Let’s face it, transport’s problems are, at best, getting no worse.
In my nearest city of London, the average vehicle speed today is the same as it was in the days of the horse-drawn cart, with a vastly higher vehicle throughput. As mentioned by Howard Jennings and Paul Mackie’s article on February 8, transport is a major contributor to much of society’s ills. With more and more people predicted to move to and live in cities all over the world (the UK’s population is expected to increase by 15 percent in the next 25 years), such transport problems are likely to be around for a while.
As if this isn’t difficult enough, all of these new terms like technological disruption, mobility as a service, the sharing economy, and autonomy are appearing and promising to change the way that we approach our work.
I must admit that, after 10 years of working in a local authority in the UK, I was skeptical of the potential for new technologies to significantly disrupt our work. We do safe things, in predictable ways, with innovation being incremental. These “Ubers” won’t do anything, and Google Maps is just doing what journey planning has always done.
But the times are a-changing, and they are changing for the betterment of both the profession, and those with new ideas and approaches who find it frustrating to work with us sometimes. And here is why.
The skillset of transport planners isn’t being challenged, it is being ever more valued and added to
The Chinese General Sun Tzu once wrote,”All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” New bike infrastructure, safer routes to schools, traffic calming, and road-building grab the headlines. But your ability to strategize and the policies you develop enable you and the communities you serve to experiment and innovate.
What’s more, most people actually want to learn how you do things. Technology and design-thinking makes engagement so much more than rowdy local council meetings. The Open Policy Making and Policy Labs initiatives from the UK government’s central policy unit in the Cabinet Office, for instance, allow interested parties to work with the government to develop and quickly trial new policy. This should be the standard in policy making not because what we are doing is wrong but because challenging ideas and exchanging knowledge with people who want to make a change should be how the policy-making process works.
As a sector built on data analysis, new data sources and analytic methods should be welcomed with open arms in transport planning. Thankfully this is low-hanging fruit for communities and techies, as we planners are always on the hunt for data – particularly if it costs less than automatic or roadside traffic counts. Waze, for example, has allowed community-sourced data to be reused for traffic-management purposes. Others include Gateway to Research’s flood-risk data platforms, Kuala Lumpur’s crowdsourced bike map, OpenStreetMap, and my favorite, Green City Streets, which tracks active travel.
Not only that, but technology offers new ways for communities to understand our data and be creative with it. Platforms like Unity offer power and flexibility that the likes of SATURN and VISSIM can only dream of. Transport for London is already looking at incorporating new data-analysis techniques in its Surface Intelligent Transport Systems. Events like IM Create and the MaasDOT Hackathon show that utilizing this data to deliver meaningful outcomes doesn’t take expensive modeling software.
Break from the rules and embrace the framework
Well, OK: clearly when something is a legal requirement or critical to safety, you don’t break from the rules ‒ that’s just mad. But remember what policies and standards are: frameworks, not rulebooks. As we transport planners like a bit of structure, frameworks are extremely useful, providing both certainty and room for us to expand our thinking.
Already that is being applied to our profession. A great practical example is the Playing Out Movement (above). Alice Ferguson and Amy Rose started the campaign when they approached their local council to see if their street could be closed after school so that kids could play. By reviewing existing traffic legislation and applying some creative thinking, Bristol City Council created the Temporary Play Street Order, a legal framework through which anyone can apply to temporarily close a street.
It’s not just practical things that benefit from framework thinking. Based upon his experience with the New Zealand Ministry of Transport, planners and engineers have worked with Professor Glenn Lyons of the University of the West of England on the CIHT FUTURES project. By applying foresight and futures methodologies, major policy issues can be explored in a more rounded and engaging way than the procedural methods of transport planning.
Models for investment need changing
Our investment cases for transport schemes do not reflect the world in which we live. This world is quickly changing around our infrastructure-investment decisions, and gaps in our evidence base need plugging.
Small-scale transport improvements have been proven time and time again to offer excellent value for the money. Crowdfunding platforms are offering up new ways to deliver small improvements more efficiently. London-based platform Spacehive has partnered with the Greater London Authority for the Mayor’s Crowdfunding Programme. Using a simple crowdfunding campaign, projects such as Green Trafalgar Road, the Harrow Road, and TWIST at Tulse Hill Station are happening through donations and public-sector funds. Many of these projects are so small they can be a rounding error in our budgets, but they each have big impacts on their communities.
Technology-enabled transport infrastructure investment is also realizing new value, previously not considered, in the digital economy. Investments in sensors, and an open-data platform, have enabled communities and entrepreneurs to innovate with transport data in London, generating up to £58 million ($82 million USD) in travel-time savings alone, as well as contributing to cool apps like Citymapper and the Station Master App (whose Exit Positions feature is my favorite).
Innovation involves failure. Embrace it.
Whenever “the f word” is mentioned in the context of transport planning, images of annoyed emails from councilors, press outrage, and phone calls from irate members of the public at 5:20 p.m. on a Friday spring to mind. We can’t fail – there’s taxpayer money at stake!
Transport planners need to rethink their roles, from simply planning and delivering services to providing a basis for themselves, public-sector colleagues, and communities to experiment and innovate, all while keeping the transport system running and, of course, keeping people safe. Not only is this the only way change happens, but it’s also rather … fun. In the UK, the Community Railway movement has experimented with things that the operational railway has thought mad for years – from planting flowers at stations to humps on platforms. And they’ve found success to the point that the UK government now actively funds their work.
In a sense, we cannot afford not to think creatively. Forward-thinking authorities are doing this. Contactless payment cards in London were not built by Apple Pay or Barclaycard, but from years of trial and failure by Transport for London’s mobile payments. Helsinki’s on-demand Kutsuplus bus and free public transport in Tallinn, Estonia, also show that learning from failure is valuable.
Innovation is not about methodology, but attitude – on both sides. The mix of methodical and innovative mindsets can be – and often is – fraught, much like the desire for quick action on a road-safety issue being delayed by a statutory legal process. But as is normally the case, the answer is simple – openness and shared goals. If you know the end point, you know what is definitely not possible, and if the attitude is there, innovation flows. Co-creation is at the heart of initiatives such as DIY Streets, applying the same methods to street co-design.
Why now?
Whilst writing this article, the question that I struggled with is – why is now different? While transport planning has changed slowly, it has changed, and it has embraced new technologies. We have also historically worked with communities on many transport schemes.
The curious infusion of technology and civic pride is the game changer here. Technology is supercharging our civic society and the exchange of ideas on improving our cities like never before. As Mobility Lab shows, like-minded people can share, collaborate, and exchange ideas – even those of us outside the United States! Professional and social relationships are being augmented, expanded, and even initiated.
As the creators of some of the largest pieces of civic infrastructure in the world, and users of technology in our professional lives, transport planners help shape civic society and technology. They are also shaped by it – even if just at a personal level – and at an increasing rate of change. This is profoundly affecting our world, and the job of the transport planner.
Are you ready for this?
Transport planning – like many other sectors – is at a fork in the road. Down one path is a technology- and innovation-driven sector, based upon its founding principles and the principles of inclusivity in its attitude and delivery. Down the other is a more methodical approach, where technology and innovation simply augment practice that hasn’t changed much and is still based on the principles that got us to where we are today.
Two years ago, the second option was the more likely future for me. But the last two years have changed my mind. The opportunity is there, and so is the community willingness for us to embrace and drive change. But it won’t be an easy road to travel.
Last week, the conflicting priorities of transport planners in the UK was perfectly demonstrated by George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the UK’s finance minister). In his annual budget speech, the Chancellor stressed the importance of testing connected and autonomous vehicles, positioning the UK at the leading edge of the digital economy, and accelerating the UK’s smart motorway program. But in the same breath, he committed money to major infrastructure projects like building a new rail link between Manchester and Leeds, building a new road tunnel under the Pennines, and preparing the way for the Crossrail 2 rail expansion in London. The old world and new world collided in a single speech.
Who’d be a transport planner in this day and age? Me, and I look forward to the challenge.
Photos, from top: A DIY Streets project in Newcastle, England (DIYstreetsnewcastle.wordpress.com). Kids “play out” on a street closed to car traffic (Dan Thompson, Flickr, Creative Commons).