Title

Transport and social exclusion: a survey of the group of seven nations

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2004

Subject Area

Location - Europe, Location - UK, Location - USA, Social Issues - Social exclusion, Social Issues - social inclusion

Abstract

The persistence of poverty and disadvantage amongst some social groups in even the most affluent and advanced industrial societies and its 'knock-on' effects, such as unemployment, poor educational achievement, high crime rates, social segregation and low voter turn-out is an increasing focus of the policy agenda of these countries. Poor transport and accessibility has been identified as an important contributing and reinforcing factor in the reduced participation of excluded groups and communities. In response to the growing body of research in the UK, the FIA Foundation invited the Transport Studies Group (TSG) at the University of Westminster to undertake a scoping study to compare the position of the G7 countries in relation to transport and social exclusion. The intention was to build on previous UK research and the work of the UK Government's Social Exclusion Unit recent study of the links between transport and social exclusion in the UK in order to make a contribution to the ongoing policy development both nationally and locally in the UK, whilst also helping to raise the profile of transport and accessibility within the welfare policy agenda elsewhere and to disseminate good practice more widely between nations. This is a summary report of Phase 1 of the work which involved the preparation of seven nation specific papers. The main objectives of the Phase 1 work were to compare the extent and diversity of form of social exclusion across the seven countries and different national approaches to the problem and examine the ways in which the transport policies of the seven countries recognise and alleviate or accentuate the problem.