TRANSPORT AND TECHNOLOGY

Despite cases in which travel is undertaken purely for its own sake, travel is usually considered to be derived from a need or desire to participate in a wide range of activities - accessing people, goods, services and opportunities. People's schedules of activities in turn are derived from social practices (and the patterning of land use that affects where and when activities can take place). Travel demand, in part, is shaped directly and indirectly through the emergence of various kinds of technologies. Until now, discussion of emerging technologies in the transport literature has focussed on the impact of: (i) transport technologies (designed to assist traffic management and the movement of people through the transport system); and (ii) information and communication technologies (ICTs, that enable a substitution for or reorganisation of travel in time and space).

This project introduces a third type of technologies labelled 'non-transport technologies' reflecting technologies that shape social practices causing indirect impacts on travel demand. The invention of refrigeration, for example, enabled storing food for longer periods both in shops and in homes. This facilitated weekly rather than daily shopping and was allied to economies of scale for retailers in the form of out of town supermarkets.

The research examines socio-political conditions that have influenced, positively or negatively, the uptake and impact of non-transport technologies on social practice - and thus travel. A mixed-methodological approach is adopted to classify/cluster the different forms of non-transport technology according to their impacts and examine how these technologies can combine and interact so transforming patterns of demand for travel. The research will construct and examine different future scenarios (framed by social, political and technological assumptions) in order to assess the scope for non-transport technologies to have a major impact upon travel demand in a 'climate change' and 'resource-constrained' futures. The project will develop policy recommendations and initiate consideration of how understandings from this and related research could inform the modification/development of policy-support tools used to assess or predict future patterns of travel.

The main impact will be upon many individuals and organisations concerned with current and future transport and travel planning. There remains therein a strong discipline of extrapolation in relation to assessing future travel demand, based on key factors such as car ownership and income. Even the growing acceptance of there being greater uncertainty about the future and the corresponding use of scenario planning as a technique has tended to have a limited 'field of vision'. There has been an emphasis on how transport technologies and substitution technologies will work together to portray the 'art of the possible' in terms of futures. Yet futures for travel demand will be shaped by a much broader set of factors. In the case of this research, the potential importance of non-transport technologies impacting on travel demand through influence on social practices will be systematically explored.

The beneficiaries will include: (i) academics - who contribute to the pool of knowledge and debate concerning factors that can be significantly at work in shaping society; (ii) practitioners - who work within the confines of existing tools to explore pathways to the future; (iii) advocacy groups who articulate concerns and aspirations about how the world might or could be and wish to make sense of credible pathways to such futures; (iv) industries that provide products and services that tangibly affect patterns of travel such as the Intelligent Transport Systems profession and housing and retail developers that contribute to shaping patterns of land-use; and (v) policymakers that define the policies, measures and investment strategies that steer the shaping of society and transport.

We face major challenges ahead with a society heavily dependent upon mobility at the same time as concerns over climate change, public health and peak oil associated with our travel. There has perhaps never been a greater need to ensure we are well informed regarding decision making that will shape, intentionally or unintentionally, future travel demand in ways that accord with addressing climate change imperatives. The impact of this research will be from colouring and changing mindsets of public and private sector decision-makers regarding how the context for travel demand is being shaped by factors not immediately within their fields of influence.