Unger, N., Noka, V., Meyer, J., Cludius, J. and Kreye, K. (2026) Access Denied: Transport Poverty in Europe: Estimating Levels of Transport Poverty across the Affordability, Availability and Accessibility Dimensions to Highlight Policy Priorities for a Socially Inclusive and Climate Friendly Transport System. Berlin: Oeko-Institut e.V. for Greenpeace CEE.

Unger, Noka, Meyer, Cludius and Kreye formulate transport poverty as a multi-dimensional condition in which affordability, availability, accessibility, adequacy and time burden intersect. The iconic idea is that a climate-friendly transport transition cannot be socially legitimate if it leaves people unable to reach essential goods, services, work, care or social life without excessive financial or temporal cost. Its theoretical contribution is to move beyond income-based poverty and show transport deprivation as infrastructural, spatial and embodied. Methodologically, the report combines European survey datasets, affordability indicators, availability measures and demographic analysis to identify affected groups and territorial patterns. Its conceptual operation is distributive diagnosis: transport systems are evaluated by the uneven burdens they impose on bodies, budgets and daily schedules. The bridge to the wider field joins social policy, climate transition, mobility justice and urban-rural accessibility, making transport poverty a precise policy object rather than a loose metaphor of exclusion.