Transport poverty: definitions, indicators, determinants, and mitigation strategies - Final Report

This final report summarises the outcomes of the study “Transport poverty: Definitions, indicators, determinants, and mitigation strategies” commissioned by DG EMPL. Proceeding based on three tasks, the project (i) investigates the concepts and definitions related to transport poverty, (ii) researches and estimates possible indicators for measuring transport poverty and (iii) collects effective mitigation strategies addressing specific manifestations of transport poverty, exploring the interplay of the relevant stakeholders and how these processes are grounded in national policy making. The report also reflects key results from four national case studies carried out for Germany, Poland, Romania and Spain.

The literature review shows that transport poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that is strongly influenced by a range of related concepts such as mobility justice, mobility poverty, transport disadvantage, transport justice, accessibility poverty, and transport-related social exclusion. The three main aspects of transport poverty that are essential to defining the phenomenon are availability, accessibility, and affordability, as well as a cross-cutting dimension of adequacy.

Based on the conceptual framework, the report identifies a comprehensive set of possible indicators that span the availability, accessibility, and affordability dimensions of transport poverty. Different limited EU-level microdata sets are available to depict these dimensions and help measure transport poverty for the EU-27, including the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the Household Budget Survey (HBS).

There are important caveats and limitations in the existing EU-level data collection and therefore its quality. The data limitations make it difficult to perform an appropriate assessment of the different dimensions of transport poverty in the EU. Firstly, the survey datasets employed in this study stem from different years, the oldest being from 2014. The only indicators for which data are collected on a yearly basis are related to (non) car ownership and based on the EU-SILC. The HBS that is used for assessing the affordability of public and private transport has an implausibly high number of zeros in important transport expenditure categories for several countries ( ), hence distorting the overall assessment. Furthermore, comprehensive spatial data is missing to properly investigate the accessibility dimension at the EU level now. Some initiatives are underway to improve this situation. At the same time, the case studies demonstrate that several data gaps that exist at EU level can be filled with national and local data.

This study therefore serves as a basis and a first attempt to foster analysis and debates around measuring and monitoring transport poverty in the EU while recognising that based on the currently available data, much more monitoring is needed to have a full picture of transport poverty. In this context, further methodologies and monitoring frameworks are necessary.