The Commission on Travel Demand recommends a new approach to understanding transport futures. This is welcomed, but a first step is needed.
Last week, to much fanfare in transport planning circles, the Commission on Travel Demand published its long-awaited report on how travel demand is changing in the UK, the uncertainties behind it, and what this means for predicting the future. Naturally, ever curious to see how futures is slowly weaving its way into transport planning, over the extended weekend I gave it a read.
This post is not intended as a review of the report itself. The Commission has worked diligently over many months, collecting the evidence that informs their 10 conclusions. For what its worth, overall it is good work. The explicitre-cognition that travel demand is shaped by external forces not quite understood yet is welcomed. The evidence of change is compelling, even if the evidence of the why is not quite there yet, or not quite as compelling. The range of organisations who provided evidence was a bit ‘same old’-y, but I don’t think that is through the fault of the research done. Nor does it invalidate the findings.
What interests me most is recommendation 1:
Recommendation 1: A FUTURES Lab should be established. The Dutch model of a cross-governmental FUTURES lab should be replicated. This would allow a more integrated approach to understanding the changing role of transport in society. A range of disciplines and perspectives should be used to develop plausible social futures against which to plan transport policy. It should include regular rapid evidence reviews of changes in the full range of social and technological issues highlighted in this report including changes in youth travel, healthcare provision, pensions, education and employment. This would be an extension to some of the studies commissioned by the National Infrastructure Commission as part of its first National Infrastructure Assessment. The current Foresight Future of Mobility study should also provide a robust start point for the lab. Work commissioned by the Department for Transport should be informed by the FUTURES lab and feed back to it.
It is hard to disagree with this recommendation. The establishment of foresight capability within Government with the intent of influencing future policy confined to the Dutch. The Finns and the Swedish have delivered similar, based upon an ethos of a ‘contract with future generations’ where policy making is integrated into decision-making focussed on long term outcomes. To help balance the often short-term decision making demanded in everyday practice.
But to see such a lab as a facility that undertakes research, and who’s role is to provide evidence to support decision making frameworks is to not see their full potential. To name an obvious example, if such futures capabilities simply churned out numbers and studies that fit within WebTAG requirements, is that not simply resource replicated.
For such a lab to have a truly significant impact, it needs to shape not just the conversation on the future, but on how the future should be thought of. Take, for example, scenario planning. A commonly accepted method of considering the future, that is interpreted in a number of different ways. Transport economists would understand scenarios in terms of economic predictions, sociologists in terms of social change, planners in terms of development enabled. The acceptability of extreme scenarios to test assumptions is always hotly debated, and even marginal deviations from the core scenario are often hotly debated.
The methodologies for understanding the future are relatively settled. So a Future Lab defining itself by such methods is easy. But defining by tools is not enough. What is needed is common ground, and common understanding on the role that strategic foresight can play to support strategic transport decisions. It is critical that this is debated before simply taking an existing approach, and tacking it onto the end or beginning of existing processes.
The Commission’s report also touches upon, but does not make it quite explicit in the text, how it is important to consider a number of approaches to understanding the future. I have to say personally I am a fan of the decide and provide approach being pioneered by Transport for Greater Manchester, as it represents a boldness and willingness that is so common in future shapers. Predict and provide also gets a mention.
📷True, dat (Source: Noah Sussman)
System’s thinking dictates that, as much as making a plan based upon such approaches and understanding the systems level interventions needed is important, feedback loops are a critical component. In the ‘usual’ transport planning model, such feedback loops are understood in terms of scheme impacts on traffic, and potentially work on economic impact. Yet if the assumption is that society is influencing transport in unknown ways, how transport planners understand such feedback mechanisms even where they do not touch transport directly will be an important role of such a lab.
For instance, lets assume it remains government policy to increase rail fares by inflation +1%. By doing so, this could reduce discretionary expenditure for some households. Accordingly, they do not go out as often (fewer trips), but may order cheaper items online (more trips). Such effects are second order, but understanding such feedback loops of transport interventions where the route is not directly in the transport sector is lacking.
Accordingly, I would recommend that another approach for any Futures Lab be roughly as so:
Foresee significant trends that may impact upon transport demand, and the uncertainties associated with these;
Engage with a wide knowledge and stakeholder base in conversations on the impacts of such trends, and what we can do to understand them better;
Test our assumptions on the future through experimentation and prototyping at a scale sufficient to answer the policy questions posed;
Where possible, iterate such tests for new hypotheses to learn more;
Establish a knowledge and capability feedback loop to ensure that not only is this shared, but that our assumptions of each trend are constantly iterated and challenged.
Naturally, I am interested in establishing such a lab (and anyone who is the same should email me so we can chat!), and my interest comes from its potential radicalness. What the Commission’s report shows is that our assumptions on the future of travel demand need to be radically reassessed and challenged. The recommendations partly reflect this. So let’s be radical in implementing them. I look forward to the discussion.