Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, Volume II, Wellbeing and the Environment

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Transport and Wellbeing

Nick Tyler

University College London, U.K.

To begin thinking about how transport affects and is affected by wellbeing we have to think first about why we have transport at all: what does transport do for us? Only then we can start to think about how to make a transport system work to achieve the outcomes we desire. In particular, this chapter examines the engineering, rather than the planning, of such a transport system but of course the link between planning and engineering is symbiotic so there is a need to include at least some aspects of the interfaces between planning and engineering and how they work.

This chapter starts by exploring what we mean by wellbeing in this context and how that translates into mobility needs. This naturally raises the question of how we should design and implement a mobility system and what transport opportunities arise. This leads naturally into a discussion about the wellbeing implications for transport and how we design transport systems to maximize wellbeing. In the course of this discussion we will be raising issues of accessibility and capabilities, energy and emissions, health impacts, the importance of activities as drivers for the design of transport systems, what we really mean by capacity, the importance of information, and the integration of transport subsystems into a system that can be integrated with the other great systems of modern life: financial, political, technological, cultural, environmental, health, ...