John Taylor
John Taylor, one of the founders of the modern community transport movement in the UK, died on 23 August after a battle with cancer. When John was a student at Oxford University in the 1970s he took a summer job in Edinburgh and found himself pushing people in wheelchairs up planks of wood to get them into vans to go on trips out of the city. He said that he looked around to try to find out how people did this properly and the message he got back was that they didn’t.
So, using his training as a solicitor, he drafted some laws and persuaded politicians to get these included in legislation. The temporary clauses that were then used to enable safe community minibus operation from the 1970s subsequently became section 19 and section 22 of the 1985 Transport Act.
John’s work was pioneering and often overlooked by those that had absolutely no idea that such a humble man had achieved such revolutionary successes. When we look around today, John’s work and investment in people is everywhere. John’s legacy lives on through the many people he has supported and guided over more than 50 years.
I was very fortunate to have known and worked with him since the late 1990s, when I read a brilliant report that included a far more rigorous treatment of travel needs than I had seen elsewhere. An understanding of need that combined public policy, social justice, business, economics and law reflected the subjects John had studied at university. In the 25 years I have been using John’s framing of need it has never let me down once.
On the commission to develop accessibility planning approaches across the country, John was one of the key team leaders steering the work, and in the years that followed we worked on many projects to continually improve and refine these approaches.
We were very fortunate in Scotland that John loved climbing the mountains and I spent many happy hours discussing transport and other topics with him on the mountains.
Derek Halden, STSG Secretary