The 1990s paradigm shift - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 105

7 The 1990s paradigm shift

New realism and sustainable development

7.1 Introduction
The first half of the 1990s was marked by an unusual conjunction of events
surrounding transport policy and planning. Their effect was not so much to bring about
an immediate change in the nature of transport programmes but rather to change
the terms of reference within which their underpinning policies were debated. The
prevailing view of transport altered fundamentally and, dare one say it, permanently
- a so-called 'paradigm shift'. The erstwhile dominant view of 'predict and provide'
(Vigar 2002) did not simply swing to its opposite pole of 'predict and prevent' (Owens
1995) but there was no longer the implicit assumption that forecast traffic volumes
should be catered for wherever possible. In many ways this transformation was but a
more general application of the principle of demand management which had come to
be accepted in urban transport planning in the 1970s - and for not dissimilar reasons.
In terms of intellectual argument there were two distinct but mutually reinforcing
strands. Put simply, continuing as before was seen as neither practicable nor desirable.
These two propositions arose from more complex sets of arguments advanced under
the respective banners of 'the new realism' (in relation to transport specifically) and
'sustainable development' more generally
However, in a subject of such practical importance as transport, it is doubtful how
far or how quickly intellectual arguments alone can bring about actual policy change.
Arguably there has to be something more tangible, more visible to the ordinary person,
which heightens awareness and provides a focus around which relatively esoteric issues
can be seen to have concrete expression. In the 1990s this focus was provided by the
inter-urban roads programme.
At the end of the 1980s, as the economy moved from 'boom' to 'bust', so the trend
of traffic growth on which the expanded programme had been founded began to
evaporate. Not only was there less pressing need to cater for growth, there were also
fewer resources to fund it. Hence short-term political expediency in reducing public
expenditure happened to coincide with the more abstract arguments of principle. The
test of how genuinely these arguments had been absorbed would however have to wait
until economic growth reasserted itself at the end of the 1990s.
Last but not least a defining political change at the end of the 1980s was the dramatic
ousting of Margaret Thatcher. Under her successor, John Major, the Conservative
Government took on a less evangelical, more conciliatory tone. Many of the transport
policy options considered in the 1990s in response to an emerging 'new agenda' would
have been unthinkable a decade earlier.