🔄️ Mind the Data Gap

Good day my good friend.

It was great to see a few of you at this year’s Local Transport Summit, where I presented on my research into How to Make Friends and Influence Councillors. Thank you to everyone who came and said kind words - they are all very much appreciated.

Also, a BIG thank you to those of you who emailed following last week’s newsletter, with excellent links to research and excellent points made. The only reason I have not replied is because I have had no time to think this week - so I apologise for that.

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As an industry, transport planning is one that is data rich, yet insight poor. Looking through the Department for Transport's data and publications, there is a wealth of data on how the transport system operates.

For instance, if I want to know how many trips by public transport the average person takes over the course of a year, the National Travel Survey has me covered. If you want estimates on how many cars travel down certain roads, the Road Traffic Statistics has your back. If you want to know whether or not your local train operator is one of the worst in the country, its just a quick hop on over to the Office of Rail and Road's Data Portal.

For a long time, the UK has been collecting data on how the transport system operates. We even collect some data on the people who use the transport system in a consistent manner. I honestly feel that we are one of the best countries in the world on collecting data on the operation of the transport system over time. We can do things like analyse changes in personal trip patterns over time, and overall trends in road, rail, and bus use. We are even pretty hot at counting the number of people going through airports and ports.

But over time, the requirements for what we collect data on have grown. It is no longer sufficient to understand general trip patterns and how journeys have changed over time. We need to understand how our transport systems are making an impact in areas deemed by policy makers to be critical to understanding as to whether or not transport systems are achieving a higher purpose.

One of the most mature examples of this is understanding the economic impacts of transport investments. The wealth of data and analysis, as well as the supporting research programme, behind TAG is truly something, and again is something that the UK excels at. We may argue about the relative importance of the Benefit-Cost Ratio or values of time. But this is based on extremely robust and sound analysis that generally ensures that the economic part of business cases is somewhat robust.

Around the 1990s, things began to change, and transport began to be seen in the context of achieving wider social and environmental goals, and not just economic ones. The value of schemes in terms of economics has remained important, but tackling climate change and matters of social exclusion have become increasingly important. These are matters of which transport had very little data about, and much of the last 20 to 30 years has been spent on attempting to fill these gaps in data.

Following the publication of the Social Exclusion Unit's report on social exclusion in the early 2000s, local transport authorities everywhere were given free access to a system called Accession. Mandated by the DfT of the time, the second round of local transport plans in 2005 were required to undertake an analysis of accessibility of key services (healthcare, education, local government, and food stores) in terms of journey times by public transport, with targets to be set in LTPs to improve accessibility. The core dataset behind this - the Journey Time Statistics - were only recently discontinued.

Around the same time, local authority estimates of carbon emissions were introduced. But as these are produced by the department with a responsibility for climate change (the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs at the time, now the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) rather than transport, this passed by most transport planners. Only around the time of the Climate Change Act of 2008, which set in stone targets for achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, did transport professionals actually start to pay attention to this really critical dataset.

Since then, not much has changed. While there has been plentiful academic research, and even government-supported reports, in both social exclusion and carbon emissions, the datasets used to inform policy have largely remained unchanged. The same estimates of carbon emissions, now updated to 2025, underpin the analysis on carbon reductions and pathways to Net Zero, while the accessibility statistics were only recently updated as part of the Department for Transport's Connectivity Tool.

Even excellent sources such as Transport for the North's research on Transport-Related Social Exclusion are fundamentally based on existing statistical datasets. In this case, the Journey Time Statistics and the Indices of Multiple Deprivation.

The result of this is that transport practitioners lack access to consistent, robust data on which to make transport planning decisions. Lets take equalities as an example. Under the Equalities Act, there are 9 Protected Characteristics under law:

- Age

- Disability

- Gender Reassignment

- Marriage and Civil Partnership

- Pregnancy and Maternity

- Race

- Religion or Belief

- Sex

- Sexual Orientation

Based on some work I commissioned as part of my time at Transport for the South East, I undertook a high level analysis of whether, based on our existing data, we could come to some reasonably useful insight on these protected characteristics and the following:

- Differences in how often people travel

- Differences in what mode used and how frequently it is used

- Differences in how often people travel by journey purpose

- Differences in car ownership levels

To make this clear, this is bog standard stuff collected in the likes of the National Travel Survey. This is the lowest of the low hanging fruit, and I wanted to understand whether, across the whole of the UK, we could tell what these differences are from official statistics.

The results are stark, and are presented in the below table.

There are whole protected characteristics for which no data is consistently collected. Even where data is collected, it can sometimes be inconsistent (for example the use of Census data), or only captures such data at a high level. The National Travel Survey, for instance, only requires those who are disabled to self-report that they are so.

The problems are even more stark at a local level. The most significant dataset here - the National Travel Survey - is only broken down by region and not at the local authority level. Meanwhile, the Census is only good enough for understanding how commuting trips are undertaken by a few protected characteristics.

This is not to say that there is not evidence out there. There are plenty of research reports into the travel experiences of a variety of protected characteristics in a variety of contexts. But these are one-off data collection exercises that are not undertaken consistently and systematically, and are not presented in a manner useful enough to make decisions on transport priorities. With professionals instead being forced to rely on professional judgement and intuition.

A very real impact is in the preparation of Equalities Impact Assessments of strategies and schemes. This means that judgements on what the potential impacts of policies and initiatives is based mostly on the quality of engagement with protected characteristic groups and the insight derived from that. While systemic monitoring relies on new data collection to be undertaken.

Frankly, this is a pretty poor state of affairs. We have an entire field of research when it comes to economics, yet when it comes to equity and climate change and understanding our impact, we rely on just a handful of data sources of questionable quality? For an industry that is meant to be led by data, that is poor.

If understanding the impacts of what transport does is important, we need to fund consistent, long term data collection on the equity of transport and its climate impacts. Bespoke pieces of research add context, but are sporadic and lack the consistency to judge the impact of what we do. We need to do better.

The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author – they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.

A Review of Transportation 5.0: Advancing Sustainable Mobility through Emerging Technologies

TL:DR - Reviews the concept of “Transportation 5.0” and outlines how technologies such as shared mobility, electrification and automation support a more sustainable, human‑centred transport future.

Modeling the Severity of Crashes in Rainy Weather by Driver Gender and Crash Type

TL:DR - Investigates how crash severity in rainy weather varies by driver gender and crash type, shedding light on equity and safety dimensions in transport under adverse environmental conditions.

Does the Type of Cross Section and Type of Intersection Affect Safety on Bypasses?

TL:DR - Evaluates how different road cross‑sections and intersection types influence safety outcomes on bypass roads, offering a methodological contribution to road‑design planning.

Dynamic Preference‑based Multi‑modal Trip Planning of Public Transport and Shared Mobility

TL:DR - Proposes a mixed‑integer and meta‑heuristic framework for dynamic multimodal trip planning integrating public transport, ride‑pooling and micro‑mobility, addressing methodological innovations in planning models.

A model for pricing freight rail transport access costs: economic and environmental perspectives

TL:DR - Presents a dynamic freight‑rail infrastructure‑access pricing model that internalises externalities (especially environmental) and explores economic and environmental trade‑offs in rail vs road freight.

Here are some articles showing that, despite the state of the world, good stuff is still happening in sustainable transport. So get your fix of positivity here.

New bus lane extension delivers quicker travel through Manor Royal

West Sussex County Council opened an extension to the Manor Royal bus lanes in Crawley, completing works begun in 2021. Backed by BSIP/DFT funding, the upgrade adds to 1.3km of bus lanes in the area, with early results showing Metrobus vehicles saving around three minutes at peak times and improving reliability for up to 3.4 million annual journeys.

Next stage of Slough transport works to begin: A4 two‑way cycle lane and safer streets

Slough Borough Council confirmed construction kickoff for two DfT‑funded schemes: a continuous, 2.5m‑wide two‑way cycle lane along the A4 and the “Destination Farnham Road” public‑realm and bus‑stop upgrades (with 20mph through the shopping area). Works also include junction signal upgrades, new crossings, resurfacing at collision hotspots, and average‑speed cameras.

Telford trials its first zero‑emission bus on local routes

The council started a two‑week public trial of an Enviro100EV midibus (up to 45 passengers, c.356‑mile range) on Telford bus routes to gather driver and rider feedback. If successful, the authority plans to purchase an electric bus this financial year using BSIP funding.

Shrewsbury Night Bus trial launches with a free‑travel week

A festive Night Bus trial begins 24 Nov, running Monday to Saturday until midnight on three routes (N11, N25, N27) with the first week free, then low fares thereafter. The scheme aims to support the evening economy, improve safety and accessibility, and reduce late‑night car trips.

Seattle completes Rainier Ave S bus‑lane extension with pedestrian upgrades

Phase 2 of the Rainier Ave S bus‑lane project is complete, extending the northbound red bus lane to over 2 miles on Route 7—one of the city’s busiest lines (~12,000 weekday riders). The scheme also delivered new crossings, ADA curb ramps, sidewalk repairs and lighting, with estimated peak‑hour time savings of about 5 minutes per trip.

Yeah, this is not a nice video if you are an animal lover. But this video on the worst disaster in the history of animal shipping really shines a light on the problems of shadow fleets on the high seas.

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.

If I asked you to mention a ska band, you probably will think of the poster boys of just this genre - Madness. And rightly so, they are amazing. But another great ska band is Less Than Jake, who were massive around the turn of the century before continuing on their way in relative obscurity. Their most famous song, All My Best Friends Are Metalheads, is a complete banger that is well worth your time listening to.