Last week I heard formally that I’ve been awarded a fellowship by the Foundation for Integrated Transport. I’m really grateful to have some time to pursue some of the research that falls outside my consultancy in a bit more depth.
A few months ago I started writing a paper for rural mobility workshop for the University of Hertfordshire’s Smart Mobility Unit. I got knee-deep in data looking at travel patterns between central Manchester and the Greater Manchester urban areas, and it just got more interesting. I wrote a proposal for the Foundation to give me some time to do more analysis (not just data, but lived experience as well) and I’m fortunate to have been awarded a fellowship to study it more deeply. It’s a real honour.
Some of the things I will be looking at include:
Data analysis of 6 suburban/peri urban areas in Greater Manchester to show car vs other commuter patterns.
How often is transport given a high accessibility score at both origin and destination? To what extent does this correlate with public transport use / car driving?
I hope to create some detailed profiles of the areas and examine:
More granular mapping of transport accessibility index
Select some key journeys and analyse possible transport routes, costs and timings. Do they support the accessibility indices?
Compare with experience based profiling (eg connectivity / interchange times are not included in the indices) plus walking time and infrastructure for walking.
Analyse these routes against current deregulated and also commissioned services.
Analyse whether new demand responsive transport and micromobilty modes would improve connections between people’s origins and destinations. Could they reduce the need for car journeys and make MaaS possible? What are the cost implications and benefits for local authorities?
I’m hoping that this time will allow me to do some thinking about better data on pavements too as safe active travel routes will be one of the important components for any MaaS platforms to be useful.
I presented a summary of my thinking (pre the fellowship to FISITA recently - you can read it here.
And below is what I like to think of as the start of my mapping adventures. I hope it will become more complex and sophisticated in time.
Congratulations too to fellow FIT fellows Alistair Kirkbride and Jonathan Tyler. You can read more about our fellowships here.
Please do get in touch if you’d like to follow this project. I am hoping it will be something that will contribute to the wider discussion of Mobility as a Service.