CIHT are pleased to announce the publication of the full CIHT FUTURES report, Uncertainty Ahead: Which Way Forward for Transport?.

CIHT asked Professor Glenn Lyons to carry out a wide ranging series of workshops around the UK, involving over 200 CIHT members. Glenn’s report, presented earlier this year, is a fascinating picture of our members’ views of how we should deal with uncertainty and has some key recommendations as to how CIHT and others should respond.  This final report will be a catalyst for further work by CIHT.

In an interview for CIHT’s latest podcast series, Professor Lyons said:

“The historic and inexorable growth in road traffic has come to a halt. Road traffic in total appears to have flat-lined since about 2004 through the period up until at least 2014. And indeed during that period and preceding it what had once been a historic coupling between road traffic activity and economic activity seems to have weakened”.

Listen to the podcast now.

Glenn goes on to say:  “It clearly raises an uncomfortable question when our transport models and forecasts, in an official capacity in many countries, continue to suggest an upward trend in road traffic”.
Looking at the past holds lessons: the shift from horse drawn transport to cars took a number of decades until car use became a dominant mode of transport. This was a regime change.  So Glenn poses the question of whether we might be in the midst of another transition away from the auto mobility regime to something radically different.

What are the implications for transport from the revolution in technology? How will people travel and connect in the future – will they do this in person or virtually? Oil prices have drastically fallen, what might happen to energy prices in the future? And how should we plan the future of our transport system based on these uncertainties?

The CIHT FUTURES project builds on work that Glenn undertook on behalf of the New Zealand transport ministry, he said:  “One of the key outputs or findings from the New Zealand work was just an examination of plausible but very different futures for transport and society, particularly taking account of the unknown about how the digital age will be changing how we connect in society.  Will we continue to rely as heavily as we have and have a preference for physical transport or might we increasingly into the mix add physical connectivity without the need for physical travel”.

CIHT members were presented with a range of scenarios for the levels of road traffic growth to 2042.  One scenario being an increase in total road traffic of 35%, to another a decline of 53%.  Both of which members thought were plausible.

What will the level of road traffic be in the UK in 2042?  No-one knows, but we should at least be asking the uncomfortable question of are our assumptions correct when faced with such disruptive change.

 

Read the report in full