Jools Townsend, CEO, Community Rail Network

Modal integration is a huge, underestimated challenge we must overcome

Community rail delivers wide-ranging community engagement initiatives and community-led projects, which play an important role in social inclusion, wellbeing, community confidence and economic development. The movement promotes and widens access to rail as a key part of sustainable, healthy travel, while advising rail partners on local needs, helping communities get the most from their railways and have a voice on transport.

I’m going to cut to the chase because I’ve not heard it said yet today: modal integration I don’t think exists in the vast majority of places across the UK, and it’s a massive, underestimated problem. It’s in the way of having a better used railway, in the way of achieving net zero transport and in the way of allowing our communities to be sustainable and inclusive and liveable into the future.

What do I mean when I say modal integration isn’t there? I’m looking through the lens of sustainable and inclusive mobility, with the ultimate goal of everyone being able to get around and access the places they need and the opportunities they want, while not impinging on their own or others’ health, safety or wellbeing, or the health, safety and wellbeing of future generations.

I’m thinking about the sustainable travel hierarchy, prioritising active travel, public transport and shared mobility over the private car. I’m thinking about the evidenced need to reduce private car use and car dependency, to decarbonise transport and tackle transport poverty and exclusion. I’m thinking about the three in 10 adults who don’t have access to a car, predominantly those on the lowest incomes and marginalised groups, who rely on public transport and stand to gain the most from change in this space.

Looking through that lens, good modal integration with rail is not about installing more car parking at train stations. That does nothing to help those without a car to access rail, it further locks in car dependency, it encourages traffic and pollution in our local places, and it can divert investment in, and attention to, measures to help people to access rail via climate safe, healthy, inclusive means.

Good modal integration also doesn’t just mean cycle parking at stations or having a bus stop outside or a crossing – although these things are a good start, and they aren’t a given. For me, modal integration means a shift in thinking on transport, towards a truly holistic approach. It means safe walking and cycling links all the way to places where people live, work and visit, it means buses that arrive and leave at the right times and in the right places for the trains. It means good links with community transport and shared mobility schemes, especially where bus services have been cut. It means clear way finding, access for all, and never having to run the gauntlet – or run at all – between services. It means affordable ticketing and easy planning for all journeys, the station as a mobility hub, and the railway as a backbone of a sustainable transport system that works for all.

It also, crucially, means engaging continually and meaningfully with communities, local government and working with partners across transport, in collaboration, not competition. It means drawing on local knowledge and insights to tell us what’s not working and what is. And it means thinking well beyond the passenger. We don’t just need to better understand how people are getting to and from stations now, and the views of current passengers, we need to get to grips with journeys that are habitually made by car or dismissed by those without a car as unfeasible. Only by engaging with communities can we understand those potential journeys as well as the challenges of those made already, and then work together and with communities to unpick the blockers, barriers and issues.

In community rail, we’re all about engaging and empowering communities, working with rail and transport partners, building connections and shining a light on local needs, and we’re increasingly going beyond rail. Pulling partners together across modes and opening up green, end-to-end journeys, and it’s really fruitful important work, delivering social value, improving and enhancing local places, and influencing transport behaviours. But it isn’t easy. Because the transport sector isn’t currently oriented in this way, towards holistic, collaborative and empowering work. But I’m full of hope for the future. I think events like this show us that there is a growing recognition within transport that we need to break free of the silos, embrace collaboration, and work with communities as partners, towards the change we need.