Columnist Daisy Chapman-Chamberlain explores the link between access to travel and community wellbeing.
When we think of ‘health’, we usually picture hospitals, undertaking physical activities, or taking care of our mental health by spending time outdoors or connecting with friends and family. However, sitting below these immediate associations, is the need for reliable connections to access these opportunities and locations.
Without comprehensive and accessible transport links, access to healthcare, leisure opportunities, and social gatherings may be out of reach for some members of our communities.
Escape to the country
Connections to active leisure opportunities by rail are essential for many people, including those who live in cities who want to access more rural locations. An excellent example of this is Northern’s Yorkshire Dales Explorer route (previously known as DalesRail). This Saturday service connects Rochdale, Manchester, Salford, Bolton, and Clitheroe with Settle and the Yorkshire Dales. The route connects these communities to walking opportunities and stunning natural landscapes, as well as the chance to view the iconic Ribblehead Viaduct.
Services like the Yorkshire Dales Explorer exist all over the UK, boosting physical and mental health opportunities for passengers looking to explore the great outdoors. Community rail groups also often highlight these opportunities for rail users, identifying safe walking and cycling routes from stations and promoting these across their work.
Beyond the leisure opportunities, rail also acts as an enabler for active and sustainable onward travel and journey connections for work, education, and more. Manchester’s Bee Network is an ideal example of this: connecting buses, trams, cycle hire, and walking routes with the wider rail network to ensure smooth and connected journeys.
At a national and regional level we must all ensure we focus on growing connectivity and multi-modal transport opportunities, enabling communities to make the most efficient possible journeys.
The need to reduce car journeys and increase travel by public transport also has other health implications – research from the University of Oxford in 2018 found that pollution from cars and vans costs the NHS around £6 billion per year due to the negative impact on human health, and that these vehicles (largely diesel) are responsible for 10,000 early deaths each year. By encouraging and enabling use of public transport instead of car use, we can work to reduce these statistics and enable good health across our communities.
Happy and healthy
Beyond physical health, rail and good transport links can impact mental health. Research from ‘The Health Foundation’ in 2021 found that “people who rate public transport as ‘good’ are close to three times more likely than those who rate it as ‘poor’ to be able to access public services such as health care, food shops, or education. They are also slightly less likely to report feeling under strain, being dissatisfied with life, or experiencing mental health problems.”
Enabling access to basic services as well as a range of opportunities is central to happy and healthy communities, and it is vital that transport providers assess where gaps in provision exist and work to close these.
Community severance
With these needs in mind, Transport for the North has launched a new visualiser tool and report revealing where community severance is most likely to be experienced when accessing key, basic services. Community severance is a term which outlines how infrastructure can act as a barrier to movement, impacting people, behaviours and perceptions, and the environment, and can include a lack of information provision, a lack of accessibility, unreliable services, and more.
Through this work, it found that 12.6 million people in England live in areas which are at higher risk of experiencing community severance; roughly 22.3% of the English population. This tool will enable Transport for the North to support its local partners and work with transport providers to understand the impact of community severance, as well as to continue its work of enabling an efficient and accessible transport across the North which meets the needs of all.
Economic divide
Marginalised communities often also have lower levels of access to public transport and rail. A 2019 Government Office for Science report, ‘Inequalities in Mobility and Access in the UK Transport System’, found that reduced mobility and access to public transport highly correlates with social disadvantage, and that some community and social groups are at higher risk of being isolated in this way than others are. For example, it found that car owners are the least mobility constrained, but that there are considerable affordability issues with car ownership with many lower income households.
The lowest income households have higher levels of non-car ownership, with female heads of house, young and older people, black and minority ethnic (BME) and disabled people concentrated in this quintile. People living in disadvantaged areas also tend to have greater proximity to fast-moving traffic and live with higher levels of exposure to road traffic risk as well as to traffic emissions.
As outlined earlier in this article, Transport for the North recognises the need to reduce car ownership for environmental and health reasons, whilst still ensuring connected communities. This clearly highlights the need for targeted public transport improvement interventions, in line with Transport for the North’s community severance tool findings.
Access to public transport and to rail is central to happy, healthy, and flourishing communities, and projects and programmes of work in transport must be based on evidence centred on empowering marginalised and isolated groups. It is essential that we continue to collaborate and research regionally, nationally, and internationally to enable safe and efficient transport for all.
Daisy Chapman-Chamberlain is specification manager at Transport for the North. She focuses on improving transport systems, accessibility, safety, and beyond. Daisy can be reached at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.
Image credit: Transport for the North
