Transportation and the socio-spatial dimensions of travel to work flows

Numerous research studies use commuting data, collected through the Census of Population, to understand social, economic and environmental challenges in the UK. This commuting data has been used to understand patterns; answer questions regarding the relationship between housing and labour markets; and to see if travel behaviour is becoming more or less sustainable over time. However, there is lots of untapped potential for such data to be used to evaluate transport policy and investment decisions so resources are more effectively and efficiently targeted to places of need. In applied public policy a major shortcoming has been a lack of use of this data to support investment in transport which has major implications for economic growth. If transport investments are inefficiently targeted, this restricts the capacity of places to grow economies to their full potential. This wastes their resources by over investing in transport capacity in areas where it is not needed. Equally, it has long been argued that efficient investment in transport is crucial if labour market exclusion, particularly the case of deprived communities, is to be tackled. The aim of the research is to inform community transportation policy and investment and the socio-spatial dimensions of travel to work flows over time (2001-2011).
Our research develops a toolkit to help decision-makers better target investment in transport capacity and infrastructure. The toolkit includes a series of new classifications of commuting flows from the 2001 and 2011 Censuses. It will include a classification of newly developed official Workplace Zones for England to complement official residential population-based classifications alongside various population, deprivation, investment and infrastructure data. The toolkit will bring these classifications and datasets together online through various mapping and analysis tools to understand the dynamics of commuting between different types of residential and workplace locations over time and combine these datasets and analyses with locally-specific transport investment data. The methodology developed will be applied to England as a whole but we will use the Manchester as a test-case for our analysis and for development of the toolkit. The use of open source approaches to build the toolkit means that other locations will have the framework to develop their own toolkit. The flow and area-based (Workplace Zones) classifications for England will complement official ONS residential-based output area classification and existing indices of deprivation. This will be mapped in relation to key transport investments made in Manchester, using local administrative data and overlay these with the results of commuting analysis to support decision-making regarding future targeted public transport infrastructure investment.
The toolkit will be interactive so users can pose policy questions to explore commuting relationships between different places. The strength of this approach is that it will enable policy and decision-makers to test various scenarios for future transport investment depending on problems they have posed. In a hypothetical situation, a policymaker in might ask the question of whether a specific deprived community in their city is more or less connected into a major employment centre than another equally deprived community. The evidence can be used to target funding for an 'into-work-scheme' to help the most disconnected community. The toolkit allows the policymaker to explore levels of commuting and compare the level of connectivity of each neighbourhood to major employment centres. The underlying rationale for the research is that the toolkit will help deliver efficiencies in public and private sector investment. This is crucial at a time when the government is promoting the need for smarter economic growth but doing so in a challenging context in which public sector resources are scarce and the private sector is risk averse.

The research aims and objectives have been informed by policy problems identified by our external partner and therefore have particular resonance with them. The challenge for us is to maximise the potential impact of our solutions to ensure that the research has relevance beyond our external partner. Our approach focuses on ensuring that both the research process and the research outcomes are accessible to a wide range of users. We are committed to ensuring that our research approach can be replicated by other users through online posting of the full documentation of the methodology, techniques and data sources used. The primary output of the research, an online toolkit, will be designed using open-source programming so that others can replicate it. The user interface and functionality will be influenced by a user needs and requirements analysis drawn from not only our external partner but also other potential users, so that the toolkit will be of use to multiple users. The toolkit visualisation could be further developed to visualise other flow data such as social networks, information flows, or energy and water usage, extending the impact of the research outputs beyond commuting data.
The primary beneficiary of the research will be our external partner, Manchester City Council (MCC), particularly the City Policy Unit who will use the research to inform transport investment and improve accessibility for deprived communities. The research can also be used to identify where behavioural change campaigns should be targeted to reduce reliance on automobile use. However there are other user groups within MCC that will find the research of use, including those involved in social policy, planning and regeneration, economic development and education. The use of Greater Manchester means that the results will also be of interest to the other nine metropolitan boroughs as well as the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities who can use the outputs to understand the functional economy of the region. Other city-regional scale bodies, such as Transport for Greater Manchester and the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership, will also find the research of interest given the linkages between transport investment, commuting, and economic development, potentially influencing their investment policies designed to improve the city-regional economy. Due to the open-source nature of the research outputs other local authorities and city-regions will be able to draw on the research process and data sources and replicate the process in order to understand their own local dynamics and more effectively target their transport investments.
The private sector will also find the research of use as companies are increasingly developing business travel plans, are concerned with ensuring their employees have access to a range of travel options and interested in locating in areas where they can access a wide pool of employees. The public will also be able to use the research to inform house buying, as the toolkit will allow them to better understand commuting patterns in particular areas. Non-profit agencies will also find the research of interest. Through the toolkit they will be able to locate areas of deprivation and poor transport investment, lobby for improvements, and work with communities to develop alternative travel options.
The research outputs will allow these various bodies to make decisions that are directly linked to improving quality of life, reducing deprivation, economic investment and improving transport accessibility and access to low-carbon forms of transport. These benefits will have varying timescales, however the toolkit may be used first by private and non-profit groups followed later by public bodies due to the policy development process. Over the long-term the research could come to form a key tool for transport and investment decisions for a range of public bodies.