Presentation by Dr Louse Reardon, delivered as part of ITS research seminar series, Feb. 2015. www.its.leeds.ac.uk/people/l.reardon www.its.leeds.ac.uk/about/events/seminar-series

1. Institute for Transport Studies
FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENT
Wellbeing, Quality of Life and
Transport Policy
Louise Reardon
l.reardon@leeds.ac.uk
ITS Research Seminar, 24 February 2015

2. Overview
• Wellbeing and Quality of Life have become
more explicit goals of government activity
• Presentation divided into three sections
• Discussion of the rise of the ‘wellbeing agenda’
(Bache and Reardon 2013)
• Wellbeing and transport: current knowledge and
potential (Reardon and Abdallah 2013)
• Lessons from ‘Quality of Life’ in transport policy
(Reardon 2014)

3. The Wellbeing Agenda
• Focus on GDP leads to unacceptable and
sub-optimal outcomes
• Increased confidence in subjective wellbeing
measures – self report surveys
• International initiatives
• European Commission: ‘GDP and Beyond’ (2007)
• OECD: Better Life Index (2011)
• Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission (2009)

4. The Wellbeing Agenda
Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission
• Shifting emphasis from measurement of economic
output to wellbeing
• Measuring both objective and subjective
dimensions of wellbeing
• Develop a dashboard of sustainability indicators
• Promote national level focus on wellbeing

5. David Cameron:
“From April next year we will
start measuring our progress as
a country not just by how our
economy is growing, but by how
our lives are improving, not just
by our standard of living, but by
our quality of life.”
Speech announcing the Measuring National
Wellbeing Programme 25 November 2010
The Wellbeing Agenda

6. The Wellbeing Agenda
• Goal of creating an ‘accepted and trusted’
set of national statistics
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc146/wrapper.html
• Three stated uses of wellbeing data
• Overall monitoring of wellbeing
• International comparison
• Policy making process
• UK application of wellbeing tentative

7. Wellbeing and Transport
Nef (2008) Dynamic
Model of Wellbeing

8. Wellbeing and Transport
Transport’s affect on four ‘systems’
• Economic – improvements to transport
infrastructure
• Environmental – air pollution, noise pollution, road
accidents
• Social – social inclusion, fostering social capital,
social exclusion
• Individual – physical activity, psychological
response to travel

9. Wellbeing and Transport
• Research is rather disparate, not only across
‘system’ area, but also space, time, cohort,
and research method used
• Subjective wellbeing indicators are not used
that readily to understand impacts
• Stanley et al (2011) the ‘value’ of extra trip
• Stutzer and Frey (2010) challenges
assumptions about commuter trade-offs

10. QoL and Transport
Delivering a Sustainable Transport System
• Support economic competitiveness and growth
• Reduce carbon dioxide emissions
• Contribute to better safety, security and health
• Promote greater equality of opportunity
• To improve quality of life for transport and non-
transport users – the ‘quality of life goal’

11. QoL and Transport
Sheffield City Region (SCR)
• Area lagging behind national average on several
economic indicators
• LTP had four goals
• Support economic growth
• Enhance social inclusion and health
• Reduce emissions from vehicles
• Maximise safety of the transport network

12. QoL and Transport
Sheffield City Region
• No operational definition of quality of life
• Referred to in numerous ways
• Quality of life implementation group
• Largely a rhetorical shift

13. QoL and Transport
“I think it [quality of life] was a catch all phrase
at the end of the day, to cover a lot of things
that didn’t necessarily fit in with everything
else.”
“It [quality of life] sort of grows, there’s
never one specific definition.”

14. QoL and Transport
City of York
• Out performs national average on several
economic indicators
• LTP3 had five goals
• Provide quality alternatives (to the car)
• Provide strategic links
• Implement and support behaviour change
• Tackle transport emissions
• Improve public streets and spaces

15. QoL and Transport
City of York
• Quality of life identified closely with quality of place
• Improving public streets and spaces
• Enhancing character of spaces and streets
• Reducing vehicle intrusion in the city
• Improve the environment for walking and cycling
in residential areas

16. QoL and Transport
Why the variation?
• National level very hands-off
• Local level recognised need to keep national
government on side – follow signals
• Local context key
• Governance structure had no real effect
• QoL prevalent if tied to economic growth – a
higher priority

17. Conclusion
…Tying these three areas together
• Wellbeing is a potentially important agenda
• Wellbeing evidence challenges assumptions
• Need to be clear what we mean by wellbeing
• Increase the evidence base
• Does wellbeing have the potential to resonate
within the transport sector?