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Sustainable transport is often defined according to energy efficiency and environmental impacts. With global approval during Habitat III, however, a set of Sustainable Development Goals have become the focus for human development until 2030, underlining the relevance of health, equity and other social issues.

These goals raise the challenge of achieving significant progress towards ‘transport justice’ in diverse societies and contexts. While exclusion occurs for different reasons, discrimination, based on cultural roles, combines with sexual harassment and other mobility barriers to limit women’s mobility. This makes gender an area of particular interest and potential insight for considering equity within sustainability and its social components.

Using data from Metropolitan Santiago to ground a conceptual exploration, this chapter examines the equity implications of women’s travel patterns and sustainable transport. Key findings underline the importance of considering non-work trip purposes and achieving better land-use combinations to accommodate care-oriented trips. Moreover, barriers linked to unsafe public transport environments limit women’s mobility and, therefore, their participation. Women account for a disproportionately high number of walking trips, a situation that can be interpreted as ‘greater sustainability’ in terms of energy use and emissions, but suggests significant inequalities in access. Environmental and economic sustainability gains may be achieved at a high social cost, unless specific measures are taken.

Purpose – The social dimensions of the relationship between transport and climate change are examined, in particular, the potential for unintended negative consequences to directly and/or indirectly arise from policies to reduce the climate change impact of the transport sector. It takes the example of current policies in the UK as its primary focus.

Methodology/approach – A combination of literature, policy review and the quantitative and qualitative evidence gathered through primary fieldwork research from a number of related studies.

Findings – It is identified that different social groups can experience very different outcomes in accessing transport and adapting to changes to the transport system, whether these are uniquely targeted towards certain individuals or more systemically applied across the whole population. For this reason, it is essential that policy makers fully understand the potential vulnerability and resilience of different social groups to policies that are intended to address transport-related climate change. The key component of social impacts should be systematically analyzed, by income, potential vulnerability and their spatial and temporal distribution, as well as according to resilience/adaptability to the proposed intervention. This continues to pose an important future challenge for research in this area of transport policy making.

Originality/value – This chapter highlights the potential for unintended negative social consequences to directly and/or indirectly arise from policies to reduce the climate change impact of the transport sector.

This chapter presents a critical examination of the interaction between concepts such as equity and accessibility in a framework of sustainable and inclusive urban development. The analysis compiles a series of reflections that build on previous research that focusses on the role of transport as enabler of opportunities for material and social capital, healthcare and leisure, which contribute to human development and well-being. The research discusses accessibility metrics for mandatory and non-mandatory travel in the context of current global agendas for social and development policies. It also introduces methodological reflections in relation to the analysis of accessibility indices from an equity perspective highlighting the role of equity metrics such as the Palma ratio and Lorenz curves. The authors link accessibility and urban development seeking to inform current approaches for policy development and assessment in a context of high manifested inequity. The research is set in the context of the Bogotá Metropolitan Region, a paradigmatic case of transport development and policy in the Global South. The findings seek to contribute to present transport policy and practice, providing relevant insights to support actions that redistribute accessibility to opportunities and questioning some of the paradigms of mainstream transport planning in cities like Bogotá, suggesting a more relevant role of transport policy as a potential engine of equity and social development.

After a technocratic period predominating in mobility literature and practice, the rhetoric of participation has been incorporated as a vital condition for the sustainable mobility agenda and, more recently, for achieving transport and mobility justice. Considering the social significance of mobility beyond simple movement and participation as a term that can accommodate a wide range of motivations and implications, this chapter explores the complex interplay of participation and mobility in the global south context. To this end, this study adopts the spaces for participation framework to investigate the multiple roles of participation in urban mobility. With a focus on the Brazilian context, this chapter uncovers the nature, dynamics, and reach of invited and claimed spaces for participation in mobility planning. Using Rio de Janeiro as the case study site, the chapter examines the invited spaces for participation enabled by the city's mobility plan and analyses whether marginalised populations engage with and/or create further spaces for participation. This was achieved through document analysis, online photo-elicitation interviews with residents of Favela Santa Marta as well as semi-structured interviews with municipal government professionals and representatives of non-government organisations involved in the development of Rio's mobility plan. The chapter discusses the interconnectedness or lack of, within invited and claimed spaces for participation and the multiplicity of meanings attributed to participation and mobility by different actors. The chapter closes with a reflection on what this means for participatory mobility planning in Brazil but which may apply to similar regions in the global south.

This paper aims to describe global trends and policy responses with respect to the social sustainability of urban mobility which, put simply, refers to whether the benefits and costs of transport and travel services (mobility) and the spatial organisation of facilities and services (accessibility) are equally and equitably distributed in a society or community. Considering urban transport provision from a social sustainability framework raises critical issues of policy goals and purpose, not least of which is the consideration that policies aimed at stemming or reducing urban mobility should not accentuate existing inequities and inequalities in accessibility. It also raises issues of reshaping urban decision-making structures to better integrate the end-user, where the end-user includes both those who are presently included in mobility and accessibility provision and, most importantly, those who are presently and have been previously excluded.

Comprehensive research into the global policy literature and urban practice around socially sustainable urban mobility under the auspices of an international agency.

The databases and methodologies around social sustainability have not been sufficiently developed to permit ready operationalisation. The use of electronic technology and user feedback – which such technology makes possible – has not been adequately harnessed to develop the necessary methodologies for the measurement of social sustainability with respect to urban mobility.

The development of improved social sustainability methodologies will increase the probability of the building of pro-poor infrastructure.

The development of improved social sustainability methodologies will proved improved frameworks for evaluating the social responsibility of transport options.

The development of participatory methodologies and evaluatory frameworks will lead towards more cohesive and better integrated cities, that is more socially sustainable cities.

This paper makes the case that the participatory research necessary to the evaluation of transport projects, schemes and networks as socially sustainable has not yet been undertaken. It brings together a set of global evidence to make the case that current discussions of the social sustainability currently take place in an evidence and policy vacuum.

Crime in public places is an increasing concern for the police, users of public places and the general public at large. Significantly, users of public transport facilities consistently perceive their risks from crime to be considerably higher, hurting levels of patronage. The aim of this study is to examine concerns for personal safety and measures that could improve sense of personal safety in a Nigerian public transport facility. This study further examines whether respondents’ perceptions determine frequent use of this public place. Explanatory factors are personal safety and place improvements concerns ratings.

The study adopted a case study. The selection of this was accomplished using carefully defined criteria in previous studies. The research process consists of three steps the on-site assessment, objective insecurity assessment and subjective insecurity survey. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Quantitative data were explored using mean ranking, percentages and correlation, whereas qualitative information was analysed using narrative techniques of reporting. To define the major determinants of the frequent use of this public place, a multiple ordinary least squares regression was constructed for variables in the correlation model.

Results show that places within the site are not designed to meet crime prevention through environmental design strategies, as 625 crimes were documented with thefts well above other listed crimes. Respondents exhibited a significant level of concern for their safety across all the factors enumerated while the most important improvements concern was enhancements to lighting. Generally, findings suggest that there is still much to be done to improve elements of surveillance, access control, territoriality, image management and activity support on the site. Regression model shows that efforts to enhance perceived safety of users would have major significance on the frequent use of this facility.

Policies on public place developments should be mainly in terms of tackling the environmental design of car parks and the effects of darkness at night time. This should involve improvement of lighting and the installation of CCTV, security camera as well as constant maintenance of bushes, vegetation, plants, trees and other elements of the landscape. Furthermore, the aesthetics of the site has to be attractive to users. The site and its closest surroundings have to be well-maintained and cared for. Besides, place lines and private areas must be defined with plants, pavement treatments, short walls or fences.

Previous studies on safety and security of public transport places, particularly rail facility, have mainly concentrated on the relations between fear of crime, perceived safety and place improvement concerns. To the best of authors’ knowledge, no study till date has explored how they correlate to the patronage of the transport facility, particularly in the sub-Saharan nations. This study contributes to existing literature having revealed perceived personal safety and transport place improvements concerns to be another important dimension of rail transport patronage in the Nigerian context.