Demonstrating an absence is difficult, but what was striking across the data was perhaps the lack of any comments about the inherent low status of bus travel. Although buses were often unpopular for being dirty, crowded or potentially risky (see Chapter 6), because all young people used them, there was no stigma attached to using the bus. Neither was there any sense that they were, as young people, relegated to public transport. Indeed, bus travel was, in the accounts of many young Londoners, simply the way in which many Londoners got to work and other destinations. This exchange gives aflavour of the accounts of bus journeys, with the range of other passengers who might be encountered on a typical journey:
F:I’ve had many a conversation with older people, not so much like 30 to 50 year olds they don’t, they keep to themselves . . . You can see mothers chatting to other mothers from their primary schools and stuff
M:Those are the workers who are so miserable that they just stand there and then especially when a bus is packed they say like, so rude and they get in your face and they’re just like, why are you standing in my way? . . .
M:And then the school kids
F:And then school, well children yeah
M:And then, but the good thing, sometimes the good thing about having old people in the bus is that you get that moral side out of you because when they come on the bus and you’re sitting down in the seat you feel like oh because they’re old you should give them your seat. So you feel good when they seat down because they normally say thank you
It is not that free bus travel in itself created this normalisation. Two other conditions were necessary. First, the fact that universal free travel meant that bus travel had become a default, taken for granted mode of transport for all young people, meant that bus travel was‘normal’ for all their peers, whatever other modes of transport werefinancially or otherwise available to them (see Chapter 3).
Second, was the context of enhanced bus provision, which had increased the modal share of bus travel in general in the capital (see Appendix 1). This generated routinely experienced encounters with a range of other Londoners, and visitors, on the buses (including older citizens, commuters, mothers with young children), making bus travel very visibly a‘normal’ way for all kinds of people to travel. Without the relative accessibility and availability of buses in London, free travel, even if universal, would not become a
preferred mode for so many journeys. A few, particularly those who had experience of other places and who lived more centrally, where bus services were in general more frequent, noted this explicitly:
M:The good thing about London is the amount of buses we have because when you go to other places you’re waiting half an hour for a bus scheduled to come at this time. And here you can just wait two minutes, you’re on a bus, you know what I mean
Isl, 15 years
For most, however, the taken for granted accessibility, and ubiquity, of bus travel as a normal way for a range of travellers to get around was merely an unremarkable backdrop to their accounts of travel in London.
Conclusion
In the short term, it is difficult to assess how far this intervention has changed the levels of private car use in London. A range of other policy interventions (notably the congestion charge) have reduced the
advantages of car travel, and the number of trips by car has declined for all Londoners. Additionally, as the majority of young people’s car journeys are those made by adults as well, the reduction in young people’s car travel is included in that of adults.
In outer London, the qualitative data suggest that the free bus pass has displaced some car journeys, reflecting young people’s preferences for travel independent of parents and which allows sociable travel with peers. In the longer term, it is difficult to assess how far the intervention may have shifted perspective on the desirability of driving. However, although most young people still express positive views of learning to drive, what is notable is that bus travel has become normalised for this group. The broader context of London’s changing transport system is an important condition of the effects of free travel. In a transport system in which bus travel is in general more available and more reliable than in other parts of the country, it carries little of the stigma attached to bus travel in other parts of the UK, where bus use is disproportionately a mode used by the young, older citizens and poorer households.110,111
In summary, a range of policies contributed to the reduction in car travel by young people in London in term-time weekdays, and to the normalisation of bus travel as a non-stigmatised alternative to driving.
Chapter 6 What impact has the scheme had
on safety?
Introduction
Transport policies have the potential to impact on safety and inequalities in safety through a number of pathways. First, different modes of transport incur different risks of RTI for users and others,44so policies
that shift mode distributions are likely to change the numbers of RTIs. However, mode share may also affect relative risks (as in the example of‘critical mass’ effects for walking and cycling, see Jacobsen112),
so there may be feedback loops which reduce these effects over time. In Chapters 3–5, we noted a rise in bus use and a decline in other (currently more risky) modes, which could reduce the number of injuries young people experience on the road. Second, perceptions of risk may change as transport modes become more or less acceptable or well used. Third, as the overall number of trips or distance travelled goes up, young people may be more exposed to both road injury, and other risks, such as assault.
This chapter assesses the impact of the intervention on the risk of RTI and risk of assaults by comparing changes over time in young people with those in adults. Given that a range of other factors also
contributes to declines in road injury, and in assaults, we also compare what happened in London with the rest of England. We then draw on the qualitative data to provide evidence on young people’s views of the risks of transport mode use in the context of free bus travel.