At last! Behaviour change leadership.

Six days ago a globally important document came out – a document that shows true political leadership in recognising that transport, and in particular car dependence, is at the heart of the climate crisis and that urgent action is needed to reduce car use.

Transport Scotland (the Executive Agency of the Scottish Government responsible for transport) in partnership with COSLA (the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities acting as the councillor-led ‘voice of Local Government in Scotland’) have published "Reducing car use for a healthier, fairer and greener Scotland - a route map to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030". The reduction target at the heart of this document is part of being able “to meet Scotland’s statutory obligations for greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2045”.

In December 2020 the Scottish Government set out the update to its 2018-2032 Climate Change Plan. In this is set out a “truly world-leading aspiration” with a commitment “to reduce car kilometres by 20% by 2030” (against 2019 levels). The document published this month provides a route map for how to turn that world-leading aspirational commitment into a reality – in the next eight years. And this will be imminently followed by its second Strategic Transport Projects Review – “a whole-Scotland, objective-led, evidence-based review of the performance of the strategic transport network across all modes – walking, cycling, bus, rail, road and wider island connectivity” that “will set out how the recommended investments will contribute to net zero greenhouse gas emissions and inclusive prosperity”.

The route map document is only 44 pages long. My best advice is to go straight to the document and read it for yourself (intriguingly its only 20% of the length of the UK Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan focused on technology fix that weighted in at 216 pages in July 2021).

However, if you’re happy to read on, you’ll see I offer in the article below some of my own views about, and prompted by, the document.

Leading the charge

Great credit is due to Transport Scotland and its political masters – we need global leadership that reaches beyond the disappointing international display at COP26 of a fixation on electric vehicles being the answer to our prayers with travel behaviour change barely registering as a footnote to proceedings. Granted, technology fix is an important part of the transport decarbonisation agenda since it would be na?ve to imagine in the foreseeable future we will not continue to have significant reliance on cars for mobility in society; and when they are driven they need to emit as little CO2 as possible. However, ask any transport planner worth their salt and they will say emphatically that we need technology fix and behaviour change to achieve the rapid reduction in emissions this decade that is needed.

I have a fragile hope that we are seeing the early signs of growing commitment to addressing behaviour change. The New Zealand Government is legally bound to publish an emissions reduction plan by the end of May 2022. In October 2021, it’s Ministry of Environment published a consultation document to help inform development of the plan. Within this, feedback is sought on a proposed transport target to “reduce vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) by cars and light vehicles by 20 per cent by 2035”. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the UK, the Welsh Government declared in the October 2021 publication of its ‘Net Zero Wales Carbon Budget 2 (2021 to 2025)’ its aim “to reduce the number of car miles travelled per person by 10% by 2030”. Yesterday, a new report for the Greater London Authority was published setting out four pathways to net zero by 2030 for London. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has identified his preferred pathway including a 27% reduction in car vehicle kilometres travelled by 2030, relative to 2018.

I would welcome pointers to actions emerging in other countries. Let’s hope momentum can be built up internationally.

Getting beyond the blah, blah, blah

The approach in Scotland for reducing car use is summarised in the route map document as “reduce your need to travel; choose local destinations to reduce the distance you travel; switch to walking, wheeling, cycling or public transport where possible; and combine a trip or share a journey”. This makes sense of course. But to be a little blunt, expressed in this summary way it doesn’t say anything particularly new.

In fact I found my mind wandering back to the last serious attempt at a UK-wide national transport strategy in 1998 – ‘A New deal for Transport: Better for everyone’ (credit to Scotland and Wales for having published their own devolved nations’ transport strategies in February 2020 and March 2021 respectively). That 1998 White Paper set out, amongst other things, to “reduce the need to travel through better planning and technology” and “produce better public transport and easier access to workplaces and other everyday facilities for all”. And going back a little further to ‘Planning Policy Guidance Note 13’, published in 1994 (now lost but not forgotten), its objectives were to: promote more sustainable transport choices for both people and moving freight; promote accessibility to jobs, shopping, leisure facilities and services by public transport, walking and cycling; and reduce the need to travel, especially by car. Does all that sound familiar?

In the world of transport, closing the policy-implementation gap often remains as elusive as ever. If those well-intentioned words from the 1990s had led commensurately to the extent of change aspired to, we may not have found ourselves here three decades later faced with a climate emergency.

So, Greta might well then ask, is this latest publication just more blah, blah, blah?

The route map document reflects well upon: (i) the past and present state of travel behaviour and attitudes towards prospective future change; (ii) the challenges of, and opportunities concerning, behaviour change; and (iii) behaviour change theory. This is to its credit and provides a good grounding for what lies ahead in terms of interventions needed. Various takeaways on addressing behaviour change are neatly summed up as follows: “While the route map uses a behaviour change approach as its framework, it is not simply about asking the public to change their behaviours, but about creating the right material and social conditions and providing people with the capability, opportunity and motivation to choose sustainable travel behaviours”.

And with such grounding, the route map includes and explains an impressive series of interventions over the immediate years ahead that could really have teeth if implemented on time, at scale and with suitable support and enforcement where appropriate. It’s that ‘if’ that all eyes will now be on; but for now Greta, I would say there is more than blah, blah, blah on offer here. Hopefully much more.

I’d also add that since many if not most transport authorities around the world are faced with the decarbonisation challenge and a need for ways and means to respond, this document is an excellent primer and resource for ideas and actions elsewhere.

The long-running love affair

Society’s ‘love affair with the car’ has been an often-used phrase, seemingly coined in 1961 during a television programme with sponsorship from a stakeholder in General Motors. In a Washington Post article about the myth of the love affair with the car it is suggested that “It’s one of the biggest public relations coups of all time. It’s always treated as folk wisdom, as an organic growth from society. One of the signs of its success is that everyone forgets it was invented as a public relations campaign.”

Love affair – “an intense enthusiasm or liking for something” (says Google) - might conjure up a sense of something illicit that is short-lived and exciting but ultimately not bound to end well. If it ever was a love affair, is Scotland’s society ready for it to be over? Has the enthusiasm and excitement started to wear off and is society prepared instead to turn to a marriage between triple-access and prosperity (drawing upon a changing blend of physical mobility, spatial proximity and digital connectivity to fulfil its needs and preferences for access to people, goods, jobs, services and opportunities)?

The route map document reminds us that before COVID-19, “Between 2009 and 2019, the number of car kilometres driven in Scotland increased by 7 per cent, despite the population only increasing by around 4.5 per cent. The proportion of car journeys made with only one person in the car has also grown over time”. Sounds like the car still has its proverbial feet firmly under the table? Maybe, maybe not. The document goes on to say the following. “Despite current data showing high levels of car use, public opinion surveys tell us that there is public support for change. In a recent survey, 73 per cent of respondents agreed that ‘for the sake of the environment, everyone should reduce how much they use their cars’, whilst 43 per cent agreed that they were ‘willing to reduce the amount [they] travel by car to help reduce the impact of climate change’.”

Perhaps a key question is how strong and enduring is the Scottish public’s appetite for change? The hosting of COP26 in Glasgow raised the importance of, and concern over, climate change in many people’s minds, at least temporarily. Ipsos-MORI’s Issues Index takes a monthly barometer reading of what the British public see as concerns facing Britain today. ?From the November poll to the December poll “Concern about the environment dropped by 27 points after one of its highest ever scores in November during COP26”. Yikes!

The important message I have taken since I first heard about Scotland’s 20% reduction target is that how the target is framed is likely to really matter. We know that people feel loss more strongly than they feel equivalent gain. A 10% pay cut versus a 10% pay rise. The reference point matters too. If I say ‘I’m going to curtail some of your car use’ that can sound unappealing. Suppose I temporarily took all your car use away but then later gave you 80% of it back, how might you then feel? My point is that we are asking people to turn down the dial a bit, not to give up their cars. In fact the message could be seen as ‘even faced with the climate emergency and the threats posed to future life on the planet, the Government is still able to accept you having 80% of the car use you depended upon before the pandemic’.

Working together

It seems more than symbolic that this important route map has been jointly developed by Transport Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA). “It recognises the need for ongoing collaboration and partnership working between national, regional and local government”. This is surely critical. Time is not on our side. We cannot have a patchwork quilt of parallel developments across Scotland in terms of efforts to address decarbonisation where each local authority is muddling through by themselves and without clarity regarding the framing, co-ordinating and enabling functions provided at a national level. Working together is key, having a sense of common purpose and a coalition of key players signed up to a shared agenda.

I cannot help but note the distinction in my own mind between this document and how I interpreted the UK Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan (TDP). In my LinkedIn article on the TDP (which I referred to as the Transport Decarbonisation Puzzle) I observed that “The Plan promises to better coordinate local transport funding and then seems to draw breath to say ‘Local authorities will have the power and ambition to make bold decisions to influence how people travel and take local action’ … what comes across here is a clear sense that while Whitehall will deal with technology fix, local administrations can deal with influencing behaviour”. The TDP is a very different sort of document and deserves credit of its own in many respects, but when it comes to the matter of behaviour change there is a distinct feeling of ‘them and us’ in the TDP, whereas the newly published route map document for Scotland has a very appealing collaborative ‘we’ feeling. Let us hope that latter sentiment continues to play out in practice.

But ‘we’ cannot be fully autonomous in terms of the actions Scotland wishes to pursue. As a devolved administration, the Scottish Government is still beholden to UK-level decision making in London on certain important matters, as the following paragraphs make clear:

“The current approach to motoring taxation has also been identified as a significant barrier to the decarbonisation of the transport sector. Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty are reserved to the UK Government and successive UK governments have frozen the rate of Fuel Duty each year since 2010, meaning motorists have benefitted from a significant tax cut in real terms.”

“The Scottish Government will continue to engage the UK Government on the need for reform of existing taxes related to motoring. This is essential in order to create a tax system that better incentivises the transition to zero emission vehicles, and protects future revenues to fund interventions that support a shift healthier, fairer and more sustainable travel.”

Is the UK Government going to play ball and work collaboratively?

Joined up thinking and distributional sensitivity

Dealing with climate change is about as far from straightforward problem-solving as you could get – it’s a wicked problem. Managing the problem calls for a cool-headed, collaborative approach to come to terms with understanding and responding to the problem. The route map document recognises the need to see this as much more than a transport problem that points only to transport solutions. The Triple Access System is going to play a crucial part in achieving a 20% reduction in car kilometres travelled, in which: (i) land use system planning and new developments’ location and design can, for the longer term, help in changing the demands placed upon motorised transport and the car in particular for meeting access needs; (ii) high quality digital connectivity through investment in the telecommunications system can lessen the need for some travel; and (iii) reprioritising investment in, and the allocation of, availability of transport infrastructure to different modes and services can help shape a transport system that lessens the relative appeal of the car by rendering the alternatives more attractive more of the time.

The route map document rightly highlights that ‘all journeys are not equal’ when it comes to the decarbonisation challenge: “a small number of longer journeys account for a disproportionate percentage of total car kilometres, with around 4 per cent of trips (those over 55 kilometres) accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the total kilometres driven in 2019…Conversely, despite 45 per cent of trips being under 8 kilometres in length, these accounted for just 12 per cent of trips of total car kilometres in 2019.” With kms not trips being the important unit of measurement, the route map has been able to size up the importance of ensuring that the repertoire of interventions and types of behaviour change are going to help target the distribution of trip lengths and achieve gains in the most appropriate way.

The national conversation that the document is seen to be opening up, and the collaborative context created by the jointly prepared document, complement the document’s recognition of a distribution in the nature of how the overall 20% reduction can be achieved. Not all communities, households and individuals are equal. Some will have more choice and capacity to reduce car use than others and this must be reflected in the distribution of interventions and of expectation.

The document also rightly recognises that many people are not directly contributing to the current levels of car kilometres travelled – “around 30 per cent of households in Scotland and 60 per cent of households on the lowest incomes do not have access to a car”. This is a route map that recognises that social inequality can also be addressed through the steps to reduce car dependence in the interests of transport decarbonisation, with the prospect of helping to “achieve better health and wellbeing and a more inclusive economy”.

This is more than a route map for decarbonising transport, it is a route map that aligns with the National Transport Strategy and which has strong prospects of delivering co-benefits for Scotland. As the widely seen cartoon below reminds us, decarbonisation need not be a form of sufferance for society, it may indeed unlock a better social and economic future too.

I’m aware as I write this that the next Strategic Transport Projects Review is about to be published – perhaps I’ll have more reading to do before the ink has dried on this LinkedIn article!

In any case, the consultation on the route map is already open – why not take a look at the questions it is asking?

Conclusion

Transport policy in Scotland (and in Wales) gives me a sorely needed sense of optimism at the moment about being able to rise to the transport decarbonisation challenge. The transport planning community has been quick to see through the impression some would like to give that electric cars are the answer to transport decarbonisation. They are part of the answer for when cars have to be used, but they don’t achieve the pace of decarbonisation needed and neither do they do much to address the wider difficulties the car (with whatever form of propulsion or control it has) has brought with it into society. This route map and the target it supports are to be applauded. May it be the stimulus for others at national, regional and local levels around the world to take their own steps to help change behaviours and generate the global momentum needed to decarbonise.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. Scotland is showing great leadership in it’s vision-led strategic planning. But the route ahead remains difficult and long in terms of plan execution and the realisation of the change that is sought. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’m looking forward to enjoying a helping when it’s served.