[sustran] Re: mobility as a right

[Maunder, Dave A C]

I enclose a short abstract from a TRL report on Sustainable Livelihoods
, mobility and access needs published in 2003 which may help clarify
access and mobility

1.1	Distinguishing mobility and accessibility 
All communities require accessibility to supplies, services, facilities
and work opportunities. The accessibility of such things can be measured
in a number of different ways [Jones, 1981]. Accessibility depends on
infrastructure and available and affordable modes of transport for the
movement of people and their loads. Accessibility therefore depends on
physical proximity and mobility. It may be improved by greater mobility
and/or improved proximity.

Mobility is simply a measure of the agency with which people choose to
move themselves or their goods around. This involves two components. The
first of these depends on the performance of the transport system, which
is affected by where the person is and the timing and direction in which
they wish to travel. The second component depends on the characteristics
of the individual such as whether s/he has a bicycle or car available,
can afford taxi, bus, or rail fares, is able to walk or use public
transport, or has knowledge of the options available [Porter, 2001]. In
other words, the first element is concerned with the effectiveness of
the transport system in connecting spatially separated locations, and
the second element is concerned with the extent to which a particular
individual or type of person is able to make use of the transport
system.

Accessibility, or the perceived proximity of desired locational
destinations, is heavily influenced by the transport mode being used.
Accessibility is concerned not with behaviour but with the opportunity,
or potential, provided by the transport and land-use system for
different types of people to engage in activities. 

The two concepts of mobility and accessibility are clearly related but
can be easily confused when they are not distinguished from the
intervening facilitation of different modes of transport. In the
transport literature accessibility is often defined as the ease with
which one reaches a desired location. In fact taking a more social
science perspective which traces agency and process, 'ease of movement'
and 'ease of access' are attributes of the transport modality rather
than a feature of the mobile agent or the locational destination per se.


	
In this research an emphasis on mobility is preferred because it is
concerned directly with behaviour. This is more in keeping with the
decisions that must be made to ensure, enhance and sustain livelihoods.
Moreover, mobility, activity systems, and welfare can be conceptually
related. Any analysis of mobility must take account of all the
motivational factors of individual agents. An agent's age, gender and
income will heavily influence his/her choice of destinations as well as
facilitating the possibility for individual movement. For example, women
may be socially sanctioned from going to public bars to drink, or a
young man's income may prevent him from having the money to travel to a
distant sports event even though he may highly desire to do so.

Physical mobility has to be distinguished at three levels: short-term
daily or frequent regularised patterns of mobility, 'one's daily
movement'; medium-term long-distance mobility, in other words, 'travel
mobility'; and finally, long-term residential mobility. The three levels
interact in a number of ways, but it would be highly misleading to lump
them together. For example, one may state that a certain woman is highly
mobile because she travels a great deal for pleasure seeing different
parts of the world whereas she has lived in the same location all her
life and commutes daily to her work just half a kilometre from her home.
This can be contrasted with someone who has lived in many different
places over the course of his/her life or has a job involving continual
daily movement around a big city. Who is more mobile? Clearly, an
individual's level of mobility has to be qualified to be meaningful.

To isolate the influence of mobility levels and changes on livelihoods,
our study attempted to hold accessibility constraints reasonably
constant by excluding the sampling of remote communities. These are
often dominated either by severe road access problems or major
[long-distance] mobility constraints that preclude individual
initiatives. They have, in any case, already been extensively studied
[Barwell, 1996; Dennis, 1998; Hine and Rutter, 2000]. Our study
concentrated on parts of the city where the range of transport modes,
network density and transport access are comparatively high, which
facilitates an understanding of the influence of income differentiation
on mobility and the poor's relative mobility position.

D Maunder
TRL Limited
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SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred,
equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries
(the 'Global South'). Because of the history of the list, the main focus
is on urban transport policy in Asia.


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