Public transport (PT) is an essential urban infrastructure. Attempts to accelerate PT uptake are based on accruing environmental benefits and enhancing economic viability. It remains unclear how socially just these attempts and their outcomes are in terms of who benefits (distribution), whose needs are considered (recognition), who decides and how (participation). The close relationship between the built environment and uptake of PT is poorly understood. The proposed research will advance capacity building and inclusive transitions on the urban scale through a dual perspective on PT and built environment. It will examine inequalities in terms of needs, capabilities, decision-making and accessibility. It will also analyse how and to what extent PT and built environment policies take distribution, participation and recognition dimensions into account. It will co-produce understandings on how urban planning goals regarding resilience can be strengthened through inclusive processes. In close collaboration with policy-makers and service providers, the project will consider micromobility, fare structures, flexible on-demand PT and transit-oriented development (TOD) in the urban regions of Tallinn (Estonia), the Flemish cities (Belgium), Stockholm (Sweden) and Oslo (Norway). The project aims to bring about a shift in how mobility policies and services are developed, implemented and delivered so that urban built environments and PT become integrated and inclusive.

Project results summary (tentative)

Aim and purpose related to the project and to the call

CARIN-PT focuses on the social embeddedness of infrastructure using a co-creation approach informed by mobility justice research. CARIN-PT explicitly addresses the challenge of ensuring a robust and resilient urban infrastructure and built environment as outlined in the call for proposals. The project aims to boost capacities for resilient, inclusive, multi-modal public transport infrastructure and the built environment at a time of environmental, social, economic and technological transitions. The CARIN-PT focus is on urban regions, looking into ways to develop and improve inclusive and integrated public transport systems. CARIN-PT strengthens the management and governance capacities of the public transport authorities and supports them in modernising planning processes, increasing cooperation with researchers and various stakeholders, and enables learning and reflection on intercultural differences. The project provides unique insights into recent public transport policies such as demand-responsive or fare-free public transport, micromobility in combination with public transport and the use of transit-oriented development as an urban and transport planning policy. It also provides insights into organisational guidelines, access to experiences and verifiable knowledge. At the centre of the project are different understandings of justice: distributive, recognition and participation, with the latter importantly driving the urban living lab framework in the project.

Methods used and experiences that you would like to highlight

The project relies on a mixture of methods, including more traditional research methods like surveys, interviews and mapping to more explorative ways of urban living labs. The latter provided us with a platform to reach communities not reached by other methods (particularly in the Oslo Urban Region), to engage critical groups of service users particularly dependent on some of the public transport systems such as demand-responsive transport (such as in the Flanders region) or to experiment with changed mobility behaviour (in the Tallinn urban Region). The urban living lab method has been a valuable way to link research to practice, but also needs a lot of time and energy from the research team to set up and run.

Experiences of working in the interdisciplinary project

Different research methods are used in the project disciplines, as the team works with questions about public transport economics, urban studies or political science, Yet, the approaches employed in the project mainly follow similar understandings of inclusive and integrated public transport systems within urban regions. With a focus on a clear and integrative topic of inclusive public transport in urban regions, discussions across multiple disciplines as well as contexts were enabled and enhanced. The project also involved close collaboration with partners beyond academia such as municipalities and service providers. One interesting approach worthwhile testing also in future projects has been having a PhD student in two positions: a researcher within the university and as a mobility expert in the municipality, enabling putting research to practice immediately and gaining insights needed to set up meaningful research questions.

Overall tentative results that you would like to share to the public

– Public transport accessibility is a limited residential asset that low-income households struggle to obtain.
– Often narrow definitions with regard to transport infrastructure planning (e.g., TODs) limit focus on different social needs and inclusiveness of public transport.
– Public transport serves a diversity of needs and a range of users apart from mere home-work commutes: health care, education, administration, shopping and social visits, and trips categorised under “care mobilities” category.
– The project highlighted different forms of justice in addition to distributive justice: namely, also recognition (such as barriers to micromobility for care use or safety concerns felt particularly by female users or the recognition of the trips by on-demand transport users with most of the trips being essential ones) as well as participation, with the latter forming a necessary part of the co-creative approach in the CARIN-PT project.
– Co-creation enabled a broader range of voices (especially those not easy to reach with other methods) and a more explicit link with implementation (Such links have further been supported by research/practice integration such as in the case of Tallinn ULL, a PhD researcher is also employed by the studied municipality).
– The business logic of public transport and associated services (such as micromobility) limits system inclusivity.
– Environmental policy in transport systems should be accompanied by social aims as sustainable mobility transitions need to be socially just: e.g., fare-free transport policies or transport policies involving low fares contribute to increasing users’ activity spaces (Sträuli, 2023) and increasing opportunities, significantly, for low-income households.

References

Sträuli, L., 2024. Fare-free, not carefree: care mobilities in a fare-free public transport system in Tallinn. Mobilities 19, 686–703. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2024.2328215