As a society, we seem to have moved towards the joint understanding that decarbonisation is a present and pressing policy objective. Transport produced 24% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 – the largest emitting sector. Despite this, there is a lack of overlap between decarbonisation outcomes and socioeconomic outcomes; one is rarely measured at the same time as the other. My PhD therefore asks: what are the social and spatial equity impacts of a transition towards net-zero transportation in the UK? Looking specifically at the East of England, my research uses the tools from the Arup City Modelling Lab to evaluate the best metrics for measuring socio-economic outcomes of decarbonised transport.

The base is a sophisticated model of transport flows, from Jaywick Sands to the Norfolk Broads; from the Isle of Ely to Dunwich Heath. Within this model, each individual agent has a profile, a set of needs, and a set of attributes. Agent-based scenarios are used to gauge how changes we make in the transport sector can have knock-on effects on individual welfare. East Anglia is a good jumping-off point for this research, given its mixture of rural countryside, smaller towns, and larger urban areas. What we learn from East Anglia, we can apply using the City Modelling Lab nationwide.