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Leading Change
Leading Change is a Parking Live thought leadership podcast where industry professionals share their thoughts and opinions based on experience, expertise and views.The podcast is a space for sector collaboration and thought provoking conversation aimed at leading change.
Leading Change
Navigating the Journey Toward Accessible and Safe Mobility
Unlock the secrets to creating a more inclusive transport system in our latest episode, where we're guest hosted by future mobility expert, Sharon Kindleysides and joined by Jade from Conduent Transportation, Natalie from Citizens Online, and Jennie from Bus Users UK. Together, we confront the stark reality of transport options and their impact on social inclusion. As we navigate the complexities of disparities in travel times, especially for the elderly, the disabled, and caregivers, our experts shed light on the pressing necessity of integrating hospital routes into the larger transport framework. They also emphasise the transformative potential of considering visitor access as part of patient recovery, showcasing how a more equitable transport infrastructure can promote overall societal health and well-being.
Venturing deeper into the nexus of technology and transportation, we unravel the challenges of digital exclusion and its ramifications on transport service utilisation. A staggering number of UK adults lack the digital prowess vital in an increasingly connected world, raising questions about how we can design services that bridge the digital divide. Our guests offer provocative insights into the state's role in fostering digital literacy and ensuring connectivity for all, with a special focus on those who might be left out of the digital leap - the unbanked and the offline. Through candid discussions, we highlight how local authorities and community-driven initiatives can use technology and data to enhance safety, accessibility, and efficiency in transport, even amidst financial constraints.
Wrapping up our comprehensive journey, we spotlight the innovative ways in which technology is being harnessed to support local authorities in transportation planning. With an eye on the future, we delve into how Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras and other data-centric tools can revolutionize the way we think about sustainable and accessible transportation. Our dialogue with Sharon, Jade, Natalie, and Jennie brings to the fore the transformative power of community initiatives, underlining the importance of keeping safety, affordability, and accessibility at the heart of transport services. Tune in as we explore these critical themes, championing the call for a transportation future that is inclusive and equitable for everyone.
Hello and welcome to the Lead and Change podcast. I am Jade Nebel, the regular host, but for today's podcast I am handing over the baton. The hosting duties will be carried out by one of our guest panelists, sharon Kindlesides. Now, today's topic is social equity and we have an amazing panel of experts. So I'm not going to take over the hosting duties now by going to do the introduction. I'm going to hand over to Sharon, sharon over to you.
Speaker 2:Hello, my name is Sharon Kindlesides. I'm based in the UK, where I'm a future mobility expert. I'm passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion, and particularly a strong supporter of public transport and making sure that it's fit for the needs of everyone who wants to use it. Today, I'm joined with an amazing set of panelists and we're going to be talking about social equity and transportation. So, jade, could you introduce yourself please?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, sharon. Hi, my name is Jade. I am the Head of User Experience at Concurrent Transportation. I've cut my teeth in my career in parking, so I'm a parking professional at heart, but my current role spans across the transportation sector, across various different aspects of, and I am the regular host of, parking Life. So thank you very much for guest hosting today, sharon, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Natalie.
Speaker 3:Hi, good morning Noel. Thank you for inviting me on today. So I'm Natalie Thorpe. I'm project manager for Citizens Online. Citizens Online is a charity that works to ensure no one is left behind in today's digital world. Our work is quite varied. For example, we're working partnerships, developing and writing strategies for organisations going through digital transformation. We're currently been supporting Conduent with the new loans of the Guard Charge Service, and our priority is really conducting research and doing delivery of projects and evaluation focused on digital and social inclusion.
Speaker 4:And Jenny. Hi, so I'm Jenny Martin. I chair the Board of Trustees at Bus Uses UK, which does what it sounds like it would be doing. I'm also a trustee at PACT, which is a transport safety charity here in the UK, and a trustee of CLT International. I have a very strong interest in public transport, a strong interest in transport technology, because of where I've spent my working life with, its, united Kingdom, and I'm also very interested in transport issues in low and middle income countries and I'm always building my network there.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So what I've been thinking about this podcast today and what equality actually means, I was reminded of some of the work that was done during COVID. And during COVID what was obvious was it was the people that absolutely had to travel travel during COVID and this enabled a lot of transport authorities to sort of narrow down who it was that was travelling and why they were travelling. And I did hear of a case study, not just to do with COVID, but two neighbourhoods in America had very high infant mortality and when they looked into these areas they discovered that parents were having to make two or three bus journeys to get the children to hospital and this led to them taking them to hospital later and also not going back for checkups. And I think earlier this year the campaign for better transport also did a similar not exactly a similar piece of work, but they looked at how long it took people to get to hospital or doctors by public transport and then using the car. So when I was thinking about this podcast, I quickly ran it through for myself.
Speaker 2:Where I live in a relatively rural area and from the old people's sheltered accommodation to our local GP emergency hour service, it is seven minutes by car or 18 minutes by public transport, of which eight of those minutes are walking. So I was really going to start by talking about how do we ensure that these necessary services that people don't automatically think about people can get to, because the people who are going to hospital tend to be elderly, they may be disabled, they may have caring responsibilities. So it would be interesting to hear your views as a starting point of is this a good measure? You know we've got to look at some sort of measure of accessibility, so is the hospital test a good one, and what examples of you may be seen in practice of where things have worked or where they haven't worked? Jenny, would you like to start?
Speaker 4:Yes, thank you Sharon. Yeah, but I think that's a really good example. In the UK, as you know, we discuss transport to and from hospital a lot. We particularly we talk about car parking at hospitals for staff and for patients and for visitors. And should this parking be free and how much of it? Should there be Very interesting and often very divisive topics? I think absolutely.
Speaker 4:Accessibility to health services has got to be one of the minimum things. When we talk about the rights to accessibility that citizens should have health care, employment and education they've all got to be up there. It's really important. I think it's really important that it's not assumed that that access has to be by private car, because not everybody has that option and I'm also very much of the opinion that people should. It should also be a choice. It shouldn't just be that you know I can't drive or I can't afford a car. It's perfectly valid to say I do not wish to, and the more especially in urban settings, the more people who do not wish to and take that option, the better the the the neighborhood is for all of us, with fewer cars driving around and being parked.
Speaker 4:I'm not aware of any examples of Hospitals being taken into account when local authorities do their wider transport planning. I like to think that's just because I haven't come across them, and they do exist. Hospitals themselves in the UK certainly have travel plans, and I think often one of the priorities of those travel plans is to enable non-private car-based use, and that's something that everybody should encourage. Lastly, I would just like to add to your point. It's also really important that visitors can get to hospital, Because the mental welfare of the patient is very important in their recovery. And lying there all by yourself because the people who might want to come and visit you aren't connected to the hospital in a sensible, affordable or not too time-consuming way is also not going to help.
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting point, actually, particularly about the visitors. I hadn't immediately thought of that, but it's very true, and particularly if it's a specialist hospital that's even further away. How do you get there? Yeah, especially at a time when you're probably concerned for your loved one or friend in hospital. That's interesting. I shall think about that. Natty, would you like to add something?
Speaker 3:Just from the rurality aspect.
Speaker 3:Obviously, a lot of what's happening with the transport can come from a cost perspective and the rural services are the first services that I generally am active.
Speaker 3:So it's really interesting looking it from the health perspective and getting to and from hospital, especially when a lot of services are going digitally transformative and there's a presumption that people can actually access those services if they can't necessarily access buses, which is not always the case, because the rurality also comes with complications of connectivity, broadband issues and signal issues. So, looking it from a health perspective, it's not just a case of people can't actually get to hospital, but there is the social and mental health aspects to consider exactly the social exclusion that can happen when visitors and friends and family can't get there, because transportation is actually less. Plus, as the original start of the conversation, it can actually impact on health and it takes much longer to get there, especially when you think of rural areas as well, especially in the UK, which comes from more worse weather the snow, for example, when it lands and the access to clear roads and accessible bus services with regards to light, safe spaces for people to actually stand and wait for those few buses that make long, once or twice an hour with that.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. I will touch on the well I'll probably more than touch on the rural aspects a little bit later on. But, jade, would you like to add anything or?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, sure, in one of my past roles I was managing a hospital site parking a kettering hospital actually and it was absolutely an issue trying to get people in, and kettering is quite well placed in terms of its off the main, you know, it's just off the A14, so it's not too bad to get to in that sense as you have good public transport links.
Speaker 1:But the access to the car park was particularly an issue.
Speaker 1:It was always oversubscribed. There is always a need for extra space in hospital footprints and it's always a battle to make sure that that space is used in the most effective manner, whether that be additional hospital services and buildings or whether that be to park up visitors and patients and staff as well. So obviously staff need access and I think the focus on green travel plans for hospitals was quite a focus where they were trying to encourage a more active travel modes for those that live closer to the hospital, particularly staff members, to be able to then free up more spaces for those who are visiting and needed to come in as patients or were needed coming for additional regular critical care, going into the rural spaces and people that require access to transportation that may necessarily have their own. It's almost like we need some kind of centrally funded agreement with taxi companies and services where we can say, right, on a need-by-need basis, there is an agreement to say that you will provide transportation in X circumstances to people that need it the most.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's that kind of on-demand ability to you know, get a taxi or be able to find a means to get from A to B without costing that person and knowing that they can actually do it within a reasonable timeframe, would help solve that issue. Because, you know, as we were talking about before, public transport in rural areas is specifically challenging, especially buses, and frequency of being able to access those kind of elements of transportation, and a lot of it involves walking from one place to the next as well, because sometimes the bus stops in rural areas are free and far between. But I know we're going to touch on that in a bit, but to me, yeah, and on some kind of centrally funded on-demand service, I think it's probably going to be the most logical solution for that maybe.
Speaker 2:And both Jade and Natalie said something interesting and it made me leave me to think. When I was looking up this morning about travel distances to the hospital and travel times, I knew how to do it. I can just go on an app. I know what to do. Everyone has their own favourite travel app and particularly for these one-off journeys, I think they're the ones that are really difficult for people to plan. If you're making the journey every day, you sort of know what it is, but it's these one-off ones when you're a bit under stress, and I was going to come back to you on this.
Speaker 2:Natalie, I believe you know some figures about really digital inclusion or possibly digital citizens online. I saw somewhere that something 11 million people did not have essential digital skills and almost 8% of adults in the UK haven't used the internet in the last three months. So, as well as these services being available, how do we make sure everyone has access to finding out what they are? And you know things like how do you book a ticket, do you need cash, do you need a smart card? So really that's probably multiple things, because some of it touches on banking and again, I did look up and I think 1.1 million UK adults are unbanked, and that excludes, you know, the younger people who maybe aren't even old enough to have a debit card but still need to travel. So, really, what can we do to make sure that digital inclusion doesn't lock people out of using transport? And then, how do you make sure that payment systems also work for them? Who would like to start on that one?
Speaker 3:Well, it's quite a loaded question that there's a lot of different angles coming from that. So I think some of the key points that you could probably start looking at is when you're actually designing these services from an organisational or government or authority perspective especially transport as well is ensuring it's inclusive design, that you actually look at all the marginalised potential people, that they can actually use those services, and ensuring that they can access those services on an equitable footing. So you can't stop technology advances and society actually changing. But what you also need to consider is when you're doing digital design is always considering minority groups, of which the digitally excluded people are really part of. So a conversation that we've touched on before is, for example, cashless bus services, and the point about debit cards etc is a really valid point.
Speaker 3:Not everybody has access to a bank account, for whatever reason, whether that is actually.
Speaker 3:I mean, there are a lot of social bank accounts that are actually coming onto the market nowadays because people are recognising the need for them, but not everybody trusts online banking services. Not everybody uses them, and you can only access online services if you have connectivity. Connectivity then goes on to issues with data poverty and whether people have the devices and the money to be able to access Wi-Fi or other places, and although there may be free Wi-Fi in libraries, touching on the services, then actually might be closing in rural areas because it's one of the first services that can go off public funding. With this cost of living crisis, Everybody's actually you know, everybody's reading everybody's feeling that in different aspects nowadays. So it's, how do you ensure and I think the most important part is to actually come back to that inclusive service design, making sure the users are actually involved in this and ensuring that there's always access for people to gain offline services, whether that's support through a telephone service or for internet access at all means to actually get hold of that information through personal services?
Speaker 2:Jenny, from Bossusers UK Point of View, I'm sure you've got lots of thoughts on this.
Speaker 4:Yes, absolutely. Sharon yourself and Natalie have just outlined. There are a lot of people out there who, for various reasons, are not digitally connected or digitally savvy or digitally skilled. It's really important that those people also have access to transport services, of course. My personal view is that we were at a point now as a society where we should acknowledge that being able to use digital means to access absolutely anything not just transport, but anything is now essential, and I think we as a society we need to take responsibility for this, and where there are people who are currently digitally excluded but who could be included with training and support, then that should happen, and it should happen for free.
Speaker 4:I make the analogy of sometime back in the 19th century. We decided that we were going to run our society in a way that meant that everybody needed to be able to read and write. We then set about to make that happen, and you don't get. There's not much you can do in life now in the UK without reading and writing, and I think we're there with the digital connections as well, plus the fact that if we do provide that support and we do upskill people in that way, many other aspects of their lives become much easier. And again, of course, you also need a device and you need the connectivity. Why should that not be something that the state helps with if it's so essential for citizens participating in the state to be able to do these things? But I also completely acknowledge we are always going to be left with a group of people where it just isn't possible and they must always be catered for.
Speaker 4:I've recently been doing a lot of work on demand responsive transport in the form of buses and again going back. This is usually in rural areas and those types of services must always come with some full analog back, not just because of the potential users maybe not having the skill or the device or whatever, but also because sometimes the connectivity just isn't there or the device runs out of battery, and there must always be that backup. We must never leave people stranded. And moving on to the the issue of being unbanked again, obviously that is a big issue in buses.
Speaker 4:The people operate buses have a lot of savings to make in all sorts of different ways from going cashless. But by going cashless you are also no really excluding people who only have that means of paying. And yes, you can use preloaded cards like like the oyster in London, but the card comes with A fee. You have to put on a deposit on the card. That's extra money you have to find and again, it's really important that we always consider those and, wherever at all possible, to provide a cash alternative. And I'll just finally to echo what Natalie said. It's absolutely great to see the growing acceptance of that this there should be social bank accounts offered. That it's something that any, any bank that considers itself to be a A recent, reasonable social entity as well as a commercial entity should offer, and I'm really pleased to see that coming online.
Speaker 2:Thanks to you, and when you were talking about cash, I also thought a group that is probably it's not really excluded, but tourists in particular who may be travelling and they may have bought cash Because the credit card owner charges me for bringing abroad and I was thinking the really big cities of the international, cities of the airport. It should be really clear how you can buy your ticket with cash, rather than you have to sort of flail around looking for ticket machines. You know experience, I've had a transfer professional. You go to the ticket machine and you can't you know, you can't work out how it works, and so I don't know foreign language, or it's not immediately obvious where you put your cash in. I was going to quickly and I was going to come back to you, not only.
Speaker 3:I was thinking about the recent suggestion that I can remember about the closure I don't want to go down a particular transport route, but the closure of kiosks at train stations and things, and that was Not going to say where this isn't going from, but obviously that immediately rings alarm bells for the people that are actually could have been potentially excluded, which is very interesting talking about there, about people coming in from the you know country is coming into here, visitors, transport, sorry, trans Things. It's actually the people that you know, maybe blind, or if the machines aren't working that morning.
Speaker 4:Digital is a great tool that you always need to have additional backup, so I'm glad to see that decision was actually because it was kind of inducing when the first one came out yeah that it was so great that I got reversed it Me for so many reasons and many of them not even to do with buying a ticket, but the, the, the great perception of safety.
Speaker 4:It's much better when someone actually there Me not as a Londoner. Yes, I know that when they shut out ticket offices on the underground system we were told that there would always be someone on the station. I'm sure they probably is, but human nature is what it is In. The must be three or four years since this happened, or possibly longer, was pre pandemic. Anyway, in that time at my sort of slightly small and quiet station I have seen staff on the platforms maybe four or five times and that's enough. Five years is it happens once a year Because if you you're working by yourself in the situation where you gonna do, you gonna go find a quiet room, you're not gonna be wondering around the station and it's not at all great, for the Possibly makes no difference, for real safety before perceived safety makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about the digital exclusion of the downside of technology. But where do you see the positive sides of technology? How can I actually help inclusion and where, again, you know, where have you seen it work really well? I would like to start on that one.
Speaker 4:Well, if I can start because I've really really recently experienced I've spent the previous three days of this week. I was in Brussels and I don't speak French, I don't speak Flemish, but the ticketing machines there where you might, in my case, reload your, your old ticket, but also you can buy a ticket, and the way you use them on the buses and the trams and the underground system. It's not just available in English, which is helpful, of course, but it's also really intuitive and I think for the, I do think that for the majority of people, digital tools in terms of accessing transport options are really really helpful. They're not a hindrance, they are a help. But I do think there's a great piece there, and Natalie's also already mentioned it it's the way the interfaces are designed. I mean, I am, I worked for over 20 years in transport technology and I regularly come across interfaces where it takes me four or five goes to get through to where I need to be, because it's not intuitive.
Speaker 4:It's designed by someone who's far more interested in IT than he or she is in using transport. And again, I think is what we mentioned, it should be an absolute given that when you design these, by all means design the platform with your IT skilled colleagues, but when it comes to designing the interface, you must work with user groups seriously, and in the UK there are so many charities who for all all types of groups of people who may be excluded if the interface is badly designed. They will help you. It won't cost you anything. They will send you someone to work with you and that should just be a given part of the process.
Speaker 2:Natalie, would you like to add anything?
Speaker 3:I was just thinking there about that, that it might be sort of slightly changing the subject there, but obviously I'm just leaning in there towards the funding aspect and the charities. There are many charities like ourselves that are out there supporting these marginalised groups and they're all very willing to help, but there is a cost of living crisis and a lack of funding that's actually impacting charities' survivability. I have actually seen, very sadly, a couple of charities needing to close each day because of the lack of funding. There is less money to go around for everybody and we are all feeling it, which is why the positives of digital can help save money and time.
Speaker 3:But there are still always those audiences that could be left behind and the charities are struggling to support everybody else to help keep those services and unfortunately, with the lack of public funding that's around at the moment, unfortunately more and more burden has been coming on to charities and they're actually having to pick up the slack, so there's more work and less resources. So, yes, there's plenty of people out there that actually have the experience and the willingness, but there's more and more reliability on these charities and a lot of the charities are actually staffed by volunteers we could touch on to the food bank aspect and everything, but just sticking to the digital transformation and that supportive services. They're having to pick up and put the pieces together for this holistic service to try and help people on that journey, to make sure that their support is there and that they can actually provide. We can give the advice, but charities still need to remain to exist in order to provide that service.
Speaker 2:Hi Jake, would you like to come in, particularly with your parking hat on? I'm sure you've seen plenty of technology.
Speaker 1:Parking technology is becoming more and more of not a challenge, but we are growing more cash. First, there's more digital options. There's the parking machines that take the EOD coins in the far rural areas are still quite needed because of the access to the connectivity. Data is an issue, so SIM cards are not necessarily going to be the way forward for that. So second, car payments is always a bit of a challenge. So when you get your access to areas such as your cashless providers as your phone app providers, that's where you start to help fill that gap. But however, you need a smartphone, you need to be able to do that, or you need to be able to be confident enough to dial that phone number, put the area code in, and it can be quite a convoluted process in some cases. We have seen some development of payment services and cashless services that allow you to use your mobile billing so carrier billing to be able to then connect and pay via a free G2G connection. So you don't have to have access to a data connection other than your normal cell connection and you can do that by texting and using various other methods as well. So even if you're unbanked and you're using a paid-to-go phone and you don't necessarily have that access to be able to pay by direct debit or whatever you're doing prior your billing. You can use your paid-to-go service as an account effectively to pay for other services. So parking Contra worked with a business recently to adapt that into their parking so we can pay for parking charges and parking charge notices. So parking fines as well as payment for parking services to help with the reduction of debt recovery and making payment accessible to everybody as easy as possible. So that's an option that can also then be translated into paying for transportation modes, so that can then be useful for paying for your bus fare, for paying for your train ticket or whatever it may be, as that kind of technology gets used more and is wider spread. So it is being considered and it is starting to evolve quite quickly, which is good to see.
Speaker 1:There's also the implementation of the National Parking Platform. So that's some of the government has obviously backed and it's going to be rolled out relatively soon I believe by autumn next year and that will see the consolidation of data across various different platforms. So if you are particularly used to an app and you have a favourite, you know how to use that. You're comfortable with it. You don't then have to download another app if that area doesn't support it, so you could use one cashless provider app or one app for your EV charging, which will be something that will be coming in the future. It's not necessarily going to be part of the Go Live plan for MPP straight away, but that will be the idea that if you're used to a particular carrier and user, then you don't then have to learn and download something else to then have to use that service. You can go and park in any area and use your preferred payment method, because all the databases will be centralised. So that will then increase the accessibility as well from that perspective.
Speaker 2:No great.
Speaker 2:Jenny and I have been to a lot of intelligent transport systems conferences and I've seen a few applications, particularly for specific areas to help specific types of people where technology has been applied, and there's a couple of examples.
Speaker 2:The one I've always liked it's not quite transportation, it's around active travel, but it's enabling users who perhaps can't physically get to press the button on a pedestrian crossing to trigger it by using their phone, and I do feel that where technologies can play a really good part is this enabling in specific situations people to be more independent.
Speaker 2:Another scheme I'd heard of was the German Deutsches Blindersfaband, so their equivalent of the Blind Association, and what they'd realised is, as you're travelling and changing locations, you need almost like an umbrella app that knows I am now at the station or I am now at the bus stop to actually make sure the right app is sort of at the front of the screen or can come up. So I think there's a lot of application quite niche, which obviously causes a financial problem, but be good to hear what other apps you've heard or applications and I'm sure DRTs are going to come back into this but where else have you seen these sort of niche solutions to help a particular demographic or group of travellers be more independent. I'll go to Jenny because I'm sure you've seen loads.
Speaker 4:Well, I'll start by quoting a sort of a best practice example though it's very old but it's still valid which was when the Department for Transport here in the UK, when they funded real-time information for bus passengers so this is 20 or years ago now the working party that was set up to make this happen. Almost right from the start, it also included okay, so how are blind bus passengers at the bus stop going to be informed? And I won't bore you with the details of what the solution was, but it's a really good example of that. The truth it wasn't like oh, let's do this first of all for passengers who can see and then, after an inorder amount of lobbying by the RNIB, we might get round to thinking about the passengers who can't see. It was actually right in there from the start and we did work with the RNIB on that. So that's a really good example. So fast forward 25 years Again.
Speaker 4:I think none of these things should be niche, because there's very few things that benefit users with disabilities that actually benefit all of us. As someone who used to travel with very heavy exhibition equipment on public transport, anything that benefits a wheelchair user on the public transport was certainly very good for me, when you see a lift, your heart lifts wonderful, but so something that benefits all of us is the massive advances in really detailed mapping, digital mapping, including indoors, and I think Sharon Berlin is like a leading example of this, where they're mapping all their train stations, all their tube stations so that they'll be excellent wayfinding for blind and visually impaired users. As a result of these excellent digital maps, but they will also benefit all the rest of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I agree completely If we make the system easy for everybody, and the other example I always use is when you've got a suitcase and a cup of coffee and you've got to go through a barrier. I too, am really happy when the luggage barrier is free and open. Natalie, have you seen any good either applications or projects or solutions to help particular groups, or even ways of letting communities know when systems are changing near them so they know how best to access them?
Speaker 3:I can't think of anything on the public side. I just keep on coming back to different angles of interest. I have access to devices in order to be able to access these digital services. Have the devices if they have the connectivity. I'm not 100% digital included.
Speaker 3:There's certain aspects, on apps and mobile banking, for example, that I personally wouldn't use as a digital included person. But even I struggled in a recent countryside trip where I went to actually try and access the app to actually pay for parking and there was no signal. So there's always issues that are coming around. Although it's a lot easier for people, it's a lot quicker and it's very simple, but there are still instances that there's issues with actually connecting. So making sure that that aspect is also there for people who are not accessing digital tools or don't have the ability to access digital tools. So, not being a transport expert, I'm not as up to date as all you ladies are and the latest information and the new things that are coming down the line. It's more a case of the inclusion aspect and making sure that that social and equitable factor is always there in all services that's being designed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that sort of made me think as well. Particularly around, we're always trying to encourage people to come into our industry and be as diverse as possible, and it did make me think that a lot of the startups in the transport area are probably being generated by people we haven't previously seen in the industry and hopefully they're bringing a different view of life, a different lived experience to it. And I'm thinking about young people who've perhaps grown up without a car or they've seen their. So they've grown up without a car or they can't afford to have driving lessons, so they're also developing solutions to help them and their friends, whereas possibly older systems engineers will go, oh well, everybody's got a car, everybody's got a credit card. So I was going to say, jade, have you? You're so obviously slightly more industrial than we are at the moment. Have you had, you know, a conduit? Have you seen any really great ideas coming through from younger people coming up with innovative solutions that possibly we haven't seen as a problem to start with?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose like we've got a quite handy companion, a mobility companion app that we use in France, and it's not just an app website various different options to be able to access it but it remalgamates lots of different transport data from different transport modes into one place so you can do route planning for multiple mobility modes and transport modes. So, whether that be walking from one place to the next or being able to get a bus or a train or multiple modes together, it would also identify where there are accessibility points as well. So if you need ramp access or if you need lift access, it will indicate where all these points are available to people that need them, and you can also select various different things. So if you say you need to plan a route with ramp access, then you can select that and it will only give you those routes that have those options. You can even drill down to if you want the most economic route, whether it be cost or whether it be then environmental impacts, and it will then filter the route by that as well. So it does some really great things.
Speaker 1:It's again, it's the access to having the app or the internet to be able to access those platforms. So where I'm thinking that that can be developed a little bit more is where you have your transport hubs and when you have access to community centres maybe having either a tablet or both access to tablet and a phone audio service where you can be able to actually discuss these things through or have access to them. If you don't have the devices or the connectivity yourself to be able to do these planning, these routes, there's an awful lot that AI can do as well to support with route planning, and then over you have these chatbots that give out automated responses. They are very good at being able to help and assist people, either verbally or visually, with guiding through that process, and I think that that's probably not used enough at the moment and it's something that is being picked up on not just with Conjurent, but with other businesses within parking and transportation as well, so I would like to see that developing a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Yeah and that sort of. I was remembering a project I've heard of. It was about particularly in active travel and it was being developed in South America, I think in Mexico City, and it was using data analysis to identify safe walking routes. I sort of talked to the founders a bit and it was as well as going on physical things, like you know, where's there a shop it was. Also I'd suggested to them using Google Maps, google Street View, to see street lights, the spacing of street lights and things like that. So they were using the data analysis, I mean, you know, to identify safe walking routes to encourage people to use active travel in a city where probably none of us would feel confident walking. So I was quite yeah, I was quite impressed with that. They'd actually thought it through and again, like you know, the use of AI or the use of video analytics to identify safe routes. And then going to the probably going to the other end about information.
Speaker 2:So I live in deepest, darkest Fenlands. You all knew I was going to mention it. We have, yes, we have just got I don't know how many, maybe four or five big column like touch screens out and about in the town to give visitors information and in the window of our library is actually got the bus times of the next buses. Now this just shows quite how few buses we have because you know, you can sort of see it in the window of the library. But I would like to talk about rural transport because I think it has its own needs and the one I've particularly seen is Ely's got 22,000 people. We have a lot of children who come into Ely, maybe to go to college, and then they either you know so they're either coming in on a school bus or the maybe is getting a lift and then when they go into the sixth form, a lot of the children are actually then going into Cambridge. But it means their parents pretty much having to bring them into Ely to get them on the train to go to Cambridge. And I think this is quite, I think this is quite a rural commuting thing that people don't always think about. So we've got these young adults travelling and I, you know if a train is cancelled and you've suddenly got, you know, two classes full of young teenagers stuck at the station. You know they sometimes panic or worry or get more upset than you know adults get upset if their trains cancelled.
Speaker 2:So, really, looking at the challenges of the rural area and buses, what can we do? That's fair, you know. Should we manage our counties as a whole and allocate the money where it's needed and assume the city is going to pay for the villages, or what are good ways of doing that? And how do we make sure, like I think it was, jenny said that you don't have to be rich to live in a village, because we don't want these villages to die out. We want them to have young people, you know, and the young people want to go to the cinema or the coffee shop or the pub at the weekend. So how do we make, how do we make rural travel what it needs to be? We'd like to start on that one, jenny.
Speaker 4:Yeah, as somebody who grew up in the middle of nowhere and got out of there as fast as she could and is never going back. You will never catch me living somewhere where there are street lights again. That's not going to happen. It is very interesting to me because I think it is. You know, our topic today is transport equity and I think it is inequitable that we don't really give citizens the options of living anything like full lives in rural areas without the private car playing a big part in their lives, whether because they own it and they drive it themselves or they've got some informal arrangement going with relatives or neighbors or whoever. It just doesn't seem right to me, and as someone who was a teenager in exactly the situation that Sharon just described, it meant that my parents had to run two cars, because one car always was with my father at his workplace and for those sorts of situations that Sharon just described, my mother had to be able to hop in and drive and get us from wherever we were stranded. Usually we lived about half an hour outside the town where we went to college. It isn't fair. And also, you see so many as a Londoner, I know so many people who move out when they retire and it's all going to be absolutely lovely with the big garden and the village fest and what have you. But human life is what it is. There comes a point in all those people's lives when they can't drive anymore and I've certainly seen that happen myself where all of a sudden health fails. And now the fact that there is no public transport service, or it's literally one bus in, one bus out each day, or the DRT that we were to mention, which is great when it comes, but no one will give you the exact figures for how many ride requests they turn down, but it's not going to be fewer than 20%. I wouldn't have thought. So now you've got your hospital appointment, you put in your DRT request and you're told no, oh, okay, so maybe a book of taxi. That's probably going to be 60 or 70 pounds. That's not an affordable option. So I do.
Speaker 4:I don't have a sort of detailed prescription for which pot of money should be subsidizing which service, but I think it's absolutely equitable that there should be more money spent per passenger, as it were, to keep people moving in rural areas to have the mobility they need, as opposed to in cities where there are more of us, so, logically, we are better able to pay for our shared services.
Speaker 4:I really don't see a problem with that and again, as Sharon and I have had this conversation many times, the problem we transport spend is that the benefits always accrue somewhere else. So if the county or whichever local authority decides that, yes, we are going to spend on some form of public transport service or even subsidized taxi service so that people can live in our rural areas even though they don't drive, there are going to be great benefits. But those benefits are going to pop up in the health budget or in the retail budget or in the entertainment income where they now go to the cinema, which we weren't able to do before. It never pops up where we can say look, we made that money. And that's to me one of these big conundrums that we really want to solve.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jade. Have you got any feelings? You don't live too far away from me, or do you live in the metropolis of Huntington?
Speaker 1:Yes, the stones throw away from me leave a world away at the same time, so I do have a couple of local pubs, which makes me spoil, but yeah, I do. It's a strange one. I used to live in South Indus when I was younger so I grew up with access to transport quite easily within the stones throw of London and regular buses, good lighting, being a seaside town, and it felt relatively safe to go into moving into a rural area when I was in my early 20s and the safety aspect for me and the reduction of street lighting was a bit of an eye-opener. I'd never really stepped foot outside the South End until I moved completely out of it and it was a bit of getting used to. It did affect how I travelled as a young woman. I didn't necessarily go to buses as an option. I went straight to be in a car owner and drove pretty much everywhere and it was mainly for the safety aspect. Really. That and accessibility of the buses around here is they come very few in between, pretty much similar to Ely, and getting access to a bus to go anywhere We've been to Cambridge takes quite a long time when in the car it's 20 minutes down the road. There's that aspect to it too. That's what drove the idea of the Ask for Anger campaign. I was trying to. I was wrecking my brain In South End.
Speaker 1:I was working as a civil enforcement officer, so I started my parking career patrol in the streets, enforcing parking restrictions and managing parking areas. It kind of struck me that we have a whole untapped resource there when it comes to trained officers on the ground who are able to support people who may be then walking from A to B to get to the bus stop, or you park your car somewhere to then not necessarily go to your final destination, but then to walk to somewhere else to then get another motor transport, which is what we're encouraging more now. We want you to leave your car further away from the main city areas and then use other motor transport to come in and more active motor transport to come in. But it's the safety element in between those parking your car, getting out your car and then going to the next mode or getting to the next point. We started training our civil enforcement officers in an adapted version of the Ask for Anger campaign and welfare and vulnerable engagement training we were looking at.
Speaker 1:Initially it was about supporting the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls campaign that is still being quite avidly pushed by government, which is fantastic to see, and the DFT picked it up as well with the transport champions who were being pushed by a transport for West Midlands and it was a way of being able to offer additional support to people who may feel vulnerable when they're walking from one place to the next.
Speaker 1:And there's an awful lot of scenarios that can be helped and officer can support in, whether that be whether some of the fields like they're not being followed, or whether they're someone that they're with that they don't particularly want them to be with them anymore and they feel threatened by that person.
Speaker 1:There is a safe like a trigger word, like a phrase asking for Angela. It's exactly the same process as what's been used in licensed premises, but we've adapted it to include scenarios where the officer was obviously alone, working themselves and they could be working out on their own in dark areas and obviously it's a bit more focused on the fact that we're going to support remotely, so not having access to a large licensed premises with security guards licensed security guards there but we do have communications to be able to get in contact with police. We do have body-on cameras. We do have mobile phones and radios and access to other support around us where we can make sure that we've got back up if we need it. So there's all sorts of different scenarios there, but I think that for me it was a bit of a culture shock to go from somewhere that's so built up to somewhere so rural, and for me the aspect of safety was the biggest point. That kind of restricted my ability to move from A to B.
Speaker 2:I think I just want to do a call-out now for Strutsafe, which is a charity I think was set up in Scotland by some amazing women and for anybody on a. I think it works Friday night, saturday, possibly Sunday night. You can ring them up and they'll talk to you all the way home, just to keep you company. Fortunately, I've never needed it, but I've definitely passed the number on to a number of people. So I would just like to give a call-out to Strutsafe. Natalie, I mean, obviously, having even having a phone signal in rural areas is sometimes quite tricky. So what are your experiences or what are your recommendations?
Speaker 3:Just ensuring that accessibility is there for everybody when you are looking at that sort of service design and making sure. Another consideration while it's great to actually have staff available, which is not always the case I think that phone service is absolutely amazing that needs rolling out nationwide, definitely. That sounds an amazing thing to do. But yeah, it's thinking of the actual staff that you've actually got inside your organisations and these kinds of folks. Having what was mentioned a while ago about the screens accessible to actually access touch screens and having devices there, that's amazing, but you need to also remember that it's not just always access. It's actually confidence, online safety and skills that people need to have, and it's not just necessarily your customers. It's also reflecting on the staffing inside organisations. Do they have the skills and knowledge on how to speak to digitally included excluded people and do they have all the full skills themselves that they're expecting your own customers, users to have? So that's the only other angle I would come from that, being born, bred, still living here in Sheffield.
Speaker 3:We are on Seven Hills, which gets quite tricky, and poor weather, but other than that it's actually very, very good for transport. But I'm literally on the edge of Derbyshire and within three miles of moving from my house I'm immediately in a rural area. So the connectivity, the dark street, the safety, everything does come into Angle and obviously we're all here, women. We've all had experiences at some point in the past where you may have felt unsafe. So always considering that Angle is always the way forward, excellent.
Speaker 2:I've been keeping an eye on the clocks and we're nearly coming to the end and I'd probably just one take away. We may or may not have a general election next year. If you managed to get a transport minister in the corner, what is on your wish list? What is the one thing you would ask for from them? I mean, I think I'm going to go first sort of host privilege. I think I would just make sure that they never do away with cash and they never do away with the backup system, and sort of accept that no matter how great and shiny the digital technology is, you've always, always got to have an analogue system. So I hope I haven't stolen your thoughts, jenny. What's your one wish for the next parliament?
Speaker 4:No, I would certainly back your wish, and I would add my wish, or what I would say to him or her is for goodness sake, remember that you are here as transport minister to serve the whole of the population, and that includes the people who are, who have very little money to spend on transport but still have transport needs, and it includes people where a private car just doesn't figure in their transport planning. Please, minister, do remember those people.
Speaker 2:Thank you, natalie, your wish.
Speaker 3:Well, I have a cue, but I'll stay off the controversial one for now and just really think funding and it's linked to what Jenny was actually saying there it's considering and thinking about the whole of the population that's out there Support for services should not be left with other organisations, charities or third parties to be picked up which are providing support for all audiences or at least providing support for the youth sector to help provide the gaps in services that are left behind by organisations. So one needs to pick up that funding to ensure the whole population is covered.
Speaker 2:Excellent, and Jade, before I hand you back your own podcast, You've been a welcome guest host.
Speaker 1:For sure it's in safe hands. There is a loaded question, isn't it? There's a couple for me, and I think enabling local authorities to be able to use technology better to facilitate services is quite important, whether that be the ability to use ANPR cameras, use the data from them to then drive more sustainable and accessible transportation plans, because at the moment, a lot of the usage of cameras is mainly based around enforcement, which services then generate revenue, which then goes back into the central pot which, as we have already identified, is not necessarily always room fenced and going into the same areas that we would like to see it being implemented back into. So the ability to take away that onus of cameras being used for certain things and actually allowing authorities to use it for more and enabling them to have that data for more things. And that comes down to budget restraints and the fact that there's always cost cutting being involved there in terms of the service provisions.
Speaker 1:So, although authorities can use cameras to gather data, at the moment they don't have the budgets to be able to invest in that technology to do it if it's not generating a revenue stream. And that's where it's kind of stemming the use of this data that can be collected and can be used to better the services all around, and whether that be things like camera vision and AI, computer vision and sorry, an AI to be able to identify what types of vehicles are being used in what roads, and whether that be bikes and lorries and cars and taxis and buses, etc. So we can actually really grind down what the need is based on fact and data. Then I think that we can plan so much easier and better when it comes to future planning transport modes, so that improving the budgets for local authorities and it's not going to be easy, but that's going to be the starting point for me- Excellent.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you all very much.
Speaker 4:Thank you, sharon, for your excellent moderatorship.
