One reason that these risks, despite causing some anxiety, were not reported as a deterrent to bus travel is that they are also a source of spectacle and entertainment. Dramatic incidents were often discussed humorously in group discussions, and in individual interviews (as above) young people stressed their skills in managing the risks. Encounters that could be unpleasant or risky were simultaneously an attraction of the bus journey, providing a source of potential entertainment and a fund of stories that served to create shared narratives of‘us and them’. ‘Weirdos’, for instance, were often mentioned as a risk of a bus journey but rather than being necessarily threatening, these were sometimes known eccentric locals, who were part of the community, and, as noted here (following a discussion of the risks of bus use) they were explicitly part of the‘fun’ of travel:
M:you do meet a few weirdos on the bus
F:Yeah
M:Yeah, that’s part of the fun
M:Like the dancing guy . . .
F:. . . He’s a local celebrity
M:. . . He’s like the wizard man! . . . singing to people on the bus
F:There’s so many people like that
Sut, 14–18 years WHAT IMPACT HAS THE SCHEME HAD ON SAFETY?
Indeed, in focus groups in particular, telling stories about interesting or unusual encounters on the bus, which may have been unpleasant or even frightening at the time, was related as part of the excitement of travelling, particularly with friends. The key issue of whether incidents were risky or entertaining was whether travelling was alone or with friends. Although choosing a particular mode or route was on occasion presented as a risk assessment strategy (for instance avoiding a park, or an area after dark), a major contributor to whether or not the choice was risky was the availability of peers to travel with, as we outlined in Chapter 3.
Conclusion
Road traffic injuries declined among young people relative to adults after the introduction of the free bus travel scheme. The major contributions to this decline were reductions in car occupant injuries and cyclist injuries. Pedestrian injuries in young people declined at a similar rate to adults. Thesefindings are consistent with the changes in travel patterns reported in Chapters 4 and 5, which suggested a relative decline in distance travelled by car (see Chapter 5), a relative decline in distance cycled (see Chapter 4) and no change in distance walked among young people (see Chapter 4).
Quantitative evidence indicates a relative increase in assaults among young people in London compared with both adults in London and young people living outside London. However, there is some suggestion that much of the increase in assaults in young people in London occurred before the introduction of free bus travel in 2005.
For young people, the bus was a frequent site of conflict between different groups (schools, gangs, older teenagers), and a place where (reportedly, but rarely in their own experience) more serious incidents happened. However, bus travel was also recognised (particularly by girls) as safer than other modes of transport (especially walking) and most young people had a range of strategies at their disposal for managing the routine risks encountered. At the margins, free travel enabled‘escape’ strategies, from both the worries of being lost, and (on occasion) the ability to just jump on a bus to avoid a troubling situation. In summary, there is no strong evidence that the free bus scheme contributed to an increase in assaults in young people, and some evidence that the scheme is associated with a decrease in RTIs, reflecting the transport mode changes following its introduction.
Chapter 7 Has the scheme reduced social
exclusion? The impact on participation and
independent travel
Introduction
Social inclusion is fundamental to well-being, and transport access is increasingly recognised as important to social inclusion in settings such as London.63,80,113Differential access to transport is one of the ways in
which health inequalities between people and places are generated,5and age is one social factor that
influences the risk of ‘transport exclusion’. In the UK, for instance, the Social Exclusion Unit (p. 2)114cited
transport-related problems as restricting young people’s capacity to take up education or training opportunities. Young people’s exclusion from participation has been variously conceptualised as arising from immobility,115,116disempowerment98,117or dependency on adults for transport.67,118,119An explicit
policy aim of the free bus travel scheme was to increase access to education, training and other opportunities for young people– aims which have significant potential to enhance future public health and address one contributor to inequalities in health.
However, measures of‘social inclusion’ are problematic, in that this is a multidimensional concept that is inherently difficult to operationalise.80We had no direct measures of changes in dimensions of‘inclusion’
which might be important, such as‘participation’ or ‘access to social networks’. Furthermore, outcomes which may be causally related to inclusion, such as changes in participation in training or education, are likely to be casually distant from an intervention such as free travel. We therefore used the travel diary data to provide some evidence on one proxy measure: how the number of trips made by young people to work or school changed relative to adults after the intervention. Additionally, we looked specifically at distances travelled by level of deprivation after the intervention to see if there was any evidence that impact of the scheme changed social gradients in this measure of participation.
The qualitative data analysis provided evidence on the salience of transport exclusion in young people’s current travel decisions, and the ways in which the free bus travel scheme was used in fostering independent travel and access to a range of goods and services that are essential to social inclusion.