Care in transit: Design for passengers and homelessness support
The report by Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) created in conjunction with research from La Trobe University on transport precinct design for passengers, transport and homeless support, has now been completed and is available for download below.
Transport precincts here and around the globe play an important role in users’ lives. For some, the spaces are used exclusively for transit, for others experiencing homelessness or people living precariously (PLP), transit precincts provide access to essential basic amenities and offers both safety and community.
While not directly providing homelessness services, services are frequently delivered within TfNSW transit environments; making them uniquely positioned to help identify how infrastructure can better serve in the delivery of homeless services and help improve the overall environment for all customers.
The work in this project offers up inclusive design principles, best practice guidelines, and stakeholder frameworks as the foundation and way forward to improve delivery of services for homeless transport customers, rough sleepers, and PLP.
Background
Homelessness in and around train stations is a global issue. In 2015, Sydney saw a substantial increase in rough sleepers, highlighting the urgent need to address growing homelessness in and around Sydney transport precincts.
Transit hubs are often used for the provision of services for PLP and TfNSW understand this as a critical opportunity to help improve the delivery of coordinated and cross-sector service solutions for PLP. TfNSW needs to balance how stations and precincts assist delivery of PLP services while not diminishing overall customer experience, community connection, or service delivery.
One of the challenges faced in this endeavour is the breadth of stakeholder partners for consultation in strategy and policy. This research promotes the idea that consistent engagement pathways and a shared framework are necessary to deliver the most impact. Working collaboratively with transport policy, strategy, and project teams along with frontline staff the work is anchored into two overarching priorities:
- Design and manage train stations as inclusive care hubs
- Strengthen collaboration with care providers at stations to support vulnerable users.
The comprehensive research undertaken for this work included literature reviews, site observations, service mapping, focus groups, interviews, and workshops
Design principles
TfNSW identified inclusive design as the core value with which to pursue their infrastructure improvement program and aim to ‘improve the quality, reach, and experience of transport facilities, services and operational management’.
The design guidelines commissioned by TfNSW led by research teams from La Trobe University in conjunction with Inclusive Design Pty Ltd and the University of Sydney are intended to capture the below principles:
- Create conducive circumstances for the delivery and receipt of care, in all its forms to the most vulnerable of station and network customers.
- Reconcile care for vulnerable station and network users with the needs of other users while maintaining or enhancing the wider community’s experience of railway stations.
The design principles detailed in the report provide a clear outline, covering elements that contribute to effective care infrastructure. This includes the physical infrastructures of care, understanding the diversity of PLP, and the challenges to reconciling needs amongst other factors.
Stakeholder framework
The stakeholder framework developed here aims to identify and structure a fuller range of understandings and conversations between stakeholders. It provides a pathway for the development of inter-organisational relationships and helps identify opportunities and challenges which include:
- Current use and safe management of the train network and stations
- Monitoring of trends in order to strategically prepare for future use
- Engaging with development/re-development projects that have an influence on future use of trains and stations by PLP, social and other services
The report lists the framework’s fuller objectives, which includes the desire to map information sharing, skills and resources, the creation of conditions for collaborative innovation to better address the care landscape for PLP and supporting organisational training needs for inclusive place-based and trauma-informed practices.
It also helps to identify opportunities and challenges which include:
- Current use and safe management of the train network and stations
- Monitoring of trends in order to strategically prepare for future use
- Engaging with development/re-development projects that have an influence on future use of trains and stations by PLP, social and other services
In order to support the complex and diverse perspectives of stakeholders, the framework plots appropriate ‘levels of engagement’ by classifying stakeholder core functions and levels of influence on outcomes. This process helps define relationship management, how stakeholders are included in planning and decision making, and ensuring any interdependences become apparent.
Key learnings and recommendations
Homelessness in and around transport hubs reflects systemic gaps in the care landscape and the report spells out the multitude of sometimes complex relationships between stakeholders.
The framework illustrates the importance of having a system where multiple agencies, services and stakeholders can intersect, and further, provides a pathway for the development of inter-organisational relations.
The researchers assert that inclusive collaboration across several key themes is essential to meet these objectives and to help embed care into the management of spaces.
The core areas for this work includes:
- Strategic partnerships and governance
- Inclusive station design and infrastructure
- Access to Services and mobility
- Staff capability and support
- Lived experience and advisory engagement
- Research and evaluation
- Pilot Initiatives
They also recommend key themes in core pillar be prioritised for action in two tiers:
- Foundational actions – critical to ensure immediate impact and establishing conditions of success
- Enhancing actions – which build on foundations to expand reach and deepen effectiveness over time.
It is also recommended that the implementation of discrete actions across each of these pillars will afford the greatest impact and produce best outcomes. Lastly, pilot frameworks and interventions need to be established and evaluated in busy transit hubs ahead of broader implementation.
Download reports
Four reports from the project have been made avaiable. Click on the lonks below to download.
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