AMELIA: A tool to make transport policies more socially inclusive Roger L. Mackett à , Kamalasudhan Achuthan, Helena Titheridge Centre for Transport Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom article info Available online 30 January 2009 Keywords: Transport policy Social exclusion Social inclusion Accessibility abstract Transport policy should take into account the needs of those who are socially excluded. To facilitate this, a software tool, AMELIA, is being developed. After a description of AMELIA and how it is used, the paper continues with a discussion about the analysis of the increase in the number of elderly people who can reach the centre of St Albans in Hertfordshire in Great Britain as the result of the implementation of four policy actions, including the cost implications. The paper is concluded with discussion about the potential role of AMELIA as a tool for policy analysis. & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Social inclusion is an area of growing concern. There is a wide range of characteristics that are associated with being socially excluded, for example, having a disability, being elderly, having a low income or being a single parent (Mackett et al., 2004). Usually those who are socially excluded have two or more of these characteristics, for example unemployed teenagers and low-income people living in rural areas. Social inclusion involves many issues that have nothing to do with transport, including politics, poverty and the nature of society. However, better transport can help to overcome many problems associated with social exclusion by enabling people to reach opportunities that can help them earn money, improve their health and enjoy a rich social life, all of which can help make people to feel more included. Hence, it is increasingly being recognised that transport policy should take into account explicitly the needs of those who are socially excluded. However, there is currently no comprehensive way to ensure that transport policies do take social inclusion into account. This issue is being addressed in a research project being carried out in the Centre for Transport Studies at University College London as part of the work programme of the Accessibility and User Needs in Transport in a Sustainable Urban Environment (AUNT-SUE) consortium (see http://www.aunt-sue.info/). In this part of the programme, a software tool, A Methodology for Enhancing Life by Increasing Accessibility (AMELIA) is being developed to test the extent to which transport policies can increase social inclusion (Mackett, et al., 2007, 2008a, b). AMELIA is a user-friendly, policy-based interface to a Geographical Information System (GIS). Following a scoping study, funding for the development of AMELIA began in May 2004 and continues until April 2010. This includes a phase involving consultation about AMELIA with people who are socially excluded. In the next section of this paper, the role of transport in addressing social inclusion is considered. Then AMELIA is described, followed by discussion of the study area being used to test the software, and a demonstration of the application of the software. 2. Transport and social inclusion Even within the transport sphere there are many aspects of accessibility that are very difficult to address using transport models, for example, information provision. This means that the types of barrier to access that can be investigated with AMELIA are physical ones, and so the types of social exclusion that can be addressed are ones related to physical access, such as being in a wheelchair, or related to travel cost and time, such as reaching employment by public transport. Since about 14% of adults in Britain have at least one disability (Martin et al., 1988) improving accessibility for them will improve life for a significant number of people. These are important issues, and can be examined using a GIS approach, as shown, for example in research into wheelchair access using GIS (Matthews et al., 2003; Beale et al., 2006). In England, local authorities outside London with transport planning responsibilities are required by the Department for Transport (DfT) to produce a Local Transport Plan (LTP) which is part of a bidding process to obtain funding from central government for expenditure on local transport policies and projects. Local authorities are required to ensure that their LTP shows clear connections between targets for local transport, and targets for social inclusion (and economic growth and housing) (Department for Transport, 2004). This is the rationale behind the development of AMELIA, since it will enable planners to test explicitly that their policies do increase social inclusion ARTICLE IN PRESS Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tranpol Transport Policy 0967-070X/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tranpol.2008.12.007 à Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 20 76791554; fax: +44 20 76791567. E-mail address: rlm@transport.ucl.ac.uk (R.L. Mackett). Transport Policy 15 (2008) 372–378