The Life of a Young Transport Planner in the Age of AI

15 February 2071. That’s when a 21-year-old transport planner will be eligible for their state pension in the UK. 47 years of their career ahead.

I often get asked, “what will artificial intelligence (AI) mean for young transport planners?” Usually this is asked by senior people in the profession. They are worried about how young people will learn on the job if technology is doing a lot of the basic work they currently do.

I’ve observed a really strong sense of duty amongst the senior leaders to train up the next generation, and to pass on the opportunities which were given to them. That is one of the special things about the transport planning industry.

So, we’ve done some thinking about what the future might hold - and what it means for the life of a young transport planner in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI Will Transform The Way Transport Planning is Done

Artificial intelligence is not new. You have been using auto-complete in Google for around fifteen years now, and there have been many AI tools doing interesting things in the transport space in the last few years e.g. image recognition to check number plates, autonomous vehicle driving systems.

Performance of these models has certainly improved in the last few years, with developments in the underlying algorithms and model structures. But in my view the biggest shift has been the move from closed to open:

• Closed, where you need to spend millions of dollars to train your own models with lots of statistics PhDs in your team. Think Facebook, Google, Netflix, Amazon, Tesla.
• Open, where anyone can use AI tools themselves (think OpenAI 's ChatGPT), and software companies (like SchemeFlow ) can simply plug into AI models and use them in their own platform, paying $0.0003 every time they do!

And there are some really promising uses for using this new AI technology in the transport planning:

• Text drafting: Generating draft technical reports, or proposals, or strategy documents, or even drafting emails to potential new clients!
• New data sources: Collecting and sorting big messy data sets into something useable. For example, creating an easily navigable database of local authority planning policy PDF documents.
• Search and retrieval: Finding the right precedent from similar developments that have got planning permission, or even searching your own firm's back catalogue of reports for a section of a previous report you want to reuse.
• Summarisation: Taking thousands of public consultation responses, categorising them and summarising them for a report.

As transport planners start using these new technologies in their work, it will change the way we do our work:

• Review processes - these will need to change - how will we check an AI tool's work? Can we trust what is being produced? Can AI help us review and quality assure our work?
• Explaining your work - whether it be to a client or to a planning barrister during a planning appeal?
• Training & onboarding - how will we teach new transport planners the craft, if AI is googling the bus stops, and pulling together local policy? And what training will they need to understand how AI works?

And of course, this new technology will affect different firms in different ways:

• Big firms - who do high-volumes of work will get the largest overall efficiency time savings. How will they redeploy the capacity that has been freed up into new work, or higher-value services for their clients? Opportunities to expand AI approach across disciplines (e.g. from Transport Assessments to Flood Risk, Environmental Impact, Business Cases etc.)
• Specialists - will be using AI to do take their analysis to the next level. What is the deeper insight that AI can generate - typically using more data than traditionally?
• Individuals or small firms - efficiency time savings could be greater as a proportion of their costs. No graduates or juniors in these firms to delegate to, and so often it is senior experienced people doing manual work like Google bus stops!

So far, so predictable. But I think there will also be a number of knock-on impacts which will shape our work in unpredictable ways:

• If the work required to put in a planning application becomes much more efficient, could we see a surge in the number of speculative outline planning applications that are put in, just to see? How would local planning authorities (given all their resource constraints) respond? Perhaps AI could be used to validate planning applications?

• It won't just be transport consultants using AI. Developers will be using AI tools for site appraisal and discovery, NIMBYs will be using AI tools to pick holes in planning reports, activist groups will be using AI to generate new cycling schemes and business cases overnight!

• This AI superabundance of ideas, reports and paperwork, means that prioritisation gets even harder. At the moment, for example, the Department for Transport effectively 'throttles' the number of capital schemes it funds by making projects go through a rigorous (and expensive) multi-step business case process.
• Local authorities often have a few schemes they consider for their funding bids to Government, because they have lacked the revenue funding to scope out more projects. Could AI help to flush out new and exciting transport schemes?

And when Artificial General Intelligence arrives.... all bets are off

ChatGPT and similar AI technologies are very powerful, at generating images, at drafting text. But the fun really starts when AI can string together a number of these tasks in a row to produce complex work. So-called AI 'agents' could go off by themselves and do work for you!

A simple example (which is nowhere near artificial general intelligence!) shows how powerful this could be: pulling all the data on the local transport links to a development site, analysing the accessibility level, comparing this to local planning policy, writing up a summary, and prompting you on the potential options to mitigate this (listed by cost to the developer or potential modal shift), if it could be a risk to you securing planning permission.

Beyond that, when these AI's have the ability to learn for themselves, teaching themselves new skills and knowledge at the speed of light, all bets are off!

In Parallel, the Transport World is Changing...

It's not just artificial intelligence which is transforming the world we operate in as transport planners. We know with some confidence that some trends we are already seeing will continue:

• New ways to get around: eScooters, Autonomous vehicles, drones, air taxis, supersonic air travel, space.
• New ways to power getting around: Electric vehicles, new battery technology, hydrogen, solar, nuclear fusion.
• Alternatives to travel: Remote working (where will this trend settle?), virtual reality, augmented reality. Apple Vision Pro is only the start...
• Environmental change and society's response to it.

New skills and knowledge will be required to help clients adapt to these new trends and technologies. And some of these changes will come together:

• How should we tweak the format of a Construction Traffic Management Plan for construction drone air traffic on a high-rise building?
• What will the Full Business Case for an out-of-town autonomous vehicle holding area / parking lot look like?
• Who will be drawing up the service patterns and booking systems for autonomous drone helicopter services between Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London?

Some Predictions: What Will Stay the Same?

It is easy to get carried away with the potential of this new technology! Big change is afoot, but there are some things I think will stay constant:

• Regulation in a democracy is a bit like sedimentary rock being formed - it only gets harder and more complex. Despite promises of streamlined processes or planning reform from all political sides, the ratchet of even more complex regulation is a design feature in a democracy. Interest groups seek to strengthen their rights, and there is a gradual accretion of increasingly technical rules to service and preserve those rights. And the sand that settles on top of the sea bed gradually hardens into rock.
• Building and rebuilding will remain a human obsession. And of course, the magical financial alchemy of transforming the value of land by gaining planning approval to build on it!
• The human touch will remain your most powerful weapon. Whether it's winning new clients at UKREiiF , charming highways officers at pre-app meetings so they reply to your emails later on, or standing in village halls explaining access proposals at a consultation, these human interaction skills will remain vitally important for many years to come.
• All transport planning is local! Our profession is fundamentally tied to the places these schemes are happening in. A site visit in wellies, or a snoop around on Streetview to see what things really look like will remain hugely valuable.

Given All That, Our Seven Career Tips for Young Transport Planners in the Age of AI

1. Stay on top of new developments, not just of transport planning or AI - but go beyond to adjacent fields. It could be EV charging technology, it could be inclusivity in road design - whatever you find interesting. There are easy ways to do this. Set up Google alerts, sign up for email newsletters, or use Twitter to LinkedIn to follow topics or companies you are interested in. (e.g. do you ‘Follow’ OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT on LinkedIn?). Pretty quickly you will become the ‘office expert’ in your chosen field - and that makes you an in-demand, valued colleague.
2. Go beyond writing reports. Think of yourself as an expert advisor. Put yourself in other people’s shoes. If you are writing a report for a local authority officer. What will they say to their Council portfolio lead about this project? What will that person be worried about and how will they answer it? Your job is much more than writing reports. The sooner you realise that, the better!
3. Help other people out - without any obvious reward. Quickly mastering new technology and being willing to teach other people in the office, won’t just win your friends, it will win your promotions! It could be the latest GIS tools, it could be AI and ChatGPT, the projector in the meeting room, or your firm's file sharing system. Given you are used to adopting new technology all the time, you can make yourself invaluable in the office from day one as a young transport planner.
4. Stay in touch with people you have worked with. They will know how great you are to work with, and will trust you to work with them again. It’s amazing how often someone from 5-10 years ago pops up as incredibly useful for what you are now working on. Two super practical tips: Add someone on LinkedIn as soon as you meet them on a project. You may think that feels a bit forward or odd, but you know that it’s even more weird to add them six months after you started working with them. When you move jobs, keep hold of the contact details of your top 30-50 contacts.
5. Develop your human to human communications. Learn how to present, or to sell, or to meet new people - earn respect and trust of clients quickly. Defuse a situation with an irate member of the public during a consultation meeting. These are hard skills - and you are not taught them. You need to get stuck in and practice - even if you are an introvert!
6. Grasp opportunities to learn. Whether it’s taking part in an industry group, your company paying for membership of a professional body ( Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) , Transport Planning Society etc.), or attending a conference, make the most of it. Transport planning is such a broad profession, there are always bits of expertise to develop - and senior folks in the profession want to help you out, and develop an interest in their field!
7. See new technology for yourself. Take the demo! See the latest tech firms have to offer and are working on. It's a small time commitment, but it will keep you up to speed with the latest developments. You can always say 'no' after a demo, and as tech companies, we still have to be nice to you!

Transport planning is a noble calling - and can be a hugely rewarding career. We've got a fascinating few decades ahead of us! Good luck to you, young transport planner, as you navigate through your career in the age of AI!

If you'd like to see SchemeFlow's AI report generation technology in action, please take a look: www.schemeflow.com