Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and throughput, and indeed the planning of wider modes such as air and rail. For example:
'Car ownership [. . .] should increase, for personal mobility is what people want, and those
who already have it should not try to pull the ladder up behind them' (Department of the
Environment, 1976, cited in Adams, 1981, p. 3).
In the UK, this approach was best represented in the 'Roads for Prosperity' White Paper
(Department of Transport, 1989), where over 500 new road schemes were proposed in 'support'
of the economy and to cater for predicted traffic growth (Headicar, 2009). Though the policy
discourse has changed markedly since, with almost all transport strategies internationally now
being centred on sustainability aspirations, the implementation and investment programmes
are still very much roads-focused. Many of the road schemes mentioned in 'Roads for
Prosperity' were constructed in the following years in the UK, with 'sustainable transport'
being interpreted as the maintenance of existing levels of mobility, with lower levels of delay
and congestion. With almost every change of Secretary of State for Transport there is a
renewed call for a road-building programme, and often investment follows.
Policy has thus been self-fulfilling. Transport analysis needs to be understood within the
framework of promoting car-based transport (at least in recent history), with the 'socio-
technical systems' reinforcing themselves through positive feedback loops and increasing
returns (
Figure 2.10
). The socio-technical regime 'organises' the practices, the routines, the
competences and materialities of travel behaviours, all of which create the varied patterns of
movements. This system is being continuously reproduced. Individual interventions, for
example through network investments or urban development, only usually lead to small changes
and modifications in aggregate travel. The 'socio-technical transition' (the system of change)
hence includes a number of dimensions, including user practices, institutions, financial rules
and regulations, infrastructures, vehicle and artefact, industry structure, and cultural and
symbolic meanings (Geels, 2002; Geels and Schot, 2007).
This systemic 'lock-in' poses very significant problems for transport planning. Changing
external events (e.g. an economic downturn) or revised policy objectives are often overlooked,
or at best only seen as a short delay to the general trend of traffic growth, rarely changing
the projection to any significant degree. Planning for uncertainty and assessing the potential
for achievement of trend-breaks is very limited, and traffic growth is seen as an inevitable
outcome of economic growth
Adams (1981, pp. 205-206) explores the illogicality of this situation with his 'absurd
scenario':
The year 2205 is a milestone insofar as it is the year in which Britain becomes a millionaire
society. It is the year in which, assuming that the government's growth target is achieved,
average incomes will reach one million pounds [. . .] the volume of freight moving about
on the roads will have increased one-hundredfold. To accommodate this our descendants
would need 60 million lorries [. . .] people will spend most of the their time driving around
in the family juggernaut picking up piles of machine-made stuff from automatic warehouses
[. . .] such is the volume of stuff that will require shifting that it is doubtful whether they
will have the time to do all the holiday to-ing and fro-ing expected of them by the road
and airport planners.
Hence there are two epistemological problems to be faced: the greater uncertainty affecting
transport and travel behaviours, as well as the need to more effectively address the underlying
sustainability agenda, mean that a new set of methods need to be developed and tested. The
limits of forecasting have been reached and their use should be restricted to short-term and
