Question

how does transport system becomes a means of livelihood in a long form for reading and reflection

Answer 1

How does transport development contribute to the sustainable livelihoods (SL) approach? Can future transport research adopt and integrate the ideas embedded in the SL framework? The author examines the sustainable livelihoods (SL) approach and differentiates between the urban and rural contexts to contrast the extremes of transport characteristics and operating environments. The paper also highlights the impact of transport on livelihood assets; the transforming structures and processes involved, and identifies future priorities for research.

A search of published and grey literature related to links between transport and livelihoods, reveals that:

the transport sector is associated largely with improvements in physical capital. However, access to transport and other services such as schools, clinics and markets is integral and contributory to the development of all capital assets; hence transport practitioners have a significant role to play in understanding and supporting SL as part of a multi-sectoral analysis of community lifethe implementation of a SL approach requires the active participation of all sectors that have a vested interest in increasing people's capital assets. At issue for the transport sector is how it should be perceived within this analytical framework, and what sort of contribution it can make towards the promotion of sustainable livelihoodsnatural capital may suffer as a result of transport development, most often in the form of environmental degradation. This is not just an urban problem associated with the high volumes of traffic, rural road construction can have profound effects on slope stability, erosion and natural drainage patternsmany surveys indicate that while transport development has improved the condition of the poor, the very poor are unlikely to be affected. They often do not have a sufficient standard of living to take advantage of transport improvementsthe livelihoods approach reminds us that transport is a service industry and thus a means to an end, not an end in itself. Therefore the development of transport has to be seen in the wider context of individual, household and community developmentthe impacts of transport needs to be addressed beyond the basic level of economics, taking account of social and environmental concerns and aspirations.

The application of the livelihoods approach in the transport sector is currently very limited. In order to promote its application, practitioners need to acquire additional knowledge to understand the impacts and interactions of transport and livelihoods. The author identifies:

a need to describe the activity patterns of the poor, relating these to different household attributes, as well as to different patterns of social organisation and land use structures. Policymakers would then be able to identify how access and mobility needs are related to differences in these attributes, and hence the extent to which policy initiatives (e.g. different approaches to health care provision) can influence travel generationurban - rural linkages are clearly an important component of both urban and rural livelihoods. There is a need to better understand these linkages (e.g. what they are, and how do they contribute to both urban and rural livelihood) and to examine what role transport plays in supporting and maintaining these linkagesthe need to incorporate previous experiences collected from impact studies of transport interventions, into the appraisal of new schemes. For example, analysis of policy and operational interventions (such as subsidies or new services) directly targeted at the poorthe need to remodel impact studies of urban restructuring (for example the development of new towns and satellite cities, or internal restructuring directly aimed at the urban poor) to incorporate a greater awareness of how transport has been used to support these activities and what the impact has been. Perhaps even more crucial is the need to better understand the dynamics of urban poor settlement, and how transport reacts to these changes over time.