everybody a very warm welcome to today’s transport planning Society webinar my name is Ben plowden I’m chair of the transport planning Society uh I’m also uh an associate in the transport team at PA Consulting and a visiting professor at the center for transport studies at UCL uh so obviously have a background in transport in a number of ways it’s my huge pleasure to be chairing today’s event um which as you all know from the publicity is called the mood of the nation transport insights from ipsos UK and I’d love to be able to pretend that we knew that Richie sunat was going to announce the election last week when we planned this event uh because it’s perfectly timed in that sense but unfortunately I can’t claim that I don’t think even richy sunet knew who’s going to announce election when we planned this event so uh but the timing is absolutely perfect because what better time could there be to hear about what ipo’s research says about public attitudes towards transport how transport relates to the wider economy to the environment to issues around social inequality uh and a whole set of other issues that we know are of of great public concern so what we’re going to do is first start by asking Lizzy cop from ipsos to present a really rich deck of information from ipsos is polling over the last couple of years about transport how it relates to the wider issues that I just touched on and then I’m going to ask um Becca Massie Chase from ippr and Tom Co from the University of Westminster to respond briefly to what they’ve heard from Lizzy uh and then we’ll throw the Event open to questions to Liz Tom and Becka um and you can post your questions in the chat and um Brogan who’s organized the event will uh let me know those questions are and I and I’ll and I’ll sort of Point questions at one or more of the panel um as we go through so we’ve got about an hour uh so hopefully we’ll have plenty of time for engagement through Q&A um but let me start by introducing Lizzy um who is a research director in iOS UK social Research Institute where she heads up the transport and infrastructure social research and policy valuation team Lizzie has been involved in public opinion research for over a decade about 12 years and she designs and delivers Research into people’s travel behaviors and their attitudes towards transport this often focuses on measuring exploring changes in how we think about as well as how we use our Transport Systems including how they think about future transport technology change decarbonization and modal shift and she’s particularly interested in uh research methodologies and approaches which allow conversations with the public on complex and naughty topics of which of course transport is a very good example so without further Ado let me ask Lizzie to present what ipsos knows about transport and public attitudes towards it and then as I say I’ll come to Tom and Becca to respond Lizzie over to you thank you very much ben um and can I just check uh can you hear me okay and can you see my slides okay yeah that’s all good brilliant um well good afternoon everyone and thank you so much for for dialing into to today’s webinar I’m really pleased to be here as Ben mentioned it’s a super exciting time in the run up to a general election um and uh Ben also mentioned um that I work at ipsos UK in the social Research Institute um so we do lots of political polling lots of Market Research in ipsos um but you may or may not know that we do lots of research with the public too and I’m a social researcher sitting in our transport and infrastructure team um today I’m going to be giving you a quick Roundup as been mentioned of ipsos is in-house polling so we work for lots of clients in the transport sector but today’s presentation is all about um in-house polling to give you the latest on where the public are at in their thinking at the moment in particular on transport um so we’ll start by uh looking at some background context and then we’ll move over specifically to transport and public opinion and then we’ll consider um what next and that hopefully will lead us into a nice discussion at the end so time for change um what do the public think are the biggest issues facing the country today this is a question uh that we ask every month on our political Monitor and we can see that right now in the run up to the election the NHS is up top closely followed by inflation and the economy um this is is not uncommon for things to be in these positions and uh it’s very important to say that things that are um not on this list are not necessarily unimportant to people this is just a a relative list so for example we’ve got the environment and climate change at the bottom but if we ask about that in an absolute sense um it’s it’s not to say that this is not uh you know not an issue at all to the public we’ve got concern about climate change for example far outweighing those who say that they’re not concerned about it and if we zip over to the economy now um economic optimism it has taken um a small rise since last month it’s sitting at minus four that’s up from minus 31 um in April um it’s it’s actually quite rare to to be in the positive with the Net score for the economic um optimism index we are often gloomy as a Nation about the economy and obviously we’re we’re still in a cost of living crisis um so richy Unix had um you know a small bounce with um news about inflation um not being to the extent it was um but it hasn’t really recovered things for him and I’m going to share some figures with you now from a global study which shows that actually Four in 10 of us think the rate of inflation will rise a lot or a little over the next year that extends to over half of us saying that we expect our motoring uh fuel cost to rise in the next six months we’re below the global average for these figures um but for these ones on the right hand side um we’re actually above the global average for this study that was done in uh 33 countries so nearly foreign ten of us think that the cost of living crisis has been worse than in neighboring countries and we in Britain are more likely than the global average to say that um and nearly three quarters of us um are blaming the government um and its policies for contributing to Britain’s um cost of living uh but we also think it’s down to other things too so actually roughly the same proportions say uh that they think that’s down to the state of the global economy or big businesses making excessive profits um so that was a global study but I’m zipping back over now to our political monitor with some figures here that show um quite a gloomy mood again about public services um more people saying that it’s got worse um than on the other measures um that we’ve taken for this going back to 2012 12 um that’s the past what about the future and what we expect with public services and other things like the quality of the environment we’ve still got greater proportions saying that this will get worse um than get better and you can see public transport um down there 44% saying um over the next few years we expect public transport to get worse so where does that leave our leaders um well right now uh for both starma and sunak there that they’ve got NE negative satisfaction and dissatisfaction with sunak has been steadily increasing since he’s taken position as prime minister and it’s been increasing among conservative voters too um K starm has um seen a a little uh up uptick since the locals um but but nevertheless he’s um 50% say that they’re uh dissatisfied with the way um that he is um acting as leader of the labor party and eight and 10 of us um are dissatisfied with the way that the government is running the country so um this is not transport related obviously it’s election related but I thought I’d include it this is where this leaves us this month with the vote share if there was an election tomorrow 41% are saying they vote labor 20% conservative um and smaller proportions for the other parties there so time for a change that sentiment is stronger now than it’s been over the last couple years um that we’ve pushed this statement to the public and asked for their view on it 73% saying it’s time for a change at the next election and what do the public think that K dama should do if the labor government are um if if labor are successful in the election um in the first six months people are most likely to say um that they think as a stma government’s priority should be improving the NHS so obviously that reflects the issues index that we just saw um it’s seen as an immediate priority closely followed by the other top issues um that we saw in the Public’s eyes dealing with the economy the cost of living and we have got improving public transport on there lower down the list but nonetheless it’s not to say it’s not a priority to priority for people if we ask the public about longer term priorities um for starmer’s government if labor is successful improving public transport goes up from 13th Place to 10th place and and you can see actually improving the NHS has dropped right down there um so there’s a sort of there’s a sense among the public that that needs to be dealt with quite urgently and quite quickly um and that’s not the NHS and and Healthcare is a voter issue so it’s not onomon to see that ahead of an election this is going to move us nicely over to what the public think about um various aspects of transport and we don’t have time to look at every single transport mode but I’ll be looking in particular at Rail Road and cycling so first of all um just I’m afraid it’s more gloom and doom here going back to what the public think um it’s going to happen with uh public transport in the next few years more people um than we’ve seen historically on this trend line saying that they expect it to get worse and you can see the direction that these results have gone in between 2020 and 2023 um if we start by looking at rail um to think about you know what’s what’s top of mind for the public within transport in particular forign 10 of us are saying that the quality of rail services in Britain is poor outweighing the proportion who say it’s good and nearly as many of us expect the quality of rail services in Britain to get worse two in five of us disagree uh with the statement that Railways in Britain provide good value for money to passengers um and we’ve got disagreement being higher than agreement with actually um all of these statements on the slide here um so again it’s uh it’s looking a little negative for rail um over four in 10 of us um saying that we oppose the railway workers taking strike action not an insignificant proportion say that they support that though nearly a third at 32% um this field work was done um at the very beginning of the month um obviously we’ve had a lot of strike action since Christmas um in terms of what people think about Labour’s proposed policy of nationalizing pass passenger rail Services just over half say that we would support that um 133% oppose and obviously the rest are either saying that they don’t know or they give no views either way which is perhaps not surprising given that the rail system is not totally unnal at the moment um around half of us think that this idea of nationalization would lead to a better quality of service um we’re less likely to say um that this would lead to reduced ticket prices um a little less likely than that to say um fewer rail strikes so nearly half of us agree with the statement transport links in my local area are not good enough although three in 10 of us disagree with it who is most likely to agree with that statement um we do start to see some patterns here people age 55 to 64 um people living in rural areas and there will be some overlap there um with those respondents in the survey and people living um in the areas in the Nations that you can see Wales Northern irand the Southwest for example um and people with two or more cars or vans in the household so if we move over to road then um here are some figures that we’ve we’ve run this month um and we also run them in um February 2022 so a couple of years ago and perhaps unsurprisingly there’s not really much change um in attitudes for these statements here about car use and car ownership so nearly seven in 10 of us say that our current lifestyle means um that we need a vehicle um and that includes quite a significant proportion 40% saying that they strongly agree with with that statement um lots of us think there’s too much traffic congestion in our area though we’re going to zoom in on a couple of these statements again um to see what’s going on underneath that sort of sample average from the survey um so as I mentioned 69% say that we think um our lifestyle means we need a vehicle um and again we’ve got people um living in rural areas being among the most likely to say that people in Wales um in regions that you can see on the right hand side there um and middle-aged and older age groups are more likely to say this too um so I think in terms of the conversations that we start having with the public about modal switch and that type of thing um this is worth bearing in mind um who’s most likely to think that there’s too much traffic congestion in the local area um Yorkshire and the Humber has come up again but also the southeast and people living in urban areas as well as people aged 35 to 44 and there might be overlap there between um that age group and people who um commute to work on the road for example so we’re gonna zip over to cycling now um again we’ve run these figures twice and we do see some small shifts actually between 2022 and now um we’ve got 37% saying i’ like to cycle more than I currently do um that has dropped since 2022 um and I think in terms of how we interpret that drop we should be open-minded about why that might be this is survey polling so it’s telling us the what and that’s what it’s measuring um but it’s not telling us why people are giving these responses it might be for example that there was a bit of a post-pandemic bounce in appetite to cycle more than we currently do um in 2022 and we’ve got just over six and 10 of us saying we think it’s too dangerous um for me personally to cycle on the roads um and about half of us saying I’m not the kind of person who rides a bicycle so I’ll zoom in on some subgroups again um who’s most likely to have appetite to cycle more than they currently do people who identify as male and those sort of younger into middle-age age groups people in the southwest um interestingly people with um children in the household and two cars or vans in the household and people on higher comes got nearly as many disagreeing with that statement as agreeing with it which is uh interesting too that’s a bit of a split of opinion there um and what about those who are saying it’s too dangerous for me to cycle on the roads people who identify as female older age groups um people living in rural areas in Northern Ireland um with two cars or vans in the household okay um so that was a very quick whistle do tour of some public opinion um going in on particular types of transport but I’m going to move us forward now to start thinking about the future um and some some current and hypothetical transport policy options that we posed to the public uh in uh in our survey work so um over half of us support the approaches that you can see um on the slide here to help reduce emissions and it’s important to note that framing of the question so we asked for support and opposition to all of these things um to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions um and like I say for many of these from for walking and cycling instead of driving a car we’ve got majority support for that perhaps that’s not surprising the little white arrows again are showing some drops since 2022 um and I think it’s uh quite important that we remember again that we don’t know why people have given these responses as I say there might have been um when we did the survey in 2022 a bit of a post pandemic kind of bounced a bit of optimism about these things which led to support levels being a bit higher um it may be that the public have just hardened slightly in their views of this stuff bearing in mind the context that we’ve seen in the previous slides there might be different reasons for each of these um as to why support has dropped um and uh I think it’s important as well to to remember that earlier slide about concern about climate change um and to not interpret this as oh the public just don’t care about reducing the UK’s carbon emissions because the evidence doesn’t really bear that out for example concern about climate change is still relatively High um so that’s one thing to bear in mind when we look at the trend data for this I’ll move us on to some slightly different measures here arguably slight harder measures so encouraging people to travel abroad less um as opposed to for example still doing that but traveling a different way um so these ones are a little less about modal switch we’ve got higher levels of opposition comparatively um lower levels of support likewise um support for Road user charging has fallen in the years that we’ve measured public opinion on this um so I put the exact wording that we’ve presented to the public on this because I think views could differ depending on how it’s framed um so this was framed as being designed to reduce traffic congestion and improve the local environment um support um is actually outweighed by opposition now for that and um sorry opposition outweighs support for that one um and support has dropped even when we um present this with different conditions attached um interestingly the one that hasn’t fallen in terms of support is all revenues raised would be if all revenues raised would be returned to the road user through Lower Road tax but we’ve actually got comparatively higher opposition for that one so um I’m going to take my ipsos hat off now and share some of my own personal views and Reflections on this before we move on to hear um other people’s views as well what do all of these findings mean and how um how should we interpret this I think first of all it appears from this data like there’s quite a steep hill to climb um a lot of what I’ve presented looks quite gloomy um transport obviously has bubbled up in political conversations over the last few months or the last year or so um it’s not a top vote issue though it doesn’t have the clout of the NHS obviously it’s still important to people and there are positives there is Appetite For Change including change in the way that people travel among certain groups um so from a policy point of view in terms of what we can do about that we can kind of go in on those groups those groups that are more likely to say they’d be Keen to cycle more for example um or we could focus on allaying the concerns of the other groups the people who are most likely to say that they think it’s um too dangerous to cycle on our roads um that there are actions positive actions that can be taken for this the second point I wanted to make was that the decline in support for measures to reduce transport emissions that we just saw in the previous slide that shouldn’t be interpreted as I said as a lack of public concern about the environment or a lack of care about the environment um other data would not support that and um we shouldn’t um throughout the baby with the bath water the the public being less supportive of some green transport policy measures than they were two years ago it doesn’t mean that we don’t want these improvements um a fall in support for green options it’s not the same as saying we we we don’t want a better transport system um there is background noise as we’ve seen in this data uh the backdrop to this is a lot of um public pessimism about the state of our Public Services about the government about the economy and our personal finances so um it’s not a forgotten conclusion that the public opposed the types of measures um which I’ve shown um in the slides and they were just a bunch of measures of which there could be many more this was just what we posed to the public in survey work um support um has outweighed opposition more strongly in the past for some of these things so I think we can reframe this as how do we get back back to that but context is really important and we can’t ignore um in whatever we do we can’t ignore the financial situation that households are in because that’s continuing to bite households at the moment um the public are also not completely uniform so obviously what I’ve presented today is a bunch of sample averages from surveys I’ve pulled out some subgroups but even within those subgroups people are diverse and very very different Within that so different approaches will speak to different groups different subgroups different groups within the subgroups and so we need to make sure that we’re alive to that diversity people have messy complicated lives and and transport and how they use it will absolutely follow through that um finally then framing of all of these things is important um and we can talk about um switches and shifts rather than um binary chain switches and shifts in Journeys where it’s possible for people to make those changes um harder measures we need to package more carefully so that they’re not seen as kind of binary one or the other I don’t think that we’d ever be aiming for 100% of the population to be cycling around for example um it’s really important that the public don’t see it as a binary thing or or something um policy changes that are imposed on them or taking away their freedoms and Liberties for example so everything that I presented today has come from survey quantitative research but certainly um that’s a concern that we sometimes hear in qualitative research and engagement with the public um the idea of having freedoms taken away so that’s just to say that framing as we know is important so um that’s it from me and I think we’re going to open up a discussion now and it looks like some questions have come through in the chat Lizzy that’s fantastic thank you very much a real uh corn ucopia of data there um so just before I come to Becka and Tom just a couple of I guess kind of method questions uh that people have asked um one is um you mentioned there’s some geographical differences in in the the responses you got from this polling do we know anything specifically about uh um the difference between London and other parts of the country given the particular circumstances in London question Daniel Smith’s asked and then another question around method which is uh what does rail mean in the survey you may not know the answer to this question is it is it national rail or Does it include Regional local rail Services as well so what what rail service are people being asked about when they asked that question so just to that London versus non-london and then what is rare when people are asked about it y so on the regional differences um I’ve just picked out differences where I’ve seen statistically significant ones um and there there there were some differences with the Southeast um on the rail um wording it would it would include local Services as well as National um but how it was presented to the public in the survey really just was as you as you saw the the wording in Gray on the slides um but I I think that’s a really important question because it does highlight that people can be thinking of slightly different things when they answer questions so we try to be as clear as possible um but but we know that opinion might differ on those things so lots of really interesting data there so people are generally quite pessimistic uh about life the state of the economy they’re a bit skeptical about government both of both political parties um and also we shouldn’t sort of draw nonetheless too many kind of gloomy conclusions because clearly there is no such thing as the public there are lots and lots of different publics with subcategories of by age by geography by income by household type and so on and so forth and that we shouldn’t regard some of these sponsors that meaning that people aren’t concerned about transport or wouldn’t like a better transport system and indeed more specifically aren’t concerned about the environment and climate in particular and and a lot of this is about how you kind of frame these questions and and and understanding the different responses that people have depending on who they are and their circumstances fantastic so let me ask uh firstly Becca uh NY Chase to just give some sort of top of Mind thoughts in response to what you just heard from Lizzie Becca is a principal research fellow and co-head of part participative research at the IP The Institute for Public Policy research formerly she was co-deputy head of the environmental Justice Commission looking at how we can use citizens juries across the U UK to engage the public in important and complex policy questions like this one and she now leads the ipp’s work on developing and using participatory methods and deliberative democracy to co-create policy Solutions um so Becca just what your kind of immediate thoughts are on what we just heard from Lizzie in terms of transport and what people think about of course brilliant thank you so much Lizzy for a really interesting presentation and lots that resonated with the research that we’ve done so that’s always uh uh good and reassuring um uh and I think yes so I think might have sort of three Reflections really the first um just to kind of reflect a little bit about sort of how our research um is similar or we found sort of similar findings or um uh findings that might complement yours um is that public transport is hugely valued that that’s something that we’ found in our research um and I as uh sort of been said in the introduction I work on participative Research Across The Institute so I get the pleasure of going along to events that aren’t aren’t about public transport aren about transport they might be about social integration in Yorkshire or about leveling up in stok on Tren and every single time I go to one of those and I talk to people people talk about buses I don’t think I’ve ever been to a workshop where people haven’t talked about buses even if that’s not we’re there to talk about it is so important to people and when you start to have those conversations about what they value and and what’s important to their Liv life even if it’s not important for them they see that it’s important for somebody else and that it that you know fills you with um with hope as well I think when you hear people talking like that um so we know it’s really important and we also know for some from some recent research that we’ve done um a recent National survey that we did around Christmas time um that it’s not just really valued it’s seen as a necessity um and it’s seen as a necessity by people who are car owners as well so all of that I think really resonates um and that people want to use it more so a third of the people that we surveyed said that they want to use public transport more so it’s something it’s important to people for all sorts of reasons um and there’s a very sort of strong kind of um uh uniting thing around the people’s belief and value of public transport which is great to hear I agree absolutely that concern about climate is really high and is is really important to recognize that when people have maybe some skepticism about some of the policy um policies for decarbonizing transport that’s not rooted in um a lack of concern about climate um so we’ve just done this research um where we looked at um people’s responses in this survey um by sort of a bit more audience segmentation so some people may be familiar with Britain talks climate and the segmentation that they use so it’s seven segments across across across Britain um ranging from Progressive activists who are potentially kind of very politically active um and for whom climate change is Central to their identity to Backbone conservatives who are patriotic and proud of Britain’s environmental achievements but they’re dismissive of virtue signaling that’s s they’re different um groupings um and I can talk more about that in a little bit um but I reinforce that as Lizzie said all of those people care about climate all of them care about the environment but why they care about it might differ and the values that underpin that might differ um and when we think about our transport sort of policy stuff then actually recognizing what are those unending values um that affect how people feel um can be really important when it comes to that framing when it comes to those conversations about transport policies but I think it’s always really important to recognize how how high concern for climate change really is and that when anybody tries to turn it into a culture War issue their way off the Mark um and then just finally just a reflection on that sort of more negative perception about public expectations about the sort of maybe more depressing future ahead on public services and public transport um and just a complimentary finding maybe um from some of our recent research about the sort of low trust environment that we’re in in the moment um around politics and that that pessimism might be rooted in people’s um anxiety about who makes decisions and who makes decisions that affect them and certainly that we’ve found that over half of the people that um that we surveyed in this recent piece of research said that politicians have a bad understanding of what transport looks like in areas like mine 63% said that they feel um that they have little say over transport decisions a third said they have no say and that was I think higher in rural areas than it was in other places so when we’re thinking about why people might be feeling negative or depressed about that future ahead that actually um a good place to start the conversation might be about where decisions get made and who gets to make those decisions so those are some initial um Reflections from me on that really interesting presentation that’ve been looking forward to talking more Becca fantastic so three things one is um whatever the topic you’re talking about with your colleagues public transport in general and public buses in particular always comes up so it’s clearly it’s top of Mind in people’s lives secondly uh climate concern is an issue it exists is is significant but why people are concerned about climate will vary by who they are as we’ve heard because obviously not everyone is the same and third is something for me something very important about the pessimism and public Minds it may actually be about sort of how government works and whether they’re properly involved in decisions that affect them every day you know who are the decision makers are they taking my interest into account really interesting thank you very much so we’ll come back in a minute to to further questions and comment uh for sure so the third um speaker is today is Tom Cohen um Tom is a reader in transport policy at University of Westminster and a member of its active travel Academy um and like the other two speakers today he has a long-standing interest in democratizing transport and how people get involved in decisions and discussions about the transport that affects them with an with a particular emphasis on on what he calls deliberation uh with a particular Focus again on active travel so Tom what what your kind of top of Mind thoughts in response to Lizzy’s presentation and what you’ve also heard from Becca thanks very much Ben and thanks for the opportunity that was really interesting set of slides from Lizzy and maybe I’ll start as a researcher might by saying that when you see a presentation like that you immediately want to know what were people thinking as they gave their answers there’s so much there that is unsaid and so I would default to the focus group and other deliberative methods to get under the skin of some of that stuff because it seems to generate almost more questions than it answers but on the specifics I’ll start with pessimism since there’s plenty of it about and a very strong sense that I get that that it it imuses or it infuses everything that we’ve heard that there’s a sense in which pessimism begets pessimism so we’ve been told that things have been bad for a while and I think that’s bound to influence people’s perceptions concerning the future and I think that explains a lot of the answers that we get and perhaps it even extends to why people are less enthusiastic about encouraging mode shift than they would have been a couple of years ago and this is ironic really because encouragement on the face of it seems to Hurt No One um it’s not a stick it’s not taking your car away it’s about improving the options for those who might be aable to making a change but support for all of those things has dropped and I see that as being a due to this General sense of things being hard I hope I’m right in that because I can’t I can’t reconcile myself to the idea that people are actively opposed to encouragement as a general theme more specifically I guess there’s a there’s some interesting thoughts in there if 54% of people think there’s too much congestion then that would seem to imply that 46% find it at least tolerable and now that’s interesting because we hear about congestion a lot in terms of the transport policy debate sometimes it’s the the most prominent issue as far as the media concerned and so whilst obviously 54% is a wiring number the flip side of 46% is perhaps something that we can take some comfort from and I suppose there’s no one who’s saying that there’s too little congestion in their area but I suppose that’s a possible subtext but there’s an interesting mismatch actually when you look beneath the numbers between the incident of actual congestion at a regional level and people’s attitudes to it so if you look at department for transport figures for example people are very critical of congestion in the Northeast and yet objectively speaking it’s it’s really not very extensive compared with places such as London so there’s some really interesting perception issues going on there and I suppose that leads quite naturally into a discussion of cycling which you would expect from me saying as I’m of the active travel Academy so a couple of Statistics seem to have gone down the perception that it’s too dangerous to cycle has dropped uh the first thing to say about that is that the department for transport asks that same question in their attitudinal surveys and many on the call may know that a very large proportion of regular cyclists consider it to be too dangerous to cycle on the roads so there’s a sense in which they feel the fear and they do it anyway and I suppose that’s something for us to bear in mind the perception that it’s too dangerous to cycle doesn’t mean that it’s actually beyond belief that they might it may still happen despite the the belief that it should be a great deal safer than it is and it’s interesting that that number has fallen at the same time as people who say that they would like to cycle more than they currently do has fallen again I think I’d want to get into a focus group in order to unpick that why is it that those two things which really ought to be in opposition seem to be moving together and a final Point connected with this is again decrease in agreement with the statement that the council should be doing more to encourage cycling in my local area now my suspicion is fairly clear that that’s because people consider that to be relatively a lower priority than it was when the question was was last asked and that would seem to go back to my earlier points about pessimism but I suppose it’s just conceivable though not very likely that people are saying that they agree less with that statement because they perceive the council as having done more lately to encourage cycling such that the situation is better than it was maybe that’s one for us to ponder further Tom brilliant thank you so some questions there about sort of the general pessimism that’s prevailing seems to be what you know and and the sense that things doing difficult things is just more difficult than than it might have been in the past and what how do we frame this in terms of positive encouragement um and sort of f underlying question which I might come back to Lizzie in a second um about sort of understanding what’s really going on in people’s minds when they’re answering these these quite specific questions obviously in in in polling exercises and and how you kind of get under the skin of that um great so I’d like to start with a question uh abusing my role as chair for all three of you which is I was struck Lizzy by in your two charts showing where improving public transport ranks relative to other public concerns um that if you if you think about the role of Transport in society it’s clearly fundamentally important for many of the other things on the list that are higher up in terms of people concerned so improving education and skills and access to learning dealing with the cost of living growing the economy building more homes dealing with climate tackling inequality so I guess my question for all three of you is to what extent is this an issue around how we frame transport in relation to its role in supporting people’s wide alive and you mentioned Lizzy that uh sorry that Becca mentioned that buses always come up in conversations about almost any other topic so is there a question here about how we as transport planners frame transporter as an enaer as a means of providing access to other things like work poverty alleviation because if we just talk about it in terms of Transport then people May well think of it in a bucket over on one side so just is this a framing issue and if so how can we frame the issues around transport in a way which connects them more explicitly to these other concerns that people seem to be worried about Lizzy I’ll start with you yeah I I can only agree with those points and when we think historically um transport hasn’t necessarily been talked about as a singular public service because it’s not um if we go right back transport hasn’t been talked about for example as part of the welfare state which I you know perhaps it could be that’s a social policy conversation it’s it’s not the discourse isn’t the same as when we talk about kind of big Public Services like Health um and education and and it is a bit messy because we’re talking about lots of different transport modes um it’s not one thing put simply um so yeah personally I think a reframing um about transport as an enabler of social mobility and opportunity um as well as economic goods and environmental Goods um would be a really great way to to frame it that’s a personal view great thank you Becca same question to you then so you mentioned in your response that obviously bus has come up just almost whatever the topic is Health housing poverty um what’s your sense of how we could frame the transport issue more overtly so it was s of connected in people’s minds to these broader goals and concerns that they have about their lives and the lives of their communities I think um when you when you sort of put the question the first thing I thought is We’re All Transport people here and I wonder is it that we want that transport to go up that list is that actually the ambition that we have or is it more that we want to connect transport to the things that are higher above it on the list more explicit um because higher above it is tackling inequality and I don’t think I’d want to see that go down I don’t think I’d want to see some of the things that are above it be lower on the list than they are um but when you make those explicit connections I think that’s really important and sometimes even the word transport can be a bit of a barrier because it just immediately makes people think of um something particular um in their life potentially or it makes them think of vehicles it doesn’t necessarily make them think of what they do as a pedestrian for example so there’s there’s all sorts of things in there and I think depending on the situation will probably affect how you want to go about that and and the narrative and the sort of words that you use whether you’re talking about how we get around or you know things like that there’s different language tweaks that you might use in different situations um but I absolutely think that yes it’s of Transport is underrepresented in some of the conversations where it could be really important as an crucial dver to achieving some of those social um health environmental goals um and it how it gets brought into those conversations I think is really is really important and a much more kind of holistic approach where transport is yeah factored in U um to those to those conversations be really really helpful great thank you and Tom same question to you so obviously your interest in deliberative processes um is there a challenge here for us as transport uh professionals about the fact that we’re quite interested in transport and sometimes s may not connect it in people’s minds overtly enough to to the other things that that affect their quality of their life and and their life circumstances sure well yes as a transport person I frequently find myself feeling offended that other people are not as fascinated by it as I am but we can only hope that they will one day come around I think the first thing we have to say is that we social researchers are guilty of sometimes failing to acknowledge quite how abstract what we do is we’re asking people questions that they’re not generally asked that that aren’t at top of mind and so we shouldn’t be too surprised when the answers that come back are a bit odd or difficult to reconcile more specifically there’s certainly something to be said for starting the conversation elsewhere so if for the sake of argument you’re having a conversation with members of a community you could say to them well what should we do about the traffic around here and the conversation will go off in a particular DEC direction if you say to them instead what kind of a place do we want this to be the conversation will tend to be entirely different and transport will inevitably come up but it will come up in a secondary way after people have first acknowledged that well they want to live in a nice area which is quiet and pleasant and so forth so we certainly have a responsibility as practitioners to be alive to that and to well to acknowledge first that framing is inevitable you can’t pursue any of this without a frame but to be very frame aware if I can use that expression and perhaps even to experiment with different framings to see what that does to the nature of the questions and sorry the nature of the answers that come back to your questions sorry couldn’t follow my mute great all right that’s fantastic than so let’s come to questions from um the audience there are a couple of questions here one from Tom Sansom and one from Alec great holder which really relates to the extent to which people are thinking about their their own transport and travel patterns and behaviors as opposed to other people so Alex asked um to what extent do we have insight into the level of support for change for the public for the purpose of helping other people’s travel and similar Tom asked um it’s fair to say that there’s more support for other people changing their behavior uh than people change their own behavior so let’s just quickly ask three of you in turn Lizzy to what extent is it possible to determine whether people are more willing for other people to change their behavior so for example one of the statistics was around people not regarding their own car as important and also being concerned about congestion in their neighborhood of course congestion is obviously caused by other people not them so to what extent is it possible to understand how people are thinking about this in terms of their own behavior as opposed to the need for other people to change their behavior yeah I do think previous research has shown that people like the idea of encouraging people everyone else or all of us um to uh walk or cycle more but when you ask about um you personally um that’s a bit different that doesn’t necessarily mean that people themselves um are going to do that um sorry what was the second half of the question how how can we sort of uh get people to think about their own behavior as opposed to assum that it’s somebody else to sort out the transport problem you know for example congestion is somebody else causing it my car’s important theirs isn’t right yeah I think I think um tapping into different lever for for different people would be a really interesting idea in that and Tom you’ve mentioned um doing much more in-depth research with the the public and I think sort of testing that and working out um what well what would motivate people to change what works for different types of people for so for some people um knowing their carbon footprint of their travel in quite an obvious immediate way might be really really powerful um but for other people it might be more about um money saving um so there’s I think there’s a lot that could be played with there I don’t think that quite answers your question but those are my thoughts that’s fine okay uh Tom to you so this is transport problems being caused to me are sort somebody else’s responsibility to what extent can we kind of how could we bring these challenges back to people so that they understand that this is partly about what they do as well as what other people do uh in terms of making transport circumstances better well I think we’re probably talking about a fairly ma major social project which is to Foster altruism and selflessness and we can all carry on with that Noble Enterprise I think for the time being at least the way transport is packaged and the way it’s perceived is it’s about serving one’s own interests and I lead a module on Behavior change and the sorts of things that we talk about tend to relate to making the target Behavior desirable for the target audience not making them think ah well if I cycle I’ll be taking one for the team having an unpleasant time but benefiting the environment and my fellow humans that doesn’t really play and more generally the environmental messages don’t seem to perform anything like as well in terms of encouraging Behavior change as person benefit be that Financial time or health should we criticize and condemn our fellow humans for that no I don’t think we should and I don’t think we can I think what that tells us is that if we are going to promote significant Behavior change it’s not going to be through encouraging a degree of philanthropy which we have not so far seen amongst our species so Becca we’re hearing from Tom that Mass outbreak of altruism is probably unrealistic to expect may not actually be effective so how could we perhaps change my question how could we frame um people changing their travel behavior in ways that are sound beneficial to them to what extent is your work for example through public participation deliberation suggested ways that we can we can frame this again so that it sounds like it’s beneficial for them to change their own behavior how how possible is that I think it is definitely possible um I think I’d take a step back though um and say actually not everybody needs to change their own behavior as much across the board as some other people do so the the burden of responsibility doesn’t fall evenly across everybody and actually when we go to these deliberative events one of the things that we hear time and time again is that people who can do more should do more um so when we’re thinking about that kind of us and them and is it my responsibility is it other people’s responsibility actually one of the messages is is not just general other of people that should change it’s specific other so um we’ve got some research out today half of All Transport emissions in Britain come from just one in five people people with an income o over 100k travel at least double the distance each year of those under un earning under 30k so actually when people say they want people who can do more to do more there’s a real potential for that to happen um and so I think sort of taking that step back and that kind of Us and Them there’s something specific um in that that’s worth worth bearing in mind but absolutely sort of you know taking that um taking that to one side um people don’t necessarily see their their themselves as part of a of a problem and we’ve heard that in in we did a um an event in Scotland looking at reducing car use in Scottish cities and I remember a participant turning around and through the conversation suddenly saying oh I’ve just realized that my car is part of the traffic know it not ever crossed her mind before so there are those sorts of conversations and I I’d love it if we did more and more of these sorts of deliberative events and involved more and more people in these sorts of conversations because I think that’s how people go on that kind of journey by listening to other people and hearing their perspectives and and seeing the evidence and and having the opportunity to appraise it um so opportunities to participate in those sorts of things I think is um is one way you can’t have everybody doing it but um I think that can be a really meaningful exercise um but yes absolutely framing around benefits to them um you know people’s sort of health benefits and things like that is always always helpful and always important but there’s there’s actually a lot to unack yeah there’s a lot to unpack in this particular uh particular challenge the time um perhaps time for one more question for the three of you so so um you may be aware that Glenn Lions the uh academic at UWE has just published the uh triple access planning handbook where Glenn has been developing the idea for a while that uh we ought to be talking thinking in transport terms about access rather Mobility I as we’ve just been discussing that transport is an enabler one enabler for achieving access to Goods services and opportunities to work to Leisure to education to other people um and I wonder again I guess it’s a framing question again for each of you starting with you Lizzy um to what extent would would framing the question around transport in terms of it being a means of achieving access alongside digital connectivity and increasing proximity through spatial planning again which means we’re not talking exclusively about transmobility to what extent do you think that approach triple access planning approach is helpful in terms of sort of framing how people think about transport and the role it plays in their lives yeah I think describing the means as well as the ends is really important um but to turn it on its head talking about the ends still needs to be part of the conversation with the public um so that’s a little bit of an abstract thing to say but to give an example um in qualitative research when we talk um with members of the public about aspects of transport and perhaps safety perhaps Road Safety if something um is framed as being a means to improving safety that’s that’s quite powerful that’s an end regardless of the means um whereas it you know perhaps in some context it might be less powerful to to talk about the environment as the end so um yeah providing to access to things yes but but what what is it all for still needs to be part of the conversation I think and that kind of just takes us back to the the discussion that we just had about people will think about all of us naturally will think about what what all of what is all of this for for for me personally great thank you uh so um Tom same question to you is triple access planning potentially one way of thinking about this issue and presenting it to people differently and more positively so that they’re thinking about transport as a me one means to a set of ends rather than just an end in itself broadly yes I think as we’ve already identified it’s impossible to isolate transport and it’s not terribly helpful to isolate transport because it’s a means to an end the challenge comes in drawing boundaries around the discussion so you can actually have a destructive conversation that doesn’t just become unmanageably wide ranging ultimately we’re always talking about the same thing aren’t we which is quality of life or well-being and the various ways in which that can be influenced by how much money you earn and what kind of environment you inhabit and so on but if you can start with a general conversation about quality of life and then start moving towards the places we inhabit and the services we require you you can imagine that transport will eventually pop out at some point or it will it’ll pop up maybe at various points during the conversation that is a messy way of doing research one that I wouldn’t necessarily shrink from but I can imagine that plenty of us transport researchers might think well okay but can I be confident that I will have something reportable at the end of it that’s an academic I I live in the privileged position of not having to worry quite so much about keeping a client happy but I can see how there is an appetite for crisp answers to crisp questions well so there is every likelihood that we will continue to return to these somewhat more circumscribed ways of thinking about the issues great and then finally Becca for you same question would a kind of access means to an end framing help and to what extent and and is that the direction which moving in terms of how we talk about this agenda yeah I think I just briefly say that I think that is already how the public often think and that we hear the language of access and people talking about being able to access even if they’re not using that exact word but but certainly that’s the that’s the sort of intention um it’s already really embedded in the way that people are thinking and talking about transport I think so a good way in brilliant thank you very much so I’m going to very unfairly ask you one final question uh it’s sort of question people hate getting at the last minute um if there was one thing you wanted from each of you from the parties competing for our votes in the forthcoming election in relation to transport and more sustainable transport what would you want them to say about their commitments around transport in their campaigning over the next four to six weeks um Lizzy I’m going I’m going to start with you what one thing would you want to hear from the main political parties about transport to to move us to a more sustainable system um I personally I’d like to hear a shift away from the war on the motorist kind of culture wars narrative um because a a personal opinion is that that that isn’t helpful and and some things have become wrapped up in that so um just something totally fresh from that very good uh Tom same question for you what one thing do you want from our national politicians in in this debate to to move the debate forward well provided I’m allowed not to be realistic then I will make my my wish that any incoming party would commit to very significant car restraint very good and then finally Becca what’s your what’s your prescription for our national politicians I mean it’s very tricky to choose just one um which means I think I would go for an overarching one which is that there needs to be a new transport strategy that sets out the goals that the transport system should be working towards and that should then frame our transport decision that should that should then um yeah that should affect how we make all of our other transport decision so what what is transport for being the driving decision um at the top brilliant thank you all very much uh I’m conscious there are lots and lots of questions in the chat we haven’t had a chance to get to I’m sure we could go on with this conversation the whole afternoon if people didn’t have other things to do um but we are unfortunately at time uh just before 1:00 so I we ought to end give people chance to go back to what else they need to do uh can I thank very much indeed Lizzy for her presentation that opened it up in such an interesting way and to Becca and Tom for their contributions and and and comments and observations um thank you very much to Brogan MC first and Ruby string and Mark Frost for organizing the event thank you to all of you for coming along and posing your questions in the chat and I’m sorry we didn’t get to uh as many of them as I would have liked um so just to kind of conclude for me what I’ve heard is that uh this is a complex issue um we are uh both pessimistic and optimistic we want change um both in terms of national politics but also transport in particular that people see transport as important as it connects to the rest of their lives um and that we have to frame the questions around transport in the right way to get the right sorts of uh Rich responses that we need from members of the public who all have different views for different reasons um finally to close by saying if you’re not a member of the transport planning Society I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s event and that you all now join up urgently uh to support us in our work and thank you again to everyone for their time and their contributions to today’s event has been absolutely fantastic uh have a great afternoon
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