1) Dr. Caroline Mullen discusses the importance of transport and mobility for justice, as lack of access can limit people's ability to participate in social, economic, and other activities. 2) She describes different forms of "mobility poverty" such as lack of accessibility, availability, and affordability of transportation options. This barriers people's participation and impacts their lives. 3) While re-distribution and low-emission vehicles may help address pollution concerns, there are doubts about how much technology can help and whether it privileges private vehicles over other modes of transportation. A just system requires considering a variety of perspectives through democratic deliberation.

1. Need, mobility poverty, and
environmental justice
Dr Caroline Mullen
Institute for Transport Studies

2. • Why availability and use of transport and
mobility matter - and why they matter for
justice
• Mobility poverty: forms of mobility poverty
(proximate causes) and impacts on people’s
lives
• Re-distribution and low emission vehicles?
• Justice is walking, cycling, public transport?
• Mobility justice and deliberative democracy

3. Why having transport and mobility matters
The transport system carries
basic supplies (for food, shelter
and so on, allowing fast access
to emergency services, and,
supports an economy
Transport and mobility are
necessary conditions for
countless social, economic,
political and creative
activities, and travel or the
use of transport, can be an
end in itself

4. Why distribution of benefits of transport matter for justice
• Beginning from the assumption that each person matters (morally)
as much as any other: so their life matters, and their ability to make
something of their life also matters (Glover, 1977; Harris, 1988,
1997).
• There is a societal responsibility to make political, social and
economic arrangements which reflect this assumption that each
person matters. This has been described as showing equal concern
(Dworkin 2000; Glover, 1977; Harris, 1988, 1997). The societal
obligation also falls on each person, so that people have some
responsibility to accept limitations for the benefit of others (Mullen
et al. 2014)
• Treating people ‘as equals’ is not necessarily the same as ‘equal
treatment,’ as treatment as equals may require taking account of
people’s differing needs and contexts (Dworkin 1977, p. 68).

5. Mobility poverty: proximate causes
and impacts
• Lack of accessibility, availability, affordability
of travel: barrier to participation in social and
personal activities, caring, education,
employment, healthcare, and so on.
• For many, everyday activities involve travel by
car (or similar) either as driver or passenger
• Difficulty for those without/ struggle to afford
a car varies:

7. Difficulty for those without/ struggle
to afford a car
• Where you live - i.e. how feasible is reliance
primarily on walking, cycling public transport.
• Whether you have mobility difficulties – and
whether you are a relatively fit (adult without
small children)
• Where you need to be; what your
responsibilities are; what you are trying to do

8. Vulnerability matters here
• Are your bus services about to be cut?
• Will your employer move the location of your
job – can you still get there without car
• Will your landlord serve notice /can you afford
to move somewhere with good public
transport links

9. If (much) of the problem is affordability and availability
then is re-distribution the answer?
Probably part of the answer….
But perhaps not as re-distribution in the form of subsidies for
vehicles and fuel
Another problem with cars is pollution:
• Particulates, GHGs pose immediate and future threats to life:
barely needs saying that this is a justice problem.
• Relationship between poverty and exposure to, and risks from
transport pollution and its harms (e.g. Mitchell and Dorling
2003; IPCC 2014, 6).

10. • Poor air quality predominantly caused by
transport, has been estimated to have
mortality impacts ‘equivalent to nearly 29,000
deaths’ in 2008 (COMEAP, 2010, pp. 1-2).
Pollution from diesel has been identified as a
cause of lung cancer (Vermeulen et al. 2014).
• Fossil fuel powered transport is a major, and in
many countries the major, source of pollution
including nitrogen oxides and particulates
which have huge impacts on morbidity and
mortality (COMEAP 2010; WHO 2012).

11. Can we tackle pollutions concern through low
emission vehicles including electric vehicles?
Fair to say there are some doubts that technology
will do what was claimed for it…

12. If technology is uncertain, cause for
worry on pollution and its injustice:

13. The cars and drivers might not expand as forecast (they tend
not to), but the risk is that policy still focuses on
accommodating cars over other moblity

15. Further: tackling affordability of motor
vehicles
• As things stand, policy on EVs is more about
subsidies for the middle classes, so we would be
taking about quite a change in direction
• Would need major, and very complex re-distribution
to avoid even the most stark inequalities.
• Just removing tax from fuel, or subsidising vehicles is
unlikely to help many people if they don’t have a car
(25% households in England).

16. Would need to re-distribute to mitigate:
• Inaccessibility for those without vehicles– shared
cars might do this (inc. taxis) but need to consider
employment conditions
• Inequalities in relation to access to fundamental
needs: education, access to healthcare
• Inequalities supported by transport system – what
sort of economy would high car use promote: such
as transport system supporting high levels of
resource use creating pressure on distribution of
resources; creating pollution;

17. Even with technology doing what is hoped, and complex
re-distribution:
• At best – the focus on vehicles as a means of tackling
mobility poverty privileges some activities over others.
• It privileges land use which excludes people on foot,
cycling, excludes many activities using public space.
• Question is what privileges/ activities are fair or
wanted?
• It might be argued - ‘what is fair is whatever system
you end up with when people exercise their choices ’
• But ‘choices’ are constrained by system we have – we
can intervene in that but we should think about what
interventions we make

18. Tackling mobility poverty: more walking,
cycling, public transport, less travel?
• Plausible especially since traffic itself can be a
significant barrier to mobility and affordability
where take on financial burdens in order to
sustain car use.
• Not a new idea – see e.g. (e.g. Illich 1978;
Lucas 2006; Mullen et al. 2014).
• But a significant shift to non-car mobility
would limit some activities

19. Not [just] trivial activities affected:

20. Not [just] trivial activities affected:
• Activities including securing food and shelter,
healthcare and education.
• There is an open ended range which could
reasonably fall within the scope of these basic
activities – e.g. more specialist centralised
healthcare, or more public spaces for active
living?
• We have to privilege some important
activities, but how do we make these
decisions

21. Deliberation - democratic and epistemic
• First: no one has, or should be treated as
having, a monopoly on identifying need or
arguing about fairness
• Second: we are dealing with partial
knowledge, and uncertainty:
– activities do not follow constant patterns over
time but instead develop and change, partly, in
response to one another (Shove and Walker
2010).
– knowledge is distributed across groups and people
in society

22. • Mobility justice needs to have concern for activities across
society, such as activities involved in health and education.
• There is a need for nuanced understanding of what
activities consist in (e.g. it is not just a matter of access to
services) and how they might change if mobility changes.
• Unlikely that this understanding could occur without
involvement of groups across society.
• Not to underestimate the difficulties for inclusive
participation – cannot expect consensus from ‘all affected’