There are two aspects to RERC work in the field of rural transport: the impact of transport policies on rural areas and 2001 Census based studies of patterns and modes of travel to work in rural areas.
Transport PolicyIn July 2004 the Department for Transport (DfT) published the Road Pricing Feasibility Study which concluded that road pricing was becoming technically more feasible and could meet a number of government policy objectives for transport and the economy. Since then, there has been increasing central and, in the context of the Transport Innovation Fund awards, local government interest in taking road pricing schemes forward.
The Centre for Transport Policy (CTC) at the Robert Gordon University has undertaken a review of the possible impacts of road pricing on rural areas. Following on from this, CTC has contributed a paper on the relationship between social capital, mobility and social exclusion in rural areas.
Travel to WorkAt the RERC we are analysing travel to work flows at two geographic levels: between census areas (mainly Census Output Areas and wards) classified by the new rural definition and, using modelling procedures, at the 1ha grid square level of the rural definition which can be used to anaalyse work travel between settlements. Those from the latter are on-going ‘second phase’ research and will be reported later, though some early results were used in the RERC ‘Research Outlook’ paper.
