Multi-level governance, modal thinking, and engaging with insights from ITEM after it’s over

Posted on November 17, 2024 by HD Budnitz

The ITEM (Inclusive Transitions to Electric Mobility) project technically ended on 31 August when its ESRC funding ended and I (have had to) move on to other funded projects.

Yet it is unusual for all a project’s outputs to be published within a project’s funded timescale, never mind to see engagement with the outputs or related impact in the short term. Journal articles in particular can be slow to appear, such that publication and publicising findings can often seem detached from the publicity built into the project.

For this reason, it was exciting to see the first comparative article based on primary data collected during ITEM accepted and published in the last couple weeks – and only a couple months after project end. As lead author, I had worked hard to identify patterns in policymaking across our four case study cities, explore the implications of these for more sustainable and just transitions to electric mobility, and highlight the potential learnings for policymakers and practitioners. I may be biased, but I think the article has a lot of exciting insights to offer.

It wasn’t quite published in time to be referenced in the expert comment piece on the University website, which also aimed to publicise the policy brief we produced for Bristol. However, it had just been accepted and the pre-proof published the week I went to Bristol to give a seminar on mobility justice and urban electric mobility at the University of the West of England (UWE).

I was honoured to be asked to present some of the key findings of the ITEM project to fellow transport researchers and students at UWE and beyond. I was able to focus on some of the highlights of the paper, such as the tensions between national pressures to deliver an EV future and local discomfort among transport planners with private automobility – even when it’s electric.

There was some lively discussion on the challenges facing the approaches to increase inclusion that I identified in urban electric mobility policymaking. Could policies to make EV charging infrastructure more affordable and accessible succeed in a competitive, industry-led market? Could shared electric mobility offer alternatives at a scale to make a difference when its uptake remained relatively niche? How could policymakers reach across modal silos and be confident in including diverse groups in decision-making – especially if even when they did so, it is rarely reflected in published policy documents? And how could funding streams be made both more flexible and more fair?

All were valid questions, and I can’t claim to have all the answers. Furthermore, as I said at the start, the ITEM project is technically over, so there is only so much time to go back over the research data we collected during the project and see if there are more answers or insights.

Nonetheless, we do still have other articles to finish and publish. We can still see what impact the project outputs and their findings have. And, having moved on to other projects, we can be creative in linking new data and findings to what we have learned. My research now involves diving deeper into the barriers and opportunities to scaling shared electric mobility and the potential of reaching across not just modal, but also sectoral siloes (e.g. between home energy and mobility demand). As I move forward, I will not forget the insights from ITEM or the further questions it raised that I might yet be able to answer.

Misrecognition in the transition

Posted on May 31, 2024 by HD Budnitz

Urban residents’ reactions to distributional e-mobility policies offer insights into what misrecognition means.

Recognition Justice: Whose issues, needs, values, experiences and understandings are respected in policy and governance?

When we started talking about the different dimensions of social justice to policymakers and stakeholders as part of this research project back in late 2021, we quickly realised that recognition justice was the least recognised.

Matters of distributional justice are often well-integrated – even if not always executed – into planning, design, and appraisal processes. It’s an exercise in identifying costs, benefits, and upon whom they fall.

Now, as we come to the end of the project, we see that whilst matters of recognition justice remain elusive, expressions of distributional injustice in interviews with urban residents offer insights into their experiences of misrecognition… and how it might be addressed by policymakers.

Transport is a spatially organised sector. Spatial and physical accessibility is almost always a key metric for transport infrastructure and service provision. E-mobility is no exception, and policymakers regularly consider the distribution of public charging and shared micro-mobility, for example. Concerns around the affordability of EVs (usually cars and vans, but sometimes e-bikes too) are also widely documented, and policies often aim to make adoption cheaper.

Yet these and other policies to promote electric mobility can misrecognise what would make e-mobility more affordable or accessible to different groups. Our interviews with a wide spectrum of ~100 e-mobility users and non-users in four medium-sized European cities, from Oslo to Poznan, highlight some of the issues and experiences that such policies may need to recognise.

For example, a policy focus on the accessibility of electric mobility and EV adoption is seen by some to distract from the shortcomings of public transport and transport exclusion, misrecognising what certain sections of the population might actually need in terms of transport infrastructure.

Likewise, some social groups would never consider buying or leasing a new car – this can have to do with class and upbringing as much as income. So if grants and loans designed to make EV adoption cheaper don’t apply to second-hand vehicles, then the values of such groups are misrecognised.

Urban residents highlight how policies to improve accessibility for users of services such as shared e-scooters or public charging must be careful not to misrecognise the impacts on non-users. Do these services make other users of the same public spaces less safe? Do the needs of family members, such as children, make the services inaccessible in a way they would not be if the individual were travelling alone?

Restrictive policies like Clean Air Zones can misrecognise who ends up with the most financial burden, as well as how financial incentives could best reduce those burdens. Calls for greater flexibility in the use of loans and incentives highlighted one way to address this inequity, but care is needed.

Different groups understand and react to financial and regulatory policies, never mind their short and long-term impacts, in different ways, threatening further misrecognition, potentially born of poor communication and a perceived gap in procedural justice.

Recognition justice is not the same as distributional or procedural justice, but they all overlap. Through the window of distributional injustice as described by diverse users and non-users of electric mobility, the shape of recognition injustices become clearer. And through more purposive participation, in-depth engagement, and knowledge production, perhaps we can all learn to recognise it.

All About Audience

Posted on July 24, 2023 by HD Budnitz

I have not posted a blog for three months, but I have presented my research to five different audiences in that time. It’s been busy – and instructive.

My first audience included colleagues from various departments and disciplines across the University at an event to share research on ‘Behaviour and the Environment’. I focused first on my previous project, Park and Charge Oxfordshire, and results from a Stated Choice experiment on parking and charging preferences and the behavioural questions of EV adoption. I concluded with a short summary of my current research project, ITEM: Inclusive Transition to Electric Mobility, which partially questions the behavioural choice perspective on the transition.

My second audience were part-time students on a continuing education Masters. As the seminar was due to last 90 minutes, I started preparing those slides first, so I’d have plenty of material from which to develop my other presentations. I was still updating them the day before, adding extra slides in case I needed them to fill the time. I agreed to answer questions as I went along, and barely got through all the material I had originally included, never mind the extra.

My third audience was our research participants: policymakers and stakeholders, many of whom I’d interviewed as part of the research data collected to analyse the policy perspective. The presentation parts of the workshop had to be quick, to give plenty of time for moderate structured discussions that still felt almost too short.

My fourth audience was at a professional conference attended mainly by transport practitioners from the public and private sector. I wrote a conference paper, which I knew said all I wanted it to. That was to be circulated after the event, but on the day itself, I spoke at 5:30pm in one of five parallel sessions. The last presenter in the last session of a long day. We were all a bit tired!

My fifth and final audience was at an academic conference, where I presented at the end of the first session, 10am, on the last day. With all the previous presentations under my belt, I was no longer making last minute changes to my slides, I kept to time and received useful feedback for the comparative academic paper I am currently drafting on the policy perspective.

All these presentations took a lot of work, as there are not as many economies of scale as you might think in presenting the same work multiple times, if you are doing so for diverse audiences in a variety of formats. The process was, however, instructive and gave me new insights into both how to present my work and the work itself.

For example, the internal academic audience taught me the value of making connections between past and future work.

The teaching taught me to always build in a wide range of audience participation time if you are planning on taking questions as you go along. You never know how engaged your audience will be or which material will draw comment.

At the workshop, my presentation wasn’t as important as the distillation of some of the findings into statements and activities to facilitate discussion. The research participants gave us insights not only into our analysis of the electric mobility transition in Bristol, but also into wider issues and interactions with other places and other research.

Session assignment at a conference is not within a presenter’s control, but once the programme is announced, it is important to think not only about who you are presenting to, but also when. Nobody is likely to be full of energy and enthusiasm in the late afternoon, so I should probably have aimed for less, but more catchy content.

Finally, I found that a little bit of academic theory, if explained briefly and simply, enhanced the more practical points in my presentation. That’s academic expertise at its best, and could well have done the same for some of my presentations to non-academic audiences!

A plurality of policy processes and a pluralist perspective on social justice

Posted on February 24, 2023 by HD Budnitz

Over the last five months, we have interviewed 13 policy-makers and others involved in the policy-making process in Bristol, the West of England, UK.

We have heard about the ideas, evolution and implementation of policies for not only electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, but also the e-scooter trial, e-car clubs, the Clean Air Zone and accompanying grants and incentives, and to a lesser extent the integration of electric modes into public realm and neighbourhood improvements, e-bicycles, e-freight options, and the electrification of public transport.

We have coded, analysed and summarised the interviews, identifying not only the extensive consideration given to distributional justice issues such as accessibility and affordability, but also the greater recognition of diverse needs spatially and socio-demographically. Compared to the policy documents analysed last summer, the increased prominence of recognition justice may be attributed to more participatory approaches in procedural justice terms than was apparent in the published narratives. Our interviewees could and did describe their in-depth engagement with local residents and the establishment of diverse working groups that could inform policy.

All of them, however, local and national policy-makers, shared mobility operators, civic society representatives and experts, still raised concerns about the inclusivity and fairness of electric mobility policies. They asked what policymakers could realistically do to make electric vehicles more affordable to purchase; whether the necessities of commercial viability limited their ability to provide services to certain groups in certain neighbourhoods; and whether limited local government resources and capabilities could be allocated fairly given external constraints.

However, there were clear indications that local capabilities (even if not resources) had grown over the years through learning from both other places and from local people, tapping into national and academic expertise, and gaining professional experience.

On the other hand, our interviewees who were involved in public electric vehicle charging knew little about the e-scooter trial, and those involved in administering the Clean Air Zone did not work directly with operators implementing e-car clubs or expanding other shared mobility. This siloed approach may be limiting the potential for policymakers and operators to make the transition to electric mobility more socially just. Our research suggests it is already limiting their understanding of how just (or not) the transition is in Bristol at the moment and in what ways.

By jointly considering multiple major electric mobility policies and policy processes, the ITEM project is developing a more holistic understanding of how these policies and processes involve different groups, meet diverse needs and variably affect experiences of mobility and public space in and around Bristol. In other words, the research assesses the implications of a plurality of electric mobility processes for the multiple dimensions of social justice in our pluralist perspective.

By comparing the policy approaches and the dynamics of the transition to electric mobility across our four, medium-sized, case study cities in Europe, each at different stages in that transition, the ITEM project is also investigating how real and perceived constraints to accelerating a more inclusive transition can change and be addressed over time. That, however, is a topic for another blog.

Public Realm Resource

Posted on November 28, 2022 by HD Budnitz

The thorniest topic at the UN’s COP27 on climate change this month has been finance, or the lack thereof, to lower income and more vulnerable countries. Affordability is front and centre of the debate to not only tackle climate change globally, but also to do so justly.

Similarly, affordability is a word that has been on the lips of many policy makers and stakeholders as soon as we started researching inclusivity in the transition to electric mobility in Bristol. Electric vehicles (EVs) are seen as unaffordable by and for many people. Even retrofitting or upgrading to a vehicle compliant with the Clean Air Zone (introduced today!) is considered financially out of reach for some of the most vulnerable and vehicle-dependent.

Furthermore, for cash-strapped governments, there is debate as to whether limited public monies should be spent on installing public EV charging infrastructure, rather than leaving it to the private sector? Public sector public charging might improve inclusion by enabling EV adoption by those without an off-street parking and domestic charging option, but if only wealthier households (whether they have private parking or not) can afford an EV, do they really need public charging infrastructure to be subsidised? Especially as electricity prices go up, and providing as well as using public charging becomes less affordable.

There are arguments the other way, of course, as lower income households might still drive a company car or van. They might be able to access a second-hand or shared EV.

And there are other forms of electric mobility. E-scooters and e-bikes not only can improve accessibility, but also can be considered a reasonably affordable transport option, especially for medium-length journeys where public transport is limited. Besides, many e-scooter trials have included discounts for low income groups to make sure the scheme is affordable.

But affordability and how public monies are used are not the only topic up for debate when considering whether the transition to electric mobility is progressing in an inclusive way. Digging a little deeper, another inclusion / justice issue is around the rights of different people to use the public realm in different ways and how their different ways of moving are accommodated in public spaces.

A number of the policy-makers and stakeholders we spoke to described how the allocation or reallocation of space on the public highway or footway is one of the most contentious interventions they can propose. Even in terms of people moving through space, there are the ever-recurring problems of congestion, crowding, and the use of space of different modes. Then there’s the space taken up for parking, deliveries, sign posts, bollards, traffic signals, cycle stands – so much of our public realm is used for dormant vehicles or the smooth running of the transport network, never mind for other things like retail or socialising.

The addition of electric mobility infrastructure such as EV charging and e-scooter parking places new demands on the scarce resource that is our public realm. Electric mobility also raises questions about how that resource is used – which modes are sharing which spaces, whose space is reallocated, who will face new challenges using public space, and will there be new conflicts and safety concerns? Basically, how efficient and fair is the use and allocation of the public realm once electric mobility is added into our transport systems?

Unsurprisingly, the policy makers and stakeholders we spoke to did not all have the same answers or perhaps any answers to these questions. And yet, they were asking the questions. They realised that social justice is not all about affordability or accessibility, but also the diverse needs, rights, experiences, and expectations of the public realm resource. That is an important step in not only our developing research, but also in achieving an inclusive transition to electric mobility.

Quality in Qualitative Methods

Posted on October 4, 2022 by HD Budnitz

As we describe in the ‘About ITEM’ section of our project website, ‘Work Package Two’ reviews policy documents and holds workshops and interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders in each of our case study cities in order to review how the different dimensions of justice are accounted for in the policies and decisions that govern the transition to electric mobility, why this is, and whether policy processes can be improved.

We use qualitative methods because this research question is all about answering how and why the transition to electric mobility is happening in certain ways, not just who is(n’t) using electric mobility and where electric mobility infrastructure and services can(‘t) be found. Which is not to say we are not asking questions about people and places, but these questions too are formulated as how and why.

For example: How are different people expected to use or respond to the transition to electric mobility? Why are some groups, but not others, involved or recognised in the policies and decisions that govern that transition? How are different places imagined when planning electric mobility interventions? Why are some places identified as needing more, less or different interventions?

Qualitative methods are well-placed to answer how and why questions rigorously, and help us find ways to make use of those answers.

For Bristol alone, we have iteratively read and coded 16 policy documents, from the city, combined authority and national levels. These have included transport and climate changes strategies at urban and national scales, bids and business cases prepared for central government review, and central government guidance prepared to assist local authorities. Hundreds of pages resulted in thousands of references. Our coding worked both top down and bottom up.

We created 11 ‘parent’ codes from our analytical framework, covering five dimensions of justice (capabilities and epistemic justice formed separate parent codes) and six central aspects of policy and governance:

sources of knowledge;
policy interventions;
their strategic programming;
the problems (and opportunities) policies address;
the people / subjects identified or implied; and
the places / territories addressed or characterised.

Within these, a close reading of the texts led to child, grandchild and even great-grandchild codes that help us understand:

how dimensions of justice manifest in policy, in concepts such as accessibility or affordability;
why certain sources of knowledge or evidence are foregrounded, e.g. when it is politically expedient to show generalised public support or expert advice;
why different policy interventions or strategic packages are targeted at certain places and people, e.g. because they are seen as needing more intervention; and
how local residents or businesses are expected to respond, including as rational actors who will choose the most attractive and efficient mobility options provided.

Thus, qualitative analytical methods help us recognise patterns of meaning within the narratives these documents present about the transition to electric mobility, its role in wider policy debates around sustainable transport, climate change, and public funding. They also help us consider what is not said, especially in our hunt for indications of inclusivity in policy decisions and delivery.

These methods can also be used to analyse, quite literally, what is said, as we interview policy-makers and related stakeholders. We can ask them directly which and whether aspects of social justice are accounted for in their work. We can then use the same coding methods to see whether the answers to those how and why questions are the same, how the narratives compare, and why knowledge, approach, perspectives vary.

In summary, the research in this work package aims not only to understand how and why in the past and present, but also how and why policy and governance may accelerate a more inclusive transition to electric mobility in the future. And we will continue to use qualitative methods to not only search for answers, but also apply them.

Silence on Social Justice?

Posted on August 26, 2022 by HD Budnitz

Bristol was chosen for our case study city for three reasons.

First, in practical terms, we needed a medium-sized British city that would allow comparison with our partner cities across Europe – Oslo, Poznan and Utrecht.

Second, it needed to be somewhere with electric mobility policies and projects to study for social justice implications. Bristol has won a number of UK and European bids funding electric mobility infrastructure and services, either specifically or as part of larger transport packages.

Finally, we thought it might be a positive critical case study – somewhere more likely to be an exemplar of social justice in policy making.

Bristol has a history of civic activism and concern for equity and inclusion. It was home not only to the most significant Black Lives Matter protests in the UK, but also the Bristol bus boycott in 1963, when protesters forced the local bus company to change their discriminatory employment policies. It was not only the first local government authority in the UK to declare a climate emergency, but also the first place women were ordained into the Church of England.

In the transport domain, Sustrans, the charity which created and maintains the National Cycle Network and advocates for walking and cycling was founded in Bristol in 1977. More recently, parents in Bristol who wanted to see their children play in the streets in front of their homes without fear of traffic started the charity Playing Out, which helps residents apply for temporary, but regular road closures.

Could we find evidence of that sort of civic spirit in the transition to electric mobility and the policies designed to support it?

Ten recent, urban policy documents were analysed to find out, including transport and climate strategies and a few UK funding bids with electric mobility elements.

We did not find a suitable document specifically covering the successful European bid that funded the REPLICATE project, but thought the social outcomes of that project would surely be mentioned in policy documents that did make our list. REPLICATE included an e-bike loan scheme and new electric car club bays and was specifically targeted at neighbourhoods with more minority groups and less housing or transport capital.

REPLICATE was mentioned in three of our analysed documents, but as an example of successful delivery, without reference to social outcomes or equity nor if local residents were involved in choosing the bay locations or gave their views on driving the shared electric cars.

My analysis of data provided by Co-Wheels, the car club operator that participated in the project, showed that the e-car club bays installed during the project were located in significantly more deprived areas than other car club bays and used by residents of more deprived areas. An academic involved in the project confirmed to me that the locations were purposefully chosen to increase access to shared electric vehicles among low income residents.

Yet whilst the potential of increased access through EV car clubs is highlighted in the UK Go Ultra Low bid (see page 17), the bid cited REPLICATE only for its synergy with the proposed scheme, not for its inclusivity. All three documents mentioning REPLICATE are strangely silent on the project’s social justice implications.

We found a similar silence on another social justice initiative described in just one document: the One City Plan proposes to apply the recommendations of the citizens’ assembly that was just finishing its deliberations as the Plan was published in March 2021. Yet the two documents we could find published after the One City Plan do not mention the citizen’s assembly at all. Will others yet to be published do more?

Meanwhile, as mentioned in my blog, the Future Mobility Zone bid promises co-production and user-centred design, but there is no knowing from the document itself whether the e-mobility aspects of the bid have been or will be implemented in such a socially just way. We have to use other sources to find out.

Thus, whilst Bristol may still be an exemplar of social justice in terms of civic activism and opportunities for genuine participation, potentially even in ways that relate to electric mobility policy, relevant policy documents are strangely silent on the subject and evidence is thus far missing, particularly of recognition justice and the incorporation of diverse knowledge, values, and practices in the transition to electric mobility.

Interviews with stakeholders come next as our search for evidence of Bristol as a positive critical case study in the inclusive transition to electric mobility (ITEM) continues.

The Paradox of Procedural Justice

Posted on June 28, 2022 by HD Budnitz

The old adage goes, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Likewise, you can register someone to vote, but you can’t make them to turn out on election day. Or send a survey, but can’t make them fill it out. Or even hold a protest, but can’t make every affected individual or group attend. Efforts towards inclusion in civil society and policy-making can only go so far. At some point the responsibility for achieving justice is transferred to citizens who choose to vote, respond, march – or not.

No matter the attempts at genuine participation or the influence afforded those participating, there will be always be some who stay at home. And they might be people who never participate, who belong to marginalised groups, who have values, experiences, rights and needs that are often ignored. This can result in policies being perpetuated that are not only procedurally unjust, but also result in the misrepresentation of these groups, maldistribution of interventions intended to help them, and ongoing exclusion.

But what can one do? Elected representatives, local government officers, or neighbourhood activists can all try to make policy and govern justly, but cannot justly force people to get involved. Therein lies the paradox of procedural justice. It is limited by not only the level of participation offered, but also who decides to participate.

Nonetheless, it is too easy to blame apathy and hide behind the excuse that an opportunity was offered but ignored. Decision-makers can take responsibility for offering multiple ways to participate at multiple levels of involvement. Variety will increase inclusion by virtue of the likelihood that different techniques will attract different people who will feel more or less comfortable getting involved at that intensity.

‘Consultation’ is one of the most traditional techniques for involving individuals and groups, which we have found referred to again and again in our analysis of policy documents in Bristol and the UK for the ITEM project. Yet even this technique can be applied in various ways. Publishing and advertising policy in a ‘consultation draft’ on a website with pre-set questions or headline objectives and asking the extent to which respondents agree offers neither a high level of participation nor is likely to attract a high number of participants.

Instead, consultation on the 2020 Joint Local Transport Plan strategy for the West of England combined authority (WECA) used multiple different media – social media, websites, paper, in person – to solicit feedback on the policy in a variety of ways: a survey; an interactive tool to prioritise policy; and during discussions at stakeholder workshops. There were also opportunities for open answers, to raise concerns or suggestions that may have been excluded.

This multiplicity of techniques can enhance procedural justice, but that potential is diminished by focusing on the response to the policy-makers’ pre-set questions over more open responses; generalising the reported response so individual participants have little influence; and not paying attention to who did not respond or was otherwise missing.

Despite the paradox previously described, state-centric decision-makers and even society-centric grass-roots organisers should take responsibility for finding out who doesn’t participate and, ideally, why, without making assumptions. This is challenging at scale, so proposals in the city’s Bristol Transport Strategy or WECA’s Future Mobility Zone application focus on the smallest geographic scale when proposing more procedurally just techniques – co-design and co-production.

From neighbourhood plans to proposals for mobility hubs as local community assets, at this scale, reaching out to a greater number of individuals from more diverse groups through more channels is more possible, having more of them respond is more likely, and enabling their response to influence the decisions made is more manageable. Our next step is to find out if this has actually happened.

Either way, not everyone will get involved nor will the policies implemented meet every need, desire or expectation. The paradox still persists and procedural justice may not be fully achieved, but at least such an approach, if carried through, improves the chances of social justice.