Presentation from CTA's 10 December Online Event

1. Dr Mark Beecroft,
Centre for Transport Research,
University of Aberdeen
Community Transport Association webinar 10/12/20

2. Contents
What have we learnt from 2020 in transport in terms of:
 Planning for the future
 The relationship between transport and health

3. Planning for the future
 Career in transport research began in March 2000
working on Transport Visions Network
 Collaborative project generating visions of the future of
transport for a 2020 time horizon
 Wave of ‘2020 visions’ projects including UK Gov’t
Foresight Futures studies around turn of millennium
“We live in an age of uncertainty, an age of turbulence
and structural discontinuities… the greatest danger in
times of turbulence is not the turbulence, but to act
with yesterday’s logic.”
(Bradfield & El-Sayed 2009)

4. Scenario planning for sustainable
transport
 Tendency towards inertia in strategic decision-making
 Commitment to status quo / inability to see an emergent novel
reality / being locked inside assumptions.
 Scenario thinking can challenge potentially inappropriate
confidence in terms of both a single point future and a single,
tried-and-trusted strategy.
 We can experiment with the future by developing scenarios, in
which a range of plausible futures are developed which bound
the range of uncertainties that appear inherent in the future.
 The margin of uncertainty about the future that exists in the
present is so large that we can only narrow it to a set of
alternative scenarios.

5. • Correlation between the adoption of scenario
planning & environmental discontinuities / instability.
• We need to invest time and effort in collaborative
scenario planning across the sector!
Source: https://chesterenergyandpolicy.com/2017/11/01/stranger-things-season-2-a-pointed-comment-on-the-department-of-
energys-nuclear-history-and-future/

6. Transport and Health
 Growing understanding that environmental & social impacts of
transport often have public health consequences
 Health at intersection between environmental & social issues in
sustainability encompassing:
 noise & air pollution impacts on physical & mental health
 transport safety & accidents
 promotion of active travel
 location & accessibility of health & other facilities;
 lifestyle impacts of transport:
 obesity & sedentary lifestyles
 community severance impacts of transport on health & wellbeing
 mental health impacts of traffic & congestion
 Role of transport in disease transmission & control including
major health events (pandemics)

7. Major health events
 Pandemics at intersection of
natural (biological) & man-made
(virus transmission) activity
 Events with profound
ramifications, but incredibly
difficult to assess risk
 Pandemics rarely directly
damage transport systems, but:
 Transport is vector for diffusion
(especially aviation)
 Unintended consequence of
hypermobility
Global distribution of
COVID-19 Cases (Jan-March
2020) Source: Gossling et al 2020

8. Transport impacts of Covid-19
 Disruption of transport services/supply chains (food, energy,
medical supplies)
 Air pollution reductions during lockdowns
 Active discouragement of travel
 Impacts on independent mobility & social inclusion esp of
vulnerable groups such as older people & mobility impaired
 Impacts on aviation sector & tourism
 Role of virtual mobility
 Encouragement of active travel:
 road space reallocation
 infrastructure investment
 temporary? Source: https://road.cc/content/news/shapps-tells-
councils-stop-abusing-funding-277095

9. Collective transport impacts
 Active discouragement of collective forms of transport:
 Implications for sustainability of public transport
 Challenging traditional models of service provision, vehicles
and infrastructure
 Implications for community transport
 Impacts on independent mobility & social inclusion of
vulnerable groups such as older people & mobility impaired
 Can lead to physical and mental health consequences
 Impacts on sharing economy more broadly
 Car-sharing Bike-sharing and micromobility
 Lift-sharing Ride-hailing and collective taxis

10. New York Subway & Citi
Bike daily ridership vs
COVID-19 cases, March
2020 (Source: Teixeira & Lopes
2020)
Source:
https://www.thestatesman.com/world/face-
masks-compulsory-public-transport-uk-
eases-coronavirus-lockdown-
1502900367.html

11. Lessons learnt from 2020
Planning for the future
 Major discontinuities show incremental ‘business as
usual’ future forecasting is not sustainable
 We need to invest time and effort in collaborative
scenario planning across the sector!
Transport and Health
 Collective and shared mobility critical to future
sustainability of transport networks
 How we undertake our mobility is subject to disruption
and may not return to ‘normal’

12. m.beecroft@abdn.ac.uk