff drink before walking out the door and getting the heck on with it.
On the pedestrianisation front, as well as Camden High Street starting its trial, in Newbury pedestrianisation has worked so well that its hours are going to be extended. Turns out people don’t like traffic-choked hell holes. Who knew?
Some bike lanes have also been progressed recently. In Sheffield, Summerfield Street is about to get a one-way cycle lane. Meanwhile, a new cycle lane on Vauxhall Road in Liverpool was supported by the public.
🖼️ Graphic Design
Total number of electric vehicle charging points in the UK (Source: Department for Transport)
As good news stories are getting more tricky to find because of, well, you know, everything, the fact that the UK is still booking it when it comes to installing electric vehicle charging points is a good thing. We have nearly 30% more public charging points than we did this time last year.
📺 On the (You)Tube
I know there are lots of protests against the US Government right now. But this one of New Yorkers telling Trump where to stick it when it comes to revoking congestion charging in the city really strikes a chord with me. I was once told by an American friend that provoking New Yorkers is like prodding a tired lion with a headache with a very small stick. Now I see why.
📚 Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
- David Attenborough at 99: ‘I will not see how the story ends’ (Sunday Times)
- Does Anyone Still Hitchhike? (The Atlantic)
- The Nurse in the NYC Subway (Washington Post)
- Tiny rewards can protect the grid from a surge in electric vehicles (New Scientist)
- Bureaucrats get a bad rap, but they deserve more credit − a sociologist of work explains why (The Conversation)
📰 The bottom of the news
It was the local elections in some parts of England last week, and that only meant one thing. Dogs at Polling Stations. I don’t know about you, but Maxi the Jack Russell is gorgeous. 🥰
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