Stranded mobility and the marginalisation of low income communities: an analysis of public service failure in the British public transport sector.

Authors: Margaret Grieco, Professor of Transport and Society, Napier University and Visiting Professor, Institute for African Development, Cornell University and Fiona Raje, Researcher, Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford.

Abstract;
This paper will identify and explore the withdrawal of socially necessary public transport services from low income housing estates within the United Kingdom. Using 'stranded mobility' analysis developed in South Africa to discuss the situation of the townships, the paper will explore the interaction between land use planning and transport logics behind the development of peripheral housing estates and demonstrate how changes in planning logics and changes in the organisation of public transport finance have left the residents of these peripheral estates stranded. The changes in planning logic and transport finance as they stand constitute a network failure. The failure of transport experts and social policy analysts to identify, measure and rectify these core failures represents network failure at yet another level - a failure within the network of policy analysis. This paper builds on an existing body of work developed by the authors and extends the analysis of 'stranded mobility' presented as a keynote presentation at the International Association of Travel Behaviour Research at its meeting in Lucerne in 2003.

1. Introduction: the withdrawal of public transport

There has been a withdrawal of socially necessary transport services from low income housing areas within the United Kingdom, yet this exclusory and vulnerabilising 'policy' has received little systematic attention. The 'deregulation' of public transport in the United Kingdom has generated a context of public service failure in respect of transport services for many low income communities. Public authorities are no longer the primary providers of public transport and the fragmentation of the public transport market into profitable and non-profitable routes which accompanied commercialisation has worked against the provision of an adequate level of provision of socially necessary services. In this failing public policy context, there is no available national statistic or methodology for summarising the quality of public transport provision. Network failure largely goes unmeasured and the implications of 'stranded mobility' - the inability to access key services locally or to access mobility to key services located elsewhere - for urban vulnerability are relegated to ad hoc or individual case studies and local 'solutions'(Raje et al., 2004). An accurate and exact mapping of public transport quality and of the relationship of public transport quality to the geography of social exclusion is a necessary policy tool yet no national system for such mapping is in place. Current accessibility planning frameworks are weak (Grieco, 2003; http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_control/documents/contentservertemplate/dft_index.hcst?n=8592&l;=3)and even where accessibility planning information is held it is frequently not consulted in the decision to close key local facilities: recent rounds of Post Office closures in areas with few or poor local facilities demonstrate this point (http://www.geocities.com/allinonespot/grieco/appendix1.html).

Whatever the deficiencies of the measurement of the quality of public transport in Britain, what is not in doubt is that there is a crisis in public transport provision (http://www.cfit.gov.uk/reports/psbi/cfit/). It is a crisis brought on by a lengthy policy and commercial process of attrition.

There is one form of transport that is capable of delivering major change fast, cheaply and with enormous impact the bus. However, it has been the Cinderella mode neglected by successive governments and media alike.

Over two decades, public subsidy has fallen significantly in real terms. Rail and bus receive similar levels of subsidy while the bus carries about five times the number of passengers and delivers far greater social inclusion benefits. Bus fares have risen much faster than inflation and, significantly, they have outstripped motoring costs and train fares. As a result, bus patronage has continued its seemingly inexorable decline.

Because we want to see this decline reversed, the Commission for Integrated Transport has invested nearly three years in the most comprehensive research and study the industry has ever seen.

(http://www.cfit.gov.uk/reports/psbi/cfit/).

This crisis has a particularly British dimension: the way in which Britain organises its public transport services has particularly negative effects:

The report showed that the UK's subsidies for buses were the lowest in Europe, with higher fares and often with poorer services, leading to declining patronage while European countries had often experienced significant increases. It also showed that bus operating costs in the UK were the lowest in the EU. (http://www.cfit.gov.uk/reports/psbi/cfit/).

Finally, deregulation, which was aimed at increasing ridership, has led to decreased ridership. In 1986, 2069 million journeys were made in English metropolitan counties, but this figure had dropped by 1991 to 1528 journeys. This 5-year decline contrasts with the 1982 to 1986 period when patronage increased by 4.5%. Patronage has declined because of the loss of comprehensive networks, loss of stability caused by frequent service changes, loss of convenience of single "through journey" ticketing, and increasingly aging buses and fare increases.

The conclusions to be drawn from the UK experience are as follows:

* Deregulation has not resulted in better services at lower cost attracting more passengers.

* The overall influence of the bus industry as a tool in urban management has decreased because it is no longer possible to secure integrated networks nor to choose the optimum transport mode - bus or rail.

* The loss of passengers has gone hand-in-hand with increasing congestion.

* Some operators have been financially successful through oligopolistic business practices.

It has been shown that it would have been better to have a planned and coordinated network with integrated ticketing and optimum choice of transport mode incorporating an element of competition rather than a deregulated pattern of uncoordinated routes with frequent changes in services and fares.

Laconte, 2004@ http://www.jrtr.net/jrtr04/f18_lac.html

Laconte's succinct analysis of network failure within the bus service industry is a useful one but for our purpose here his main contribution is the understanding that the loss of the bus based public transport sector to commercial interests represents the loss of an important tool in urban management. Addressing social exclusion without direct control over the institutions of access to urban services such as transport is problematic and attempting to remedy social exclusion from transport on an ad hoc basis is likely to be wasteful of resources. Choosing worst case transport locations and providing relief whilst failing to measure or register other poorly served locations does not represent a modern policy of integrated transport provision.

2. Stranded mobility: sink estates and planning traps

The logic of slum clearance and the removal of traditional working class populations to the edge of cities was in its day benign: transport links to employment opportunities were present or employment opportunities were close to hand. Over time, employment opportunities have disappeared and transport links have been eroded: the least resourced have the worst access to the facilities necessary for health and livelihood (Raje et al, 2003). Out of city estates have transformed from spaces for healthy living into 'sink estates' experiencing stranded mobility and are best viewed as historic planning traps. The logic of a successful peripheral estate lay in the assurance of access to services through mobility and an appropriate level of local provision. Over time local facilities have disappeared and the level of transport provision has shrunk. The Government's own web sites carry case evidence on the extent of this trap (http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_mobility/documents/page/dft_mobility_506795-07.hcsp). Peri-urban communities of 10,000 neither have local facilities nor do they have access to adequate transport.

From the Government's own web pages (http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_mobility/documents/page/dft_mobility_506795-07.hcsp), we have chosen three case studies all of which talk to the depth of the restrictions on low income mobility and the prevalence of transport network failure.

Case study A:

" The 'Three Estates' is on the border of Birmingham and Worcestershire, and can be reached from the main radial Redditch Road, which acts as a boundary. It is not visible from the main road and has open field on all sides. It is not a place that you would 'pass through'. Rather like other edge of city estates, it has a high proportion of green space and must have seemed very attractive when it was first built forty years ago. In fact, the rural character of the area, with thickets of tress and uninhabited green space, makes it feel (with justification) very threatening.

Bounded by a dual carriageway on one side, and the countryside on two others, the Pathfinder Area is a very clearly defined geographical area on the southern outskirts of Birmingham. Despite a population of over 10,000 residents, there are no banks, supermarkets or launderettes in the area. There is very little direct employment available, and public transportation, for an area so geographically isolated, is patchy within the estates, although there are good services on the main road around the estates. It is an area of high deprivation, with certain areas, notably Pool Farm, having a city-wide reputation as "bad places to live".

Overview of Transport Connections and Relationship to Social Exclusion Issues

This area is typical of a peripheral estate which, because of the closure of reasonably local employment opportunities, has become too poor to be self-sustaining and is too remote from major centres to share easily in their wealth creation, medical, educational, shopping, leisure, and other facilities. Transport, or problems with it (as well as actual traffic), is certainly contributing to the social exclusion of a number of groups in this community. It is possible that almost all non-car-owning households are excluded to a greater or lesser extent.

In particular, job-seekers, young parents, older people, and young people, all seem to be affected. If facilities locally could be improved - and maintained - for younger people, some of these problems could be alleviated. The overwhelming impression is that although there are quite a lot of bus services, none of them - especially the No. 35 - can be counted on. When an appointment has got to be kept absolutely on time, either a disproportionately long time has to be allowed to get there, or alternative means of transport, probably ill afforded, has to be sought, which further reduces the probably already inadequate income of the traveller."

Case Study B:

BRADFORD - PARK LANE, MARCHFIELDS, WEST BOWLING New Deal area - Overview of Transport Connections and Relationship to Social Exclusion Issues

Transport links to Bradford Centre and surrounding areas were felt by residents to be generally quite good, although complaints were made about reliability and the lack of Sunday services on some routes, and about prices. Complaints were also made about the volume and noise of traffic.

Subways across the main road are unpleasant and avoidance of them can trap people, particularly on a Sunday or in the evening when the bus route serving that road does not run. Although other services are very close, they stop on the other side of the roundabout. Crossing points are much more accessible on the Manchester Road nearer to Bradford.

The most concerned group encountered were the traders. Because there were no financial facilities nearby and main road buses were frequent enough for people to shop elsewhere, the number of traders was below the critical mass necessary to keep the area vibrant, which was a major contributor to the problems of the area.

Case Study C:

BRISTOL - BARTON HILL

The New Deal area is the historic neighbourhood of Barton Hill, which includes the core residential area known as Barton Hill and The Dings, a smaller residential area that is closer to the City Centre. The area is located on the southern edge of Lawrence Hill ward. It lies to the east of the traditional industrial heart of the city behind the railway station, and is bound on all sides by physical barriers that separate it from the city. These barriers include an urban motorway, a canal and a major pedestrian underpass.

The Dings is fairly obviously socially and spatially excluded. It is cut off from the main part of Barton Hill and from schools, community facilities and shops by the "spine road". There is a steep hill walk to local schools (25 minutes to the secondary). The road leading to the central part of Barton Hill is busy, uphill, winding and reputedly dangerous, as there is a narrow pavement and poor visibility for through traffic.

Barton Hill comprises social housing stock, consisting mostly of high-rise and low-rise blocks, some Edwardian terraced housing and comparatively modern, detached/semidetached/maisonette social housing. Some of the high rise blocks have been refurbished and concierge schemes put in, but there is an air of unkemptness about the area, including rubbish and abandoned cars. There is a useful range of small shops and a doctor's surgery, also a fairly large open space which is used for football and recreation. Barton Hill has a frequent, 10 minute, bus service to and from Bristol City Centre (Route 36 low-floor, single deck bus), but the journey time is long and the route is indirect. There are more frequent buses along the main road at the bottom of Barton Hill, which is a short walk.

There is a high proportion of lone mothers and older people in the Barton Hill neighbourhood. There are four supermarket buses a week, which are much appreciated, although mothers with buggies find one of them difficult to board and cannot get on one of the others if it is full up.

Overview of Transport Connections and Relationship to Social Exclusion Issues
Public transport in this area seems to be a very limiting factor, and is a cause of considerable inconvenience and irritation to a number of people. There are people spending a long time travelling quite short journeys because although some services are theoretically frequent, they can be unreliable. Choice, for example, of school, is being constrained by this inadequacy. Almost half of the household interviewees said they found travelling a problem, that there were places they wanted to go to that they could not get to and that it seemed expensive. It is clearly contributing to social exclusion.

We think it would be worth investigating the use of and routes of courtesy buses. Although we did not meet many people who used them regularly, those who did suggested that they are well used. It seems possible that they may take a significant number of potential passengers from the commercial public transport network and that the interaction between the two networks could be co-ordinated.

These case studies from the New Deal programme provide us with some idea of what it is to be trapped on a British social housing stock estate. Services which exist on paper are not provided in reality and the hours of operation - lack of availability in the evenings or on Sundays - serve to exclude inhabitants from leisure activities at mainstream leisure times (Raje et al, 2003a). These case studies mirror the experiences reported to us by inhabitants of Moor Park in North Tyneside with whom we have been working in transport action groups. Despite the extreme character of this transport deprivation, presently within the United Kingdom, we have no developed methodology which provides us with local, regional or national statistics on the extent or prevalence of transport deprivation or put differently experience of transport network failure. From the national statistics, we can gain information on how far a home or residence is from a bus stop but this is not combined with information on frequency of services or range of functions accessed by services (Lyons, 2003@ http://www.transport.uwe.ac.uk/LYONS-Inaugural.pdf).

The advent of new information communication technology opens up the opportunity for collecting transport service profiles for areas both as timetabled data and as real time data and for relating these to the availability of key social activities within an area: the extent of stranded mobility can be systematically measured, archived and used as a policy tool in transport planning. If commercial companies do not find it attractive to provide the transport services which are identified as necessary through such a mapping exercise then other forms of transport provision have to be considered. These range from enhanced subsidy, through demand responsive transport to the development of community transport schemes. Simply accepting the severance of substantial populations from necessary social services is not an option: currently, the failure to appropriately measure the problem has prolonged the policy tolerance of devastating social conditions (Raje, 2004).

3. Public service failure, the new distributed information communication technologies and the prospects for open managment in the transport sector.

There has been a public service failure in the welfare economy of Britain. Paradoxically, this public service failure has gone largely unrecorded in a context where increasing emphasis is placed upon evidence based policy. The 'evidence' has increasingly become the province of experts disconnected from a user base and no longer patrolled by traditional academic autonomy. In this context the new distributed technologies (Holmes, Hosking and Grieco, 2002) can be used by communities and service users to alert on public service failure and to improve public service delivery. This would be a new system of management - the open management of public services.

Commencing with the concept of public service failure, three major areas of public service are increasingly viewed as failing or having failed in Britain - transport, health and education. The term 'public service failure' is increasingly part of the social and political vocabulary of the United Kingdom. With colleagues, the term was initially coined and used to draw attention to the major failures of transport provision in low income areas: in presentations hosted by the Social Exclusion Unit of the Cabinet office and by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/zurich.html), within community transport forums in the north east of England (http://www.goneat.org.uk) and upon various web sites concerned with transport and social exclusion (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/zurich.html , http://www.goneat.org.uk), the term was used repeatedly to refocus attention on consequences of the rolling back of public sector resources and organisation for those on low income. The relationship between transport and social exclusion requires to be investigated in terms of the decline of the quality of public services enjoyed by those on low incomes or in otherwise constrained circumstances. Public service failure can be defined as the failure of the organs of government or governance to ensure the necessary infrastructure for the full participation of citizens and this failure has been particularly visible in transport and health (Raje et al, 2003). The term 'public service failure' has now been used by the Conservative Party in Parliament in the context of a campaign focusing on the worsening delivery of public services (see Appendices 1 http://www.geocities.com/allinonespot/grieco/appendix1.html and 2 http://www.geocities.com/allinonespot/grieco/appendix2.html) and consequently will enter the index of Hansard).

The visibility of public service failure has been greatly heightened by the advent of the new distributed information communication technologies. From farmers developing web diaries to communicate their frustration with Ministry performance around the foot and mouth crisis ( http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/footandmouth/index.html), to fuel tax protests and other transport protest web sites (http://www.geocities.com/the_odyssey_group/fueltaxcrisis/fueltaxcrisis.html), to the development of community monitoring of failure in the public health service, there has been an embracing of the use of the new distributed information communication technologies to record problems, to place politicians on warning and to enable the public to gain an overview of public service delivery on an evidential basis which is not controlled by Government. At the heart of this newly developed community monitoring capabilities is the distributed character of the new information communication technologies: the farmer sealed on his farm by foot and mouth restrictions can through the in-home character of communications be in contact with other similarly 'isolated' farmers and broadcast his views to the Ministry. He is no longer simply a recipient of information but a source and author of information that can be collected together in cooperation with others to shadow, reveal and critique government performance. Similarly, low income communities trapped by lack of income and poor public transport services can through in-home and community centre based information technology set up their own account of their circumstances and relay widely the difficulties experienced. The distributed character of the new information communication technology enables strategies to be developed by those previously unincorporated in governance which directly impact upon elected representatives and weaken their political base.

Communities in the constituency of the former Transport Minister Stephen Byers have set up community transport forum which broadcast their experiences directly onto the web (http://www.geocities.com/moorparkexploreclub); public service failure in the constituency of the former Minister responsible for public transport is directly revealed by the communities themselves through distributed technology. The combination of affordable in-home or in-journey communication technologies with the social connecting capabilities of the world wide web generate a new social distribution of organising options and opportunities for those who were historically excluded from decision making: the interactivity of the new information communication technology combined with the portability and small scale of the key components necessary for interactivity change not only the distribution of information but also the social distribution of influence.

This new found ability of communities to monitor, archive, shadow and interact with authorities through the interactivity of new forms of information communication technology creates opportunities for the development of new forms of management. The real time, wide coverage feedback capabilities of the new information age can be more appropriately harnessed for the management of organisations which service the public (Raje and Grieco, 2003). Historically, gaining information over wide areas was an expensive business and responding to complaint on the performance of any particular service a highly time lagged experience. The transaction costs of complaint were high for an individual and the difference made to systems operations negligible. Only where customers voted with their feet or share holders voted to veto were management amenable to the messages of mass client feedback. In the new information environment, clients and users of services are able to signal their complaints in real time and have these recorded and displayed in public discourse space at will. A recent community monitoring experiment in Newcastle (http://www.goneat.org.uk) had over seven thousand web hits in the week in which the monitoring exercise took place: this capability of recording, archiving and evaluating public service performance for the view of a global audience indicates the emergence or imminence of a new dimension of evaluation of management performance. Local performance is now universally viewable.

Within the transport sector, new information communication technologies could be used to summon reserve vehicles where existing transport arrangements have failed (Grieco, 1995; Raje et al. 2003): a mother waiting at a bus stop with a sick child on her way to a doctor's surgery could on a Wap phone check the divergence of her waiting time from that scheduled in the system and call for a replacement vehicle. Her call would not only bring a replacement vehicle to her and her sick child but would record and register inside the operators' system, the 'drift' of vehicles away from their scheduled times. This mother would now be part of an 'open management' system. The distributed feedback capabilities of the client base would become a tool which assisted in the better organisation of service delivery: a recorded account of system performance is being developed at low transaction costs to the client. User or community monitoring can be developed as part of public service management: the quality of interactive participation can now be harnessed not only in the more lagged participation of overhauling failing public service but also in the fine tuning of operations. To move beyond the demand responsive transport example, in health organisation patients can through interactive appointments systems play an active hand in rescheduling of their own appointments with substantial benefit to health systems which have experienced the high costs of missed appointments. The new interface possibilities between client and service in the public service arena are likely to require a rethink of our urban management systems.

4. Evidence from the base: community monitoring of transport failure and the electronic charting of demand.

Along with other colleagues in the Newcastle area (http://www.goneat.org.uk, http://www.geocities.com/moorparkexploreclub), colleagues in the Odyssey Group ( and colleagues at the Centre for Social Policy Studies, Ghana (http://www.geocities.com/csps_ghana), we have been exploring and expanding the practice of making use of the new distributed information communication technologies in the development of community monitoring of public service delivery. Increasingly, within the UK there is discussion of evidence based policy but the evidence base for policy in the area of public service failure and social exclusion has been inadequately addressed by government. The detailed operational failures experienced daily within the public service sector are not adequately recorded. For example, the systematic analysis of consumer complaints received little attention compared with arbitrarily derived yardsticks of adequate service provision (http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/newvision.html; see also appendix 1 @ http://www.geocities.com/allinonespot/grieco/appendix1.html): measures of accessibility for low income communities are not weighted by quality of public transport or by car ownership statistics within government evidence procedures. There are signs in the health sector that the systematic analysis of complaints is beginning to receive attention: a government website now displays an easy to access complaint data base (http://www.doh.gov.uk/nhscomplaints/).

In transport, no systematic analyses of complaints are available. Transport operators plan routes for low income public transport without reference to the location of doctors' surgeries and without regard to the service timings of other public facilities such as hospitals or interconnections with other transport modes (Raje et al. 2003b). Despite the information networking capabilities of modern organisations, competition law and negligence combine to fragment and fracture the interaction and interchange of health and transport facilities. Through the new distributed information communication technologies, local communities can begin to provide an account of these very fragmented and fractured provisions. Creating collective diaries which document the difficulties experienced in health journeys as a community and indicating the exact forms of provision which can remedy such deficiencies can be accomplished by a community on a lower transaction basis than the research costs of commissioned research which is frequently insensitive to local needs.

Within transport, there has been much discussion of the difficulties of ensuring that women, minority groups and the mobility impaired are adequately represented in transport user groups: the difficulties in attracting users to the sites of meetings are well recorded. Developing user networks through the use of the new information communication technology can assist in ensuring that those groups which are routinely absent are now represented or present. In a community monitoring exercise in Moor Park in North Tyneside, the development of web materials and recording of experience had a local community centre as its hub: this meant that young mothers at a toddler group were able to voice their views through the internet, older persons passing through on shopping or escorting journeys were able to contribute and the academics could pull up relevant materials from the web in the sight of the community.

Whilst community members and action researchers were involved in monitoring activities in Moor Park on the east of Newcastle, colleagues from Lemington and Newcastle City Council and the Newcastle disability forum were busy monitoring activities on the west of Newcastle: this was hubbed from offices in Newcastle City Council. Through bulletin boards and web interactions, with some use of mobile phones and e-mail, these two monitoring groups linked up. The larger monitoring exercise on this occasion was being conducted on the West of the City and its web site was fed by a stream of materials from the east of the city. The distribution of communities can make very positive contributions to monitoring exercises: the greater the spread of recording points, the more information that can be captured. Digicams were used to capture the experiences on the transport system of the disability forum, of mothers waiting at bus stops and other associated transport problems. This monitoring was followed up by a Transport and Social Exclusion forum in the City Council Chamber which was web cast and in which local communities talked to their transport experience including their experience of monitoring the system. On this occasion, the transport operators indicated that problems had been recorded, aired and communicated which they had not been aware of. Also present at this meeting were representatives of the social exclusion unit of the cabinet office. The morning of this meeting was devoted to community voices; the afternoon to operators and government representatives. The culture of the meeting was positive and progressive but one in which the community was clearly expert.

Interaction between the communities, ngos, action researchers, operators, regulators and council officers has taken a number of forms but the distributed character of the new information communciation technologies has been crucial in maintaining patterns of contact and exchange between the various stakeholders involved. In developing this interaction, the e-skilling of communities is an important consideration. On e-skilling, skill sharing sessions have been located in local community facilities but supported by subsequent e-exchanges with intermittent face-to-face arrangements. The e-mentoring capabilities developed over distance and over a year with Ghanaian colleagues proved useful inside of the North East Action on Transport developments (http://www.goneat.org.uk): sharing passwords to free web sites between the learning group and those with more practice enable substantial housekeeping to be done which keeps sites up and useful.

The NEAT activities provide an indication of the extent to which monitoring is now possible by communities. The development of software packages which give communities a readier start in framing what is to be monitored and how are clearly a potential area of development. At present, resources are being sought for the development of community maintenance inventories which can be used in order to monitor and improve public service delivery. Sharing formats and problems between communities is clearly going to be important in the utilisation of new information communication technologies in community bargaining for improved public services. Earlier in this short paper, it was indicated that there is now a Tory campaign focused upon the identification of public service failure: it is a campaign in which community monitoring is likely to figure. Already the game is set where Government is asked to produce its evidence on social exclusion impacts of any measure it adopts in the failing public service areas of health, transport and education. The interaction between political parties, polity, service users and the internet is likely to expand as a domain.

Electronic charting of public service failure is one side of the equation; the other is the electronic charting of public demand for services. Currently demand is increasingly measured simply in terms of markets: price and use became viewed as the appropriate measures. Since deregulation of the transport system, many subsidised bus routes have been removed and where routes have not been removed they have been converted into lengthy meandering journeys which do not meet the survival needs of the low income communities they are supposed to serve and secure a quality of life for (Raje, 2003).

Through electronic measures, demand which is real but currently ineffective can be charted. Currently those attempting to make use of 'care' transport services can find themselves shut out of the system because of communication overloading on a manned telephone hotline. Electronic reservation systems can be used to ensure special demands are met and if not met at least registered.

The use of electronic reservation systems can be also used to develop a better organised voluntary sector. Fleet management software package could be used amongst a pool of community cars. The pulling back of the public transport sector could be met by increased community provision in conjunction with car hire companies or car clubs. Currently, the ideology of reduced car use in order to meet environmental considerations can leave low income families in circumstances where they have to walk in conditions of sickness. There has been no research and no discussion of how many working class walking journeys are made in conditions of sickness and ill health. Recording these journeys would amount to recording the demand for appropriate transport provision (Hine and Grieco, 2003).

5. Improving delivery: interaction, continuous information feed and flexible scheduling.

As we have seen, in the health sector the systematic exploration of complaints and the displaying of those complaints transparently has already begun as a government practice (http://www.doh.gov.uk/nhscomplaints/). The displaying of complaints is a beginning however it does not make the most of the interactivity characteristics of the new information communication technologies and community abilities to harness these resources in the improvement of delivery. The development of user/organisation interfaces where users can contribute information on preferences, problem solutions and immediate requirements both in conditions of privacy and with transparent arenas of discourse being available is a matter of urgency in the current context of urban vulnerability and network failure. A register of complaints requires a display and feedback on actions taken.

The spread of information sources, the speed of communication on problems, the ability to process continuous information feed and the ability to more flexibly schedule activities are all features of the new distributed information communication technologies. Harnessing these characteristics can radically improve delivery: preferences can be better batched and managed together, customised arrangements are more easily made. Systems of public service delivery can be brought into a situation of public transparency enabling a better understanding of investment decisions which have to be made. The signs and signals of change are present already within the UK public service sector: the ramping up of the debate on public services is clearly under way, the requirements for the better servicing of the 'excluded' are likely to become increasingly transparent (Grieco, 2002), government pressure on organisations for better delivery is increasingly insistent, professional concerns on under-investment are increasingly noisy - the pressures are towards a more open system of management.

The thrust of this paper has been that public services have been failing, that new technologies enable community monitoring of this failure and that the combination of interactive communication between client and service and the pressures to improve service delivery are likely to result in open systems of public service management. The charting of user needs is increasingly likely to be a community rather than an expert competence and within this framework new intelligent transport solutions to stranded mobility are to be found (Raje and Grieco, 2003).

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