{"id":83,"date":"2019-02-07T11:01:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T11:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/?p=83"},"modified":"2019-02-07T11:01:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T11:01:42","slug":"mobility-and-invisibility-as-we-age-time-for-a-policy-phase-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/2019\/02\/07\/mobility-and-invisibility-as-we-age-time-for-a-policy-phase-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobility and invisibility: As we age, time for a policy phase change"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This article was originally published by<\/a> the International Network for Critical Gerontology; republished here with their kind permission)<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we get old, unless we have the glow of money about us, we gradually become invisible.\u00a0 This is nowhere more the case than in transport policy and planning.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Anglo-American world, pedestrians and public transport users of any age are second-class citizens.\u00a0 Cars and those who can afford to own and run them rule, often with substantial public subsidy for the fossil fuels<\/a> they consume, and sometimes more direct subsidies as well.\u00a0 (Good green Germany, for example, subsidized each company car<\/a> to the tune of 2,500 euros per year a few years ago.)\u00a0 In much of the low- and middle-income world, the situation is even worse, with motorways and high-speed commuter lines claiming scarce resources that could serve the mobility needs of the disenfranchised majority.<\/p>\n

For older people, the problems posed by this transport apartheid can be especially serious, because of reduced physical mobility (we can\u2019t walk as fast as we used to); limitations on driving; and, often, the difficulty of running a car on a fixed income.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s a simple example: crossing the street to Newcastle\u2019s Royal Victoria Infirmary (above), where my office is located, the signal transitions from \u2018walk\u2019 to \u2018wait\u2019 after six seconds, and the overall length of the crossing time is 14 seconds \u2013 hardly enough for someone with reduced mobility, of any age, to cross safely.\u00a0 The junction itself is thoroughly confusing, even for those of us who use it regularly.\u00a0 Illustration 2 shows an especially hazardous traffic sewer in downtown Ottawa, Canada, where I lived and worked before moving to the United Kingdom.\u00a0 Predictably, several pedestrian fatalities occurred within a few hundred metres of this location in the years before I left.\u00a0 Many suburban junctions are even worse.<\/p>\n

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Like so many other determinants of health, the problems are socioeconomically patterned:\u00a0 my former Ottawa colleague Theresa Grant has done splendid work<\/a> on how high-income neighbourhoods are much more \u2018walkable\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Although her focus was on older people, the health and safety benefits accrue to every age group.<\/p>\n

The situation is similarly grim for bus users.\u00a0 US-owned Greyhound Lines recently cancelled all long-distance bus services<\/a> in Canada\u2019s western provinces, stranding a large number of rural residents and raising the question of why the provision of non-automotive mobility should be left exclusively to the private marketplace. \u00a0(Even asking the question is difficult in today\u2019s climate of market fundamentalism.)\u00a0 The isolation of rural residents without access to a car can be soul-destroying. \u00a0In the United Kingdom, several years of savage cuts to local authority budgets, which come largely from central government, have led to widespread reductions in subsidies for bus transport, higher fares, and the cancellation of many services.\u00a0<\/a> Older residents of many local authority areas are eligible for free bus service, but this means little when the service isn\u2019t there.\u00a0 A bus no longer runs from the neighbourhood where I lived until December, 2018 to the local hospital.\u00a0 For those who don\u2019t drive, the options are taxis, finding a ride with a friend or neighbour, or a one-kilometre walk to a bus stand in the town centre.<\/p>\n

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Some researchers have long recognized the problem.\u00a0 Karen Lucas, of the University of Leeds<\/a>, is perhaps the world\u2019s leading authority on (and advocate for) inclusive transport; her work on \u2018transport poverty\u2019 and the need for inclusive transport policy is inspirational.\u00a0 She writes<\/a> with typical British understatement that: \u2018What is still severely lacking in terms of progress in this research domain \u2026 is its transfer into policy and practice\u2019.\u00a0 If anything, policy and practice in many jurisdictions are moving in the opposite direction, probably reflecting growing inequality in the distribution of money and political influence.<\/p>\n

An equity-oriented phase change (in physics, the transition between states of matter) is overdue.\u00a0 Some short-term remedies are simple and inexpensive.\u00a0 Pedestrian crossing times at junctions can be lengthened.\u00a0 Zebra crossings (crosswalks) can be made more numerous, and better marked. Speed limits in residential areas can be reduced to 20 mph (32 km\/h); this change has already been widely adopted in the United Kingdom, based on strong evidence for improvements in child safety<\/a>).\u00a0 Once enacted into law, prohibitions on blocking pedestrian crossings (see below), like pedestrian right of way in crosswalks, can be enforced using traffic cameras and automatic fines for vehicle owners.\u00a0 Other remedies, like de-subsidizing fossil fuel and company cars and using road tolls to fund public transport, will take longer if they ever happen.\u00a0 They will require fundamental reorientation of transport policy away from the convenience of drivers, and therefore be politically conflictual.\u00a0 The challenges are formidable, to say the least, but population aging could make for a more receptive audience.<\/p>\n

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Health professionals who care about such matters can help by insisting on the vocabulary of \u2018road violence\u2019<\/a>, and foregrounding the uneven distribution of its consequences. \u00a0(For example, of 408 pedestrians killed in the United Kingdom in 2015, more than half were over the age of 60<\/a>, although this age group makes up just 24 percent of the total population.)\u00a0 In New York City, pedestrian death investigation remains a low priority<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I first wrote about<\/a> transport equity as a human rights issue more than 20 years ago.\u00a0 Although international human rights instruments make no specific reference to mobility, the overarching human rights norm of antidiscrimination is clearly relevant, as is the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health<\/a> \u2013 which for many is daily threatened by car-centred transport planning.\u00a0 To raise the visibility of non-inclusive transport, the United Nations Human Rights Council<\/a> would do well to consider establishing a special procedure<\/a> related to mobility in the context of the antidiscrimination norm and the economic, social and cultural rights to which most of the world\u2019s countries have committed themselves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This article was originally published by the International Network for Critical Gerontology; republished here with their kind permission) As we get old, unless we have the glow of money about us, we gradually become invisible.\u00a0 This is nowhere more the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1834,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/theodoreschrecker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}