As we face the greatest fight of our professional lives we need transport planners with super powers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1zM0hqMXU

On Tuesday 14 April I spoke with Michelle Wood and Brogan McPherson from PTRC for the first time about an event - a 'fireside chat' - they were thinking of running looking at COVID-19 and transport and wanted me to Chair. Nine days later we ran a panel discussion operating on Zoom and live streaming to YouTube. 1,200 people had registered (from the UK, Australia, the US, Canada, Belgium, China(HK), Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, UAE, …) and nearly 600 joined the free event. Quite remarkable when you think, by comparison about the months if not years of preparation for a big physical event pre-COVID, and the travel and expense involved.

The fireside chat lasted 90 minutes and addressed this: “The Global Shock of COVID-19: Will it jolt the transport sector into significant change?”. Nik Bowyer referred to it afterwards as “a great example of good-quality CPD and debate in the age of social distancing”. You can watch the full recording including audience comments here (and I do encourage you to do so).

However, what I realised myself is that watching/listening to an event doesn’t always give time to truly absorb some of things that were said. Therefore, I’ve written this article to try and address this, including drawing out some quotes. I make no apologies for it being quite long but feel free to read selectively. (Be thankful that it was not re-routed to become an academic article – it would have been many months before being published - and may still have been behind a paywall!)

The panellists

Our panellists for the event were as follows:

Karen Agbabiaka - Chief Executive Public Realm - Islington Council

Sunita Mills - Strategic Manager Commissioning Development - Somerset Council

Alison Irvine - Director of Transport Strategy and Analysis - Transport Scotland

Fintan Geraghty - Technical Director - WSP

Brian Deegan - Design Engineer - Urban Movement

Sonya Byers - Chief Executive - Women in Transport

They all have extensive experience. I owe my thanks to all of them as well as the PTRC team and indeed the audience who joined us.

Setting the scene

Fireside chat?

The term 'fireside chat' is attributed to a series of evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944. Roosevelt connected directly with his public through these intimate sessions as he addressed the banking crisis, recession and the World War. Our fireside chat for modern times didn’t seek to be presidential but did bring together a great set of minds on our panel to address the theme at hand.

A personal reflection

25 years ago I was a young post-doctoral researcher, with a daily 35-mile one-way commute by car to my university. I remember going to my first proper ‘meeting’, duly dressed in the normal uniform of shirt, tie and suit. At the time, a friend of mine who was a computer scientist said, “hey, check out this cool new thing called the world wide web”. Fast forward to today and so much seems to have changed. For our fireside chat I was sat at home in a heavy metal t-shirt chairing an event on the web involving hundreds of people who had driven nowhere.

Instability of the mobility system

Well before COVID-19 arrived I had been of the view that the old mobility regime that has defined our society and many of our careers, was destabilising – brought about by the digital age colliding and then merging with the motor age. We were in a period of regime transition to a new type of future mobility. COVID-19 has introduced a huge shock to an already destabilising mobility system. The rear view mirror now gives us even less of a clue regarding what lies ahead.

Opportunity to change transport planning and the shape of future mobility

With deep and now further deepened uncertainty does come great opportunity. The forecast-led paradigm of transport planning needs to move aside for a vision-led paradigm I would suggest. With mobility’s current state of flux, how can we take positive action to shape a better future: decide and provide instead of predict and provide?

At the heart of this is realising that we need Triple Access Planning instead of simply Transport Planning. What people still need in society is access – to other people, goods, services and opportunities. The transport system provides this through physical mobility; the land-use system provides this through spatial proximity; and the telecommunications system provides access through digital connectivity. And thank goodness now for digital connectivity! The question is, how do we configure the future of the Triple Access System and its use to best support the sort of society we want?

(see Lyons and Davidson, 2016)

Same old same old or time for change?

I’d be surprised if we don’t see COVID-19 accelerating a regime change in transport planning as well as in our mobility system. This remains to be seen. I must say I’m amazed by some colleagues who seem to be optimistically holding onto the idea that the old armoury of transport planning analysis and appraisal is still what we need to press on with using and that the COVID-19 shock will be ‘over’ relatively soon. Time will tell.

A taste of what’s happening around us

Talking of soon, more immediately we are being bombarded by news:

• US oil prices went negative in the last few days, with world oil prices massively suppressed. Some are calling for fuel tax to be increased.
• The aviation sector may well never recover and seems likely at least to shrink.
• Cities are enjoying cleaner air and clearer skies than many have experienced in their lifetimes.
• Motorised mobility is in retreat while digital connectivity has moved centre stage.
• Leisure cycling as well as utility cycling is up and streets are being enjoyed.
• Tactical urbanism has come to the fore – temporary reallocation of roadspace to support active travel in place of the car.
• A legal challenge is being mounted to the UK Government’s road building programme.
• Calls have been made for more investment in digital infrastructure for the future.
• There is optimism that this may be a great positive catalyst for the decarbonisation of the transport sector that is urgently needed.

Impossible then, to contemplate getting to grips with all this in a single fireside chat. But we made a start.

To the panel debate

Opening remarks

Sunita Mills is currently responsible for addressing the transport and logistics needs for her authority created by the crisis itself – she’s at the heart of the shock. She can’t yet make a call on what all this means for the shape of future mobility but notes that “given a big enough stick, a greater proportion of people have been able to change their behaviour”. With more working from home Sunita asks, is there still going to be a development need for building so much office space? Does the design of our homes need to change to accommodate more homeworking?

Karen Agbabiaka had the responsibility for delivering the Olympic route network for the 2012 Olympics – she knows a thing or two about dealing with challenges involving multiple agencies. Her London Borough is a dense urban area wih only 13% green space and with many people not owning cars. She currently faces the challenge and responsibility of overseeing emergency street works that are still permitted to take place during the lock-down. Her team are having to rework their knowledge of the borough and drastically change their ways of working to service permits for street works in the face of radically changed patterns of travel and traffic. Just one reminder of the immediate pressure transport professionals are under.

Alison Irvine has a remit covers transport strategy, investment planning and climate policy. She explained that business-as-usual activity in Transport Scotland has been largely paused – with some 500 staff supporting Scottish Ministers’ response to COVID emergency. “In terms of the consequences of COVID-19 and what it might mean for the future of mobility, we’re in a situation where we can see some quite fundamental changes in the way society is working” she says. And she goes on to remark: “nobody knows the consequences; my view is that this is a paradigm shift – none of the normal assumptions we make in transport planning hold true anymore”. Just let that thought sink in! She’s concerned that action to address the priorities of Scotland’s recently published National Transport Strategy – reducing inequality, taking climate action, delivering inclusive economic growth and improving health and wellbeing – needs to happen quickly as we transition out of this shock to the global system.

Fintan Geraghty has seen a lot change in the course of his career as a transport economist. He chose to be brief with his opening remarks but wanted to emphasise the notable developments that were already taking place in terms of how we appraise investment in transport and capture more of the impacts from such investment, pointing in particular the recent focus upon reviewing the Government’s Green Book. He holds some optimism for this dynamic in approach continuing as we transition out of COVID-19. He believes it’s a key time for transport planning with a strong need for the skills the sector has to offer.

Brian Deegan has been waiting for the silver lining that may lie in the dark cloud of the COVID-19 crisis. “I wanted to take up where you left off in 1944 Glenn [see President Roosevelt above] and talk about one of the great wrongs of transport planning, and how this terrible emergency might help us address that – and that’s the assumption that commuting by private car is somehow the future. It started round those cosy fireside chats and has gone on to infect the world”. He suggests we are now seeing what the advocates of active travel have been referring to for 30 years. He hopes that people will now much better appreciate the virtues of cycling and that perhaps a new mindset will come out the other side of this. Enthusiastically he suggests that most people want a change now and are ready for the big challenge of our lives which is the climate emergency. “After 70 years of wrong; the change now – let’s get something positive out of this” he says.

Sonya Byers is cautiously optimistic about where we find ourselves from a transport perspective and points to opportunities from COVID-19. Firstly the opportunity to fast-track reallocation of roadspace away from the private car. She’s excited by the temporary changes happening globally – “hopefully those won’t be temporary changes” she says. Secondly, the opportunity to make places where we engage in activity (for work and leisure) more accessible to all as well as learning from, and fostering, the new ways of agile working that are now being experienced. This is not just digital accessibility but a broader chance to embrace greater inclusion for a population with diverse needs. “If we really embrace this now it can be a really exciting time for us” she says.

Three in one

I suggested to the panel that our sector is facing three challenges, all of which are very demanding: (i) dealing with the here and now of the unfolding shock; (ii) dealing with transition out of COVID-19 (which I can’t help feeling many people are underestimating in terms of the length of time for this transition); and (iii) shaping the future of mobility in the medium to long term. One of our audience asked whether we have the capacity to deal with what is front of us? It seems to me that we are facing the fight of our professional lives now – we must rise to all three challenges in ways that try to ensure the forces of inertia and vested interest from the ‘old’ regime of mobility do not snuff out the flame of opportunity for positive change.

Fintan pointed to the variability in changes (and threats/opportunities) facing different service providers in the transport sector with a real difficult in being able to judge how demand would change and how quickly it would change in the weeks, months and years ahead. While noting the current focus of attention on emergency planning, Brian is hoping the COVID-19 shock is enough to really force us to reflect upon how we do things as a sector. He had the following to say. “Particularly in the UK, we’ve been plodding on going ‘we know cars are bad, we know public transport’s good, we know we should be walking and cycling’ but we’ve been enabling more and more growth in private car use…. I’m hoping this is the end of the line, we’ve hit the wall and people are seeing it for what it is now – people have got a different perspective our there on the street… all the things we’ve been saying policy terms, now’s the time to put them into practice… Initially it will be emergency response but really it should be the way we do business”.

Alison agreed that having capacity to deal with restart and recovery at the same time is a challenge. However, she sees the challenge is more about leadership and the ability to set the direction – “we’re all facing unprecedented times and don’t really understand how the virus will behave – we have to be agile – what’s really needed is good leadership and good direction”. I left hanging the question of whether or not we have a sufficient supply of such leadership.

Stages of grief

At this point in the fireside chat it struck me that across the profession we may now need to recognise that, depending upon how comfortable they were with the way things were, individuals will be on a journey through a number of stages of grief over the (potential) demise of the old regime of mobility and transport planning. Will this stand as a powerful force of inertia in the way of helping to nurture and grow a new regime?

Depending upon your perspective, what becomes of all those schemes and the business cases supporting them?

One of our audience wanted to know what was to become of all those infrastructure projects in the appraisal pipeline that are now presented with the prospect of completely reconfigured demand – not just in the immediate future but longer term? Are we going to turn the handle on our existing tools to produce some new numbers or does it call for something more fundamental?

This prompted an eminently quotable reaction from Sunita: “if this situation has taught us one thing its that we’ve got enough capacity for cars and we probably don’t need to carry on trying to build more capacity”. Let that one sink in, even if you want to challenge it. She did, however, qualify her remark by saying that this was at least from a transport planning perspective. From a transport user’s perspective – a need to get to work every day, a need to run a business - the view may be different. She stressed the importance of getting out there and seeking people’s views. This touched upon another audience question regarding whether people were being consulted on new measures that may move from temporary to permanent? Sunita highlighted the nature of the challenge: we have a chance to move quickly to shift the status quo, but are we able to do so in a respectful way that engages with people without losing momentum? Resources are currently being redirected in public authorities and having the ability to think about the way forward right now while dealing with the crisis is a real challenge. Alison stressed that “we need to be really careful with what messages we’re putting out to the public because they are having to take on board an awful lot of complex information already”. Now might not be the time.

Alison suggested it was too early to make a call on big infrastructure projects but noted their ability to provide a boost to the economy, as did Fintan, pointing to the jobs created and the connectivity benefits beyond the journey times that arise from infrastructure investment. I offered some challenge to this suggesting that perhaps the frame may have shifted in terms of what sorts of infrastructure projects we may want for the future. My feeling is that two conditions need to be met for infrastructure projects now: being able to help the economy recover; and contributing positively to the sort of future transport and society that may be sought.

Greater exclusion or greater inclusion – do we have the capacity to deliver the latter?

Policymakers have long sought to espouse social inclusion objectives in their policymaking. The phrase ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ also comes to mind. However, the lived experience across the population often suggests otherwise – something being seen as part of the COVID-19 shock itself. An audience member wanted to know, is the shock going to exacerbate social exclusion? Sonya sees opportunity. She feels that if everyone can be brought up to the same standard of access in terms of digital connectivity it will make it easier for people to interact and collaborate in a way that’s going to be effective. With big infrastructure schemes she calls for us not to stick rigidly to the original plans. Let’s revisit those plans and embrace a collaborative approach to drawing in best practice in improving the inclusive nature of the designs concerned.

Was this realistic, I asked, in terms of a need to act and achieve things quickly while the opportunity exists? Did this not bring us back to the capacity problem in our sector? Maslow’s quote “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” was running through my mind. Do we have a skills makeup in our profession aligned to the pre-COVID world and do we not now need a rather different makeup of skills for what we want to achieve ahead? Can our hammer wielders use screwdrivers to put the ‘new normal’ together? Sonya acknowledged that we certainly have a skills shortage now (at least in terms of the quantity) - exacerbated by revenues being hit, and businesses being challenged with reallocation of resources to crisis management. People are finding it difficult to see past the crisis period as Alison had noted previously. However, Sonya believes that with the right leadership and direction (Alison’s earlier point) – we can pull together and it is achievable. She went on to say the following. “Look what we’ve achieved in just a matter of weeks as a society. Look what businesses have achieved. We’ve all seen businesses that said its not possible to work from home, its not possible to put the infrastructure in place, … but they have, they’ve done it, because they had to do it. Faced with a situation where we have to change, where we are forced to change, where actually it’s a matter of life and death that we do this, and if we can really recognise that it’s a long-term investment in the future of our nation, and the economic growth of the nation, then I think it is ultimately achievable even though it might seem aspirational”.

An integrated approach?

Karen wanted to follow up. “I’ve now noticed how all our different industries work in silos – if we can pull together and understand it’s the whole and not just the part then we may be able to introduce some of the changes Sonya is mentioning”. I was cautious about aspiring to have more joined up working, the Bed of Nails Yes Minister from the 1980s was on my mind. But Karen believes the COVID-19 shock offers a catalyst for better working together: “We have a great opportunity now to be able to do something different. We shouldn’t lose this opportunity, even though we are in a difficult climate at the moment”.

Rethinking our streets – what will the people say?

How do we keep people walking and cycling after the crisis? This was a question received by panellists before the event. Brian was keen to pick it up. He pointed to how narrow many of our footways are (a complaint from supporters of the importance of walking for some time): 800mm wide when we are now asked not to pass within 2m of each other (with the result that people are walking down the middle of the road). He is hoping that we can achieve widespread roll out in terms of temporary reallocation of space in response to the emergency. We then need to ask “do we like it, shall we keep it?”. "People need to be asked whether they are happy with this new way of walking and this new way of cycling around, is this the kind of society that they want?" Brian hopes that the Transport Decarbonisation Plan will help ensure a positive response to how we design our streets in future.

The following question came from the audience. “If politicians listen to people, how can transport planners best help people who are currently in the middle of their Eureka moment?” The public themselves are seeing a wish for a new normal – can we as professionals galvanise that appetite (rather than being paternalistic about change as transport planners)? Brian saw this as absolutely right, “we should be listening to people, and people in survey after survey after survey have been saying we want more walking and cycling, we want nicer places to live, we want better air quality. Its about time we changed the profession to respond to that.” One loud and clear message is that we really need to know what’s going on out there, not only in terms of people behaviour but also their attitudes and how these are changing over time through this period of shock.

A nudge or a prod?

Sonya wanted to respond to a question received in advance concerning behaviour change and the role of nudges and of sticks. She noted that a lot has been made of nudging behaviour in a transport context, but that we’ve now seen a very significant stick at work. What then of the future? A nudge or a prod? Sonya thinks it’s a balance. “People are responding to the stick, recognising this is a necessity right now. But in the long term, people’s ability to accept that stick becomes less”. She looks to the prospect of some hard infrastructure measures to help sustain the positives (as picked up earlier).

OK – what about fuel tax?

Prompted by Sonya’s talk of balance, I couldn’t resist putting the panel on the spot concerning the question of fuel price and fuel tax, referring to a BBC News article in which the CCC’s CEO suggested that “the low oil price could allow the government the political space to put up fuel taxes”. I was interested in whether we could really take a softly, softly approach and leave the public to emerge from this in the face of cheap fuel for their cars – would they not be lured by those ridiculously low prices or should we be introducing an increase in fuel tax? I conceded that it was a very public forum to ask panellists whether we should increase fuel tax; but I did (though giving panellists the option to abstain). I asked for a show of hands for ‘yes’ on the question of increasing fuel tax:

Alison didn’t vote but considered fuel tax to be a very blunt instrument, less useful now than previously she thought. Afterwards I saw this coincided with a call from an audience member for road pricing for cars, especially with the transition to electric vehicles.

Future of transport planning and analysis

Fintan saw that the glass was half full for the future of transport planning. He was confident that transport analysis has a powerful set of tools developed over time to now help with modelling what could happen beyond the current lock-down. He reinforced his earlier point about being increasingly well equipped to capture benefits in the assessment of transport schemes and measures (including social benefits and benefits associated with active travel).

I wanted to be clear on the distinction between decision-support tools and tools in terms of the sorts of measures themselves that we need to reshaping transport and with which many professionals are already familiar any have just been waiting for their greater take-up. It seems to me we didn’t need COVID-19 to show us that we need to have the modal hierarchy that the Transport Strategy in Scotland has championed and will champion in future. But surely to goodness, COVID-19 has really highlighted its importance. We didn’t need COVID-19 to show us that some reallocation of roadspace could well make sense and that we need to get this rebalancing within the Triple Access System referred to at the start.

So, are the decision support tools still robust and serviceable? Fintan believes that they are. The tools and associated skills in using them have been built up over many years. Even if the patterns of demand are now seeing profound changes, the tools themselves remain valid – they still offer the best starting point for addressing what lies ahead, rather than going back and starting from scratch again. In my view he may well be right in at least not starting from scratch, but I’m less convinced that we can continue using the tools in the same way as before in terms of the policymaking pathways we now wish to develop and support.

Economic impact of what we do in changing the mobility system and its use

Karen stressed the need to be mindful of the economic impact of reallocating roadspace towards active modes in terms of its potential adverse effect on parking revenue for local authorities. In this light, central government needs to be ready to support local authorities that are keen to embrace positive change. Part of the frustration here I suggested was that local politicians can see the tangible loss in parking revenue but cannot see the gains to the local economy that could accrue from improved placemaking and greater prioritisation of active travel. Brian wanted to take matters further. He referred to an EU report on the external costs of private car use which he indicated were close to a trillion euros per year that we are paying to subsidise. He went on to explain that in the UK we are only recouping through direct taxation a third of the cost of the damage that cars do (in terms of collisions, air quality, environment…). This is, he says, amounts to a situation where “every man, woman and child in the UK is subsidising car use to the tune of ￡900/year”. Local fees generated in relation to car use (such as parking charges) cannot pick this up. He emphasised the need for a thorough economic assessment.

Public transport at the mercy of social distancing and other effects?

There were several audience questions both in advance and during the fireside chat about public transport. What is to become of the season ticket if so much more flexible working could take place in future? Does public transport need to be made more affordable to support its future (without running it out of business)? And a key current concern regards social distancing which logically leads to an aversion to crowded, confined space such as (some) buses and trains. As an insert here, I must say that I am currently bemused by the idea that people will avoid using public transport and use other modes instead to go to their destinations and destination activities. What on earth are they doing when they get there? Presumably the activities they engage in are now (and may in future be) rather solitary?!

Sunita was ready to address public transport. She started with a quick admission that she doesn’t know what the future holds for public transport at this point. She can’t see things going back to ‘before’ for a long time for public transport in relation to social distancing effects and this ‘interim’ state could be long-lived. She sees a range of different scenarios for service provision and use. She believes the numbers of passengers per vehicle could remain low for a prolonged period – to preserve social distancing – leading to a need for more vehicles in system – costly to operate and to the public purse (especially in more rural areas). For her local authority area, they were struggling to provide range of services before the COVID-19 shock – let alone now. They have been previously reliant in volunteers for hospital transport – but these have drifted away now because of the associated health vulnerabilities. Sunita suggests there will be a need to think differently about how we provide transport in a range of different situations. What is the interim scenario for moving vulnerable people around? They represent a small segment of our society; they are the ones we don’t count very often. They need to be accounted for in a whole-systems approach now. All this said, Sunita does recognise the opportunity here to develop a new approach – if time and resource allow.

Alison wanted to wholeheartedly agree with Sunita in terms of the challenge especially of servicing remote and rural areas. There has been significant public sector spend to support public transport over the last six weeks – something which could be a growing challenge going forwards. She gave us some hard figures when it came to changes in passenger numbers. “We’ve been monitoring trends over the last few weeks in Scotland: 90% reduction in bus passengers; 95% reduction in rail passengers; 95% reduction in ferry passengers (a big issue in Scotland); 75% reduction in car use; and a 35% increase in cycling”.

Scenarios of the future

Alison continued to briefly address the matter of future scenarios. “In terms of scale of the challenge and where we are going to go to next in terms of what the new normal might look like and how those scenarios play out, the level of uncertainty is massive.” Scenario planning it seems will be very much needed. She could only speculate at this point about the sorts of changes that were plausible. For example. There could be a behavioural rebound effect beyond the lock-down. Yet people may have become accustomed to the relative safety of digital for some of their activities, such as shopping. People may now also be more confident in using the digital system within the Triple Access System for their accessibility needs. She pointed out that, pre-COVID, less than 5% of people worked from home in Scotland – figures are now being seen of over 40%.

Conclusion – of this chapter in the conversation

There was no expectation of being able to reach grand conclusions from our fireside chat. And in the interests of getting this material into the public domain as quickly as possible after the event, I have not been able to attempt an executive summary. I hope, however, that the structure and highlighting within this document allows you to alight onto those matters that strike you as most important (and debatable) as we all work to continue our thinking, engagement and sharing of views, and ultimately our (hopefully more collaborative) actions.

Nevertheless, I invited our panellists to each offer a takeaway to conclude our fireside chat. Karen was determined to see the opportunity taken to reduce silo-working and to work more collaboratively to think outside the box. Sonya remains positive. She believes the other side of this crisis could deliver positive societal and transport outcomes as we come together. Brian hopes to see us be flexible enough to change some of our systems and approaches – not just in the short term. Fintan, like Sonya, is positive – he believes the outlook for our transport profession and what we can now do to help is promising. Sunita wants to see us using the many skills we have in our sector in different ways – whole systems thinking, outside the old transport planning box. Alison wanted to credit one of the participants, Tim Gent, with his reference in an advance comment to transport planners having super powers. We are gathering lots of information on changing travel demand and using that in a more powerful way than we have done in a long, long time she suggests. Alison says “transport planners should be seen as superheroes, and we should provide the leadership that we know that we can do”.

This resonated with people - see the article title! I wanted to note that all of us engaged in these conversations are in our careers because we want to make a positive difference to the future. In this regard, I came back to my earlier remark, namely that we are each of us as professionals facing the fight of our lives and we really have to stand up and be counted, to try and make something positive out of this.

I’ve not had time and space with this article to pay attention to the rich feed of exchanges of text messages between participants during the fireside chat. For that I apologise. However, that gives me another excuse to encourage you again, if you’ve read this far, to consider watching the fireside chat – where you can see all these exchanges as they emerge.

Its been an honour to be involved with this. My thanks again to everyone involved, and in particular to PTRC for seizing the initiative. I understand there will be more to follow in terms of the feedback from the fireside chat from participants as well as plans for further events. Keep an eye out.

I wish you all good health.