The role of information in decision making for transport

Commissioned science review for the DTI Foresight Initiativ

Transport's digital age transition

2014 marks the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web. We have seen some remarkable developments as part of the digital age revolution in the last quarter of a century. These have taken place concurrently with a motor age that is possibly past its prime. A number of major motor manufacturers have faced disappointing sales or financial crisis alongside several countries seeing a halt to the historic trend of growing car use. The co-existence of the motor age and the digital age prompts this paper to consider the hypothesis that society is undergoing a fundamental transition from a regime of automobility to something significantly different. The paper considers what has characterized the motor age and proceeds to examine the digital revolution and how this is changing people’s means to access people, goods, services and opportunities. The range of interactions between the motor age and the digital age are addressed, underlining the difficulty in establishing the net consequenceof one for the other. The new debates concerning ‘peak car’ are considered in which the digital age is identified as potentially one key factor responsible for observed changes in car use. The paper then focuses upon a socio-technical conceptualization of society known as the Multi-Layer Perspective to examine its hypothesis. Support or not for the hypothesis is not, as yet, established. Transport’s future in the digital age is uncertain and the paper sets out some views on resulting policy considerations and research needs

Future demand: Summary report

New Zealanders are driving nearly 30 billion kilometres each year in their cars, vans, utes and SUVs. The road network also carries 70 percent of all of our freight. As a nation we have built and continue to maintain a network of roads to allow us to make these trips.The road network is worth more than $60 billion and costs more than$1 billion a year to maintain. We are planning to invest $10 billion over the next ten years to change the shape of the network to improve its quality and capacity.This would be relatively straightforward if we knew how demand would change. The challenge we face, however, is there have recently been changes to the patterns of demand for personal travel.From 1980 to 2004 we saw an annual increase in demand in the order of three percent per year. This highlighted the importance of tackling congestion and improving safety and gave us assurance revenue would grow to cover the costs of a growing network. From 2005 to 2013 total demand only grew by 0.25 percent per year.We now face an uncertain future. We cannot be certain demand will return to pre-2005 levels of growth nor can we be certain it will remain flat. This means we can no longer rely on traditional forecasting models alone to help us to decide how to invest.The aim of this project was to explore the uncertainty around demand for personal travel, car travel in particular, which represents 77 percent of the total kilometres travelled on our roads. We did this by developing four future scenarios which explored the possible impact on travel of our use of digital technology and also the impact of energy costs on future travel demand.The goal was not to create predictions of the future; nor was it to create a view on what our preferences were for the future transport system. Our goal was to produce a range of plausible futures. This would allow us to improve the likelihood the investment decisions we make today will be right for the future.The conclusions of our work were:1.When we think about creating a thriving New Zealand we should recognise we are trying to improve access not just mobility. This can be achieved in three different ways: with good transport systems, with good spatial planning, or by improving digital access. We need to integrate our thinking across these three areas to achieve the optimal outcome.2.To reduce the uncertainty we face we should seek to better understand the factors affecting the changing patterns of demand and refresh our demand models accordingly. We should look both at social trends and also speed in development, take-up and impact of new technologies.3.To ensure resilience of the access system we develop for New Zealand we should seek to build in flexibility where we can. This will allow us to respond more quickly to changing patterns of demand and reduce the likelihood we will make investments which will become unnecessary.4.We need to recognise the investment decisions we make will shape patterns of demand and not just respond to them. We should move away from the approach of seeking to simply predict future demand and then provide for it. We should instead debate the sort of access we want and decide how to invest to support the future

Transport Direct market research programme: Findings and implications from phase 1

Department of Transport repor

Handling uncertainty in transport planning and decision making - Report of a roundtable discussion held in London on 20 July 2018

In the 1700s, the French philosopher Voltaire reportedly said “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” The transport sector is becoming increasingly alive to how uncertain the future is. There is significant (or ‘deep’) uncertainty about the extent to which existing trends, relationships, technologies, economic and social forces, preferences and constraints will carry into the future. Uncomfortable though it may be, there is a need in our transport planning and decision making to avoid absurdity and address this. This report reflects the insights gained from a roundtable workshop in London convened to discuss the matter.For some, absurdity concerns the continuation of a longstanding norm in transport planning of appraising future prospects through a reliance on being able to judge what the most likely future is or, in forecasting terms, what the central projection can be considered to be (with management of uncertainty through some form of error band either side of this). Such approaches no longer command a professional or public consensus. The notion of ‘most likely’ is either being challenged or a divergence of views exists over which type of future can be deemed most likely.Orthodox notions of predicting the future are giving way to scenario planning in which multiple alternative scenarios – substantially different pictures of what course of events might unfold - are entertained. One of the challenges here is in judging whether the true extent of uncertainty is being accounted for, distinguishing between probable (likely to happen), plausible (could happen) and possible (might happen) futures. Views are subjective (and further coloured by opinion on preferable (desirable) futures). This can appear uncomfortable compared to the illusion of a well-defined most likely future that frames the decision making task. Yet the act of embracing and accommodating rather than concealing uncertainty holds the prospect of better supporting and informing decision making.The following proposition emerges for an approach that may be especially well suited to the early strategic planning and optioneering stages of the policymaking process. Set against a wish to fulfil a high level vision, the aim is to consider the implications of different courses of policy action in the face of multiple plausible futures. Does a course of action align with the vision in each plausible future considered or does it align well in some and not in others? The intention is to reconcile risk and yield. The best course of policy action for one assumed future may give high yield in relation to the vision but may also carry a high risk of misalignment or even failure in other plausible futures. Meanwhile, a course of action which has reasonable alignment across multiple futures may offer a lower (but acceptable) yield but with lower risk.As becomes apparent from the considerations above, the handling of uncertainty is a wicked problem that is inherently insoluble. It is wicked in the sense that it concerns: (i) divergence in views, understanding and values across stakeholders; (ii) knowledge gaps and a lack of ‘evidence’; and (iii) needing to deal with complex relationships between multiple considerations. This should not imply policymaking paralysis if progress can be made as outlined above in terms of embracing and accommodating uncertainty.In critically examining how uncertainty has been, and continues to be, handled in mainstream transport planning practice and exploring the prospects for changing this, the following key issues emerged through the roundtable discussion:Transport planning inertia – Well established approaches, procedures and norms can conspire against developing and adopting new approaches that may be better able to handle uncertainty but which are unfamiliar and potentially challenging to communicate. Acknowledging uncertainty can have connotations of poor confidence and conviction in decisions being made – for example in the context of public inquiries.Learning by doing – The application of new approaches should be strongly encouraged, with a ‘learning by doing’ philosophy where experiences of those new approaches and the lessons learned are shared with others. Continued dialogue of the sort fostered by the roundtable is important. Guidance should be seen as an accompaniment to this evolutionary approach and as something which itself must be flexible and evolving. The growing signs of transport authorities wishing to take account of deep uncertainty in their decision making are to be welcomed.Closing down uncertainty – To avoid decision making paralysis, the exposure or opening out of uncertainty through scenario planning needs to be followed by an appropriate process of closing down. Closing down refers to how the exposed uncertainty is then accounted for in informing and enabling decision making. Closing down can take the form of concealing, reducing or accommodating uncertainty and distinguishing between them is important. Uncertainty may be concealed by reversion to focusing upon a most likely future. It may be reduced through better monitoring and understanding of change taking place or through greater effort to control the shaping of the future. Accommodation of uncertainty (as outlined above) involves making sense of what to do in decision making terms with the uncertainty that has been exposed.Analytical fitness for purpose – Especially in the face of finite time and resources, it is important that the analytical approach supporting each stage in the policymaking process is fit for purpose. There is a risk that emphasis is currently being put in the wrong place in terms of analytical effort and rigour. Heavyweight modelling tools may be used to address a small number of scenarios when, particularly at the earlier stages in the policymaking process, simpler (though not to infer less robust) analytical tools can be more effective in exploring the uncertainty space of plausible futures and enabling dialogue and development of views of actors in the process.Communication is key – The analytical tools will only ever be a part of the wider process of examining and interpreting the uncertainty faced. It is important that the actors involved in that process - from the analysts to the decision makers themselves - are enabled rather than confused by how the tools are used and their results conveyed. There is a balance to be struck between the breadth and depth of examination of the uncertainty space. There is also a need to recognise the place of both ‘narrative’ and ‘numbers’ in order to ensure effective engagement with actors and to communicate the credibility of, and insights from, scenarios analysis.Guidance and leadership – The current existence of guidance for appraisal, including the handling of uncertainty, may intend to provide latitude for interpretation rather than ‘rules’ to be complied with. However, this is not always how guidance is treated in practice. As approaches to handling uncertainty are evolved, it will be particularly important that accompanying guidance is enabling rather than constraining. This may require that practitioners are guided on how to use the guidance (with a role for case studies). Leadership will also be critical within organisations in providing staff with appropriate direction, mandate and agency to address uncertainty.Resources and expertise - We may be facing a perfect storm in transport planning: greater uncertainty over the future at a time of depleted resources and capabilities to address business as usual, let alone the handling of uncertainty. One means of starting to address this would be to consider how available resources can be redistributed across the transport planning and decision making process alongside seeking to reconsider the makeup of experts required to handle uncertainty and communicate it to decision makers. Handling uncertainty must become integral to mainstream practice rather than a bolt-on to it, with the latter risking being misaligned and ignored

Transport and society

In 1963, the Buchanan Report in the UK advocated a combination of new road capacity, improved public transport and traffic restraint as a means to tackle congestion. Forty years on, and the advice from many transport experts remains the same. However, the scale and complexity of the problems associated with a mobility-dependent society have grown. The need for politicians to make tough but realistic policy decisions on transport is now becoming unavoidable. They must confront the realities of living with the car as must the general public. Policymakers now also have social well-being and sustainable development moving higher on their agendas alongside transport. Against such a backdrop, the paper makes the case for transport research, policy and practice to acknowledge more fully the inherent links between transport and society. It argues that greater recognition and understanding of such links is crucial to confronting the present realities. Transport does not merely serve society: it shapes society, as in turn society shapes transport. The future of each is dependent on the other, and this fact must be recognized. The paper advocates in turn that the transport profession must move from its ,heartlands in engineering and economics also to embrace more fully such disciplines as sociology and psychology. A factual picture of the many facets of present-day society is presented and the implications for travel demand are discussed. Through considering phenomena such as social norms and habitual behaviour, it is then argued that the travel choices and behaviour of individuals are not simply a matter of economic optimization. This points to the need for decision-makers to be furnished with better evidence about the transport problems faced and the potential efficacy of measures that might be taken. Discussion of public attitudes and the role of the media are included in the context of assessing how politicians can be encouraged and supported in their implementation of realistic but unpopular policies. Evidence and experience within the paper are UK based, although many of the issues and arguments apply world wide. © 2004 Taylor and Francis Ltd