Roads Not Yet Travelled – Transport Futures for 2050

Professor Marcus Enoch has been exploring the possible future for transport over the next 25 years, with a book presenting eight different potential outcomes. He will be sharing his thoughts at the LTT Future Transport 2050 event next month. Deniz Huseyin looks at what might be in store.

Eight short stories that bring to life a range of possible transport scenarios in the not so distant future serve as opening gambits to a host of concepts discussed in a new book by Marcus Enoch, Professor of Transport Strategy at Loughborough University and onetime LTT reporter.

Each story, some of which could be described as warnings from the future, is based on a dominant theme – centralization, competition, chaos, cartel, care, communication, catastrophe and calculation. Each theme is a product of political, economic, social, technological,  legal and environmental trends and events, explains Enoch.

In Roads Not Yet Travelled Enoch describes the stories as “reasonably plausible potential near-term futures as to how our world may look in 2050”. The scenarios encompass a range of local, inter-urban and international transport systems. After each story,  the author offers a technical commentary on the potential pathways and draws out implications for policy and practice. “It is my hope that it will encourage reflection and provoke dialogue around the future of the transport system in a way that is evocative and entertaining,” says Enoch.

At the heart of his ruminations is a conceptual model, based on the findings of his in-depth interviews with 50 international transport experts.

The model is illustrated by a wheel (see right), with each of the eight scenarios within four axes of opposites: (1) regulate/deregulate (market power); (2) disperse/ accumulate (societal cohesion); (3)  devolve/concentrate (subsidiarity); and (4) qualify/quantify (measurement format).

The scenarios, each revolving around personal stories, describe the impact of automation, role of government, population density, attitudes to sharing and the importance of the carbon agenda.

The author hopes his stories will illustrate the need for a shift from the uncertain outcomes of the ‘predict and provide’ approach to transport policy towards a ‘decide and provide’ future. “This would focus on the type of society we want, ideally comprising  objectives agreed by stakeholders and the public at large,” Enoch says.

Through his stories, he seeks to show why the current “decide, announce and defend” approach does not work because “building public support for any policy package is crucial for its success”. Any policy must also be reasonable, correctly sequenced and properly resourced, with leaders held accountable, he adds.

Enoch believes policy makers should take small steps, prepare for surprises and plan for human inventiveness. “This would start with ‘easy wins’ (namely, cheap, quick, publicly acceptable measures) – for example, to directly tackle the reasons that people say  prevent them from using non-car modes, and then gradually building support for more challenging measures in a series of ‘implementation rounds’.”

Positive change would be based on a “strong relationship” between agent and local transport users, he says. “For instance, an employer can influence an employee’s travel behaviour through transport interventions such as parking charging, permit or priority  schemes; investments in new walk/cycle infrastructure, public transport services or lift-sharing schemes; or bus and rail subsidies; but also through changes to business travel policies; and through changes to home-working policies and rules for holidays and  working hours. This is much more leverage than any local authority might have over one of its residents, for example.”

Addressing the longer-term challenges related to the transport sector are not straightforward, Enoch admits.

“First, there are practical barriers of insufficient capacity in people, skills, time, and money, whereby governments, never mind individuals or organizations, are currently struggling to do much more than cope with the day-to-day, while lurching from crisis  to crisis,” he explains. “This situation needs to change. We need to step back and see the bigger picture.”

He adds: “This form of cognitive dissonance, between what we feel is best for us as an individual right now, and what might be right for society as a whole and over the longer term, presents a particular challenge to policy makers and suggests that more committed  efforts at communicating with and engaging stakeholders are required to ensure their success at meeting policy goals.”

Enoch calls for informed debate on transport futures to outline initial positions, agree priorities, resolve conflicts and co-create solutions acceptable to everyone.

“The need for this is made clear by the apparent weaponization of urban transport measures aimed at improving the environment, road safety outcomes and access to services by opponents of Ultra Low Emission Zones, 20mph zones, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 15-minute cities since the pandemic in the UK and elsewhere, which ordinarily might have been expected to be relatively uncontroversial.” 

Roads Not Yet Travelled - Transport Futures For 2050

Marcus Enoch will be speaking about his new book at LTT’s Transport Future 2050 event on 10th June. 

For more details about attending see folowing pages or go to https://www.landorlinks.uk/future-2050

The eight scenarios

Cartel

People are delivered like parcels for long-distance travel, where they are barcoded and rendered unconscious for the duration of the journey. This removes the hassle, boredom and discomfort associated with travelling long-distance.

Centralization

The protagonist uses an app to commute by autonomous vehicle pod in a future where other forms of transport have been largely superseded.

Competition

Two Arsenal Hotspurs supporters travel using a driverless shared shuttle in virtual pick-up stops pre-booked on an app or sometimes early morning pilotless air limo ride to the roof of the office. If they had more time in the evening, they might opt for a high-speed  river taxi back along the Thames.

Communication

A woman and her granddaughter embark on a long haul flight on a large airship, powered by eight electric engines fuelled by liquid hydrogen fuel cells that emit 5% of the carbon used per passenger by the jet-powered aeroplanes of the 2020s and has an average  cruising speed of 120 mph.

Chaos

Nation states and city authorities have become largely irrelevant. There has been a dramatic re-emergence of ‘car culture’ as a dominant form of social expression, where car owners have modified their vehicles to take advantage of the new and edgier urban environment in which they find themselves.

Care

‘Leg-ends’ propulsion boots are available that enable people to move around more quickly. Goods are delivered by cargo e-bikes and small automated vans that ‘call out’ the recipients to collect their parcels from the side of the road. Former public transport  passengers use shared fleets of driverless cars and vans.

Calculation

This scenario warns of a “purist mid-21st-century form of capitalist nirvana, where the wealth of society is almost entirely dependent on the whim of a series of well-functioning ‘societal markets’, which in turn are fuelled by the monetization of a constant  stream of big data-inspired inventions and innovations.”

Catastrophe

In the wake of the ‘Collapse’, a young woman found guilty of ‘thievery’is banished to an island, where she seeks to live within an environment ravaged by climate change (see excerpt).

Excerpt: Catastrophe

When it finally happened, the Great Climate Readjustment (‘The Collapse’) was not wholly unexpected. Indeed, scientists had been warning of such a possibility for several decades and had urged governments to act to cut greenhouse gases in a bid to reverse the  process of climate change.

However, only during the late 2020s, when climate records continued to be set at a rapid rate and the occurrence of previously extreme weather events became commonplace, did governments around the world finally commit to seriously addressing the issue. Working  together, their measures included banning non-essential travel, mandating working from home, heavily taxing meat and dairy consumption, and introducing stringent carbon rationing schemes. But in the end, humanity simply ran out of time.