Linking Transport to Employment Creation and Poverty Reduction

Professor Ronald McQuaid Employment Research Institute and Transport Research Institute Napier University, Edinburgh UK

MDG Workshop, Cornell University, May 5-6, 2007

Introduction

in terms of:

• Accessibility – for people • Business location and opportunities • Damage to life and limb, pollution

Transport and Poverty

- Transport and poverty – labor

demand and supply sides

- Supply: transport systems have

various impacts on different types of people and jobs.

- Demand: Contradictions? - Do the MDG indictors adequately

take this into account?

People’s Accessibility

1. Access to services (health, basic education, shopping, good food, leisure etc.) 2. Access to work and learning 3. Safety (modal safety and ‘area’ safety)

Why greater accessibility?

- efficiency (improving the match

between the best skilled etc. worker and a job; or increasing the supply of workers where there are unfilled vacancies; improving the productivity at work of employees through easing their journey to work; etc.);

– equity; – other benefits (e.g. direct or

complementary access to essential and other services etc.).

Employment

• Accessibility is not just transport, its about: – Information and services – Jobs (so improving skills, education etc.

are crucial)

– Opening/work times – Childcare etc. • Need to consider:

- supply side issues (employability, individual and personal characteristics etc.) - demand side issues (shift patterns etc.) - modal issues (… implications for people)

Supply side

Characteristics of individuals less likely to travel far to work (time/distance):

- part-time, low paid, low skilled jobs - gender - caring responsibilities - age - mental maps - (correlated to education etc.)

Demand side

The characteristics of jobs on offer by employers affect who will apply for or take a job and how far they are willing or able to travel to a job

 

Sector, location of employer, wages, working hours and flexibility, discrimination, qualifications (and access to these) etc. Also, during job search, information flows between employer and job seeker influenced by distance and communication channels.

Millennium Development Goals

• MDG 7 Environmental sustainability

Targets: Share of urban residents for whom mobility problems severely constrain access to employment and essential services halved

• Indicators: % of households (in the

various urban living environments) which report transport costs and time as major obstacles to employment

Millennium Development Goals

- Accessibility as well as mobility - Consider characteristics of

individuals – focus of MDG indicators on households may disguise intra-slum resident groups (i.e. intra- and inter-households variations are significant)

What needs to be done? - 1

Greater research on the causes, consequences and importance of mismatches (spatial, skills) in the labor market are needed.

- A more holistic, rather than just

transport, view

What needs to be done? -2

- Characteristics of transport • Basic infrastructure, mode • Services - safe, comfort, schedules, cost, flexibility - Reducing travel needs (incl. land use) - Reducing traffic impact and pollution

Business location & poverty

Good transport links, both internal and external are part of a portfolio of area assets that potential investors consider when making location decisions.

The importance and effect of transport varies depending on firm characteristics, characteristics of the locality and external conditions.

Transport costs are often a relatively small proportion of total costs, but that it is perceived costs, in terms of money, reliability and time that are equally or more likely to influence location decisions.

The location of specialist logistics firms, rather than transport infrastructure, that may increasingly attract other businesses.

Transport has an increasing influence on these specialist firms but less influence on manufacturing and service firms.

Freight

A few points: Systems to handle container traffic from end to end: World Container Port Traffic Million 20 foot Containers (teu)1 1980 2005 38.8

1990 87.9

2000 235.4

394.9

Freight - changing

- Rail = €1.00+ per container/mile; - RoRo= €0.50 per trailer/mile - Container feeder = €0.15 per container/mile - Megaship= €0.015 per container/mile - Zambia domestic road = US$0.07

- (SA, = US$0.02)

Freight - changing

• Africa? Loss of much geographic dividend, efficiency of ports and inland connections crucial. Do MDGs reflect this?

• % Reduction in unit goods transport cost (ton kilometer). What are implications of this?

• Focus on efficiency of ports, transfer and interchanges

Intra-regional

Measures to increase accessibility are most likely to be effective if addressed at a local level, for example improvements to local public transport.

Relocation of business to suburban and other decentralised areas creates accessibility problems and also makes retrospective public transport provision more difficult.

The effectiveness of urban transport schemes is dependent on complementary urban development policies. Evidence suggests either policy in isolation to be less effective.

Some more issues to consider in MDGs

- Inter-regional; intra-regional Need to distinguish transport factors that are more likely to influence intra-regional than inter-regional location decisions, in other words they influence the decision of where to locate within a region once that region has been chosen.

- Displacement New transport infrastructure can often involve displacing business and employment from one area to another, even within a region.

Some Conclusions

- It was not possible to do justice to the

range of the topic but some issues:

- Helpful to think in terms of accessibility

as well as development

- Need an integrated approach - Integrated activities and policies - Coordinated organizations (getting out

of transport silos)

- Based on the real drivers of change - Do MDGs do this? Perhaps…

Employment

Research Institute

http://napier.ac.uk/depts/eri/home.

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