Postscript - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 432

The extent to which such growth will be physically possible varies from place to
place. However with the increasing population size and density of urban areas it is
inevitable that, because of greater congestion, or because of pricing or other measures
taken to combat it, there will be pressures to substitute or shorten trips and to transfer
to non-car modes. As is already evident in Inner London this could feed through
into a slowing or decline in car ownership. A situation in which people come under
increasing restraint on car use in towns but are expected to continue to utilise cars at
will for travel between them is not only functionally inconsistent, it is also culturally
incoherent. Prolonged exposure to higher oil prices and higher motoring taxes for
larger cars will reinforce this. As now there will be sections of the population who
prefer a car-dependent lifestyle and who - if they can afford it - will choose to live and
work in places where they can maintain this, but as a proportion of the total they will
reduce over time.
Such changes expose the fallibility of adopting a 'business as usual' scenario as
the basis of strategic transport planning. The models which the Eddington and RAC
Foundation studies adopt to produce their reference case forecasts are predicated on
the absence of behavioural change. And yet, in the context just described, behavioural
change is bound to be a major feature - more so if public policy is deliberately orientated
to promote it. However the forecasts do have value in demonstrating what 'business
as usual' would imply and hence in drawing attention to the extent of policy change
which is needed if their predicted outcomes are not to materialise (if only as self-
fulfilling prophesies). As Susan Owens observed more than a decade ago we need to
move from thinking in terms of 'predict and provide' to 'predict and prevent' (Owens
1995).
As Hickman and Banister noted in the quotation heading this chapter it is not
possible to change direction by taking as given those practices which have put us along
our present path. We need to identify features of our present institutional and policy
environment which were conceived at a time when circumstances were different
and when the adverse consequences (as we now see them) were not or could not be
appreciated. How might things have been done differently if we'd had the benefit of
foresight and what opportunities are there to 'retro-fit' the necessary changes now?
There is potentially a very long list, but the focus here is on measures which
• could make a big difference
• if not wholly original, are outside current mainstream thinking
• should be politically deliverable.
By nature the measures are designed to release the potential for behavioural change,
i.e. where there is good reason for believing there is suppressed demand, rather than
seeking to bring about enforced change. That said, some complementary action would
be logical and indeed all the measures are seen as proceeding in parallel with current
best practice in sustainable transport. By strategic planning standards relatively modest
expenditure would be involved, achieved mainly by reorientating the development
programme of the Highways Agency. Continued - preferably enhanced - programmes
of investment in rail and urban transit, local transport and road pricing are envisaged
although the latter could well take the more selective and 'lower-tech' forms which
Eddington acknowledged merited consideration (Eddington 2006b para 3.87).