Something about rural transport: Back to the Future
That was the brief for the Kinloch Rannoch Community Trust Newsletter. This is what I wrote:
Back to the Future
“Why does 20 minutes take 8 hours?”
I had never thought of it before. Like so many things- if you haven’t experienced it, you don’t appreciate it.
35+ years go I was in rural Lincolnshire (very rural and madly flat) talking to people about their lives. They weren’t talking about entering a time warp or a Black Hole. It was about how much of the day it took up to have a 20min outpatient’s appointment in Lincoln if they didn’t have access to a car and had to use a non-emergency ambulance. There was no bus service (and still isn’t – I just checked). Oh, and the mega-metropolis that is Lincoln is all of 26 minute drive away.
Working in public transport since 1986, and living in Kinloch Rannoch since 2019, there is sometimes a sense of Back to the Future when the same issues keep coming up about rural transport: living your life can be very hard without access to a car; bus services don’t really meet travel needs very well needing long journeys and wait times; relying on friends and community transport is a real lifeline – especially for medical trips.
Though it is interesting that rural transport is seen by many in the industry as being at the forefront of thinking differently and offering new ideas and services for the future. Some of the “hot” areas which show promise are shared vehicles (and peer-to-peer car sharing), multi-purpose transport (using the same vehicle for deliveries and public trips) and rural mobility hubs (to allow easy quick changes between all forms of transport, including DRT) On the latter, moving to Rannoch I felt lucky and happy to learn that DRT was available - I have enjoyed my chats with Jurgen.
The Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community (www.ruralmobility.scot) is a voice and showcase for what local communities in Scotland are doing to make transport and connectivity better. For example, with SRITC we all recently visited the Tomatin Community Hub, a multi-functional, inclusive, and sustainable rural community hub that provides employment and local services for the 660 residents of the village of Strathdearn in the Scottish Highlands. Wind farm finance has helped get that going, which is fortunate for them. But the hub was making mobility work better.
The future? One thing in my “bucket list” which I would love to do, is to travel on a postbus. Back in 1986 I had a thick postbus timetable book for the whole of the UK. It was a thing of beauty. Scotland and East Anglia were the places to be. I never made the trip then. Now that book would be empty. Maybe they’re the future….
Fig from: Accessibility: The Rural Challenge (1979) Malcolm Moseley