Interview Koos Fransen: "The street belongs to people"

As part of Straffe Straten, we have already run a pilot project in Jasmijnstraat in Ghent, together with Trivelo, which puts in bicycle taxis for less mobile people. We put Bob and Nore together in such a taxi and just let them chat. This way, they showed each other the places they often go, where they go for walks, where they play. They talk confidently about what they would like to see different about their street. And then you notice how important talking is, and really being present in the street. First you walk around, you talk a bit, have a chat; Who are you, what do you do? That's how I met Bob. When I went to put notes in the bus, he asked me inside to come and explain a bit. I had already heard that during the applause moments in the lockdown, Bob walked down Jasmine Street with his bagpipes to play music for the neighbourhood. I ended up sitting there for 1.5 hours and discovered that he is a world authority on whisky and had already travelled halfway around the world, made documentaries, written books, etc. And of course he could tell hundreds of stories about the neighbourhood he has lived in for years.

Via an unforeseen diversions in my PhD. The focus was originally on GIS analysis with a view to studying time-space accessibility. And then the question almost naturally followed: how equitable is our transport system really? That's when I first learned about the concept of transport poverty through Karel Martens. He is pretty much the pioneer of the concept in Europe along with Karen Lucas from the UK. By delving into it, my PhD actually evolved from a technical approach to a more socio-geographical one.
People still often think in terms of not having enough money to move around. But transport poverty is about more than just money. I had a taste for it and wanted to do more with it. Hence the research together with Mobiel 21 and Netwerk Duurzame Mobiliteit to get transport poverty on the political agenda. The idea is to also follow it up and take a bigger approach than just the survey we conducted in 2020 in full corona pandemic.

Still, recently we received a question from the Brussels Region, which has already drawn up a reasonable social mobility plan with Good Move: how can we do something about transport poverty? That was unthinkable 10 years ago. There is more willingness to work on it, including from the Ministry of Social Welfare, but many organisations are searching. So yes, transport poverty gets more attention, but I still wonder if you were to go out on the streets now, what people would have to say about it. Thanks to projects by CSOs, the issue is also getting the attention it deserves. Articles and research are good, but it is the small actions and projects in CSO policies that make a substantial difference and generate attention. Ultimately, all this makes it painfully clear once again that in recent decades we have counted too much on accessibility by (private) car and that we have treated other means of transport as the poor relation for too long.

I do hope that there will be some kind of test that weighs economic benefits against the social impact of a project. Kobe and I were recently asked to review a study for the widening of the Brussels Ring Road. And if you look at those EIA studies, you see that the economic benefits are estimated to be so much more important than any social costs or environmental benefits. You should have an instrument that can measure the impact of an intervention on certain groups of people. Now that we know more about transport poverty, we can quietly start looking at new parameters to test a project against. Steven Farber, a colleague in Toronto, is already working on this. For the new metro lines, he is investigating who would use them and who the lines would benefit. You could then, for example, give people who already have many transport options less weight in such a social project test. But also ask yourself the question, if your test turns out to be negative, what adjustments do you make in return, or are willing to make.

For people in our field, it is often far too slow, but for people who are not at all involved, it takes time to make that transition. About transition, Pepik Henneman, Derk Loorbach and Debora Timmerman have written a good book: The Citizenship Book. In it, they describe what a transition is and the stages it goes through. Especially the moment of change itself is very difficult, the sequel is usually much less so. I think we ourselves should not go too fast in what we do. And that is also a focus for myself when I talk to people. Then I rather quickly have a tendency of 'allez, come on', while the final outcome is a bit more nuanced. We have to keep looking and scraping the right arguments to get people to look at things differently.