Is disruption a useful metaphor for policy change?

Policy change is characterized as being slow and incremental over long time periods. In discussing a radical shift to a low carbon economy, many researchers identify a need for a more significant and rapid change to transport policy and travel patterns. However, it is not clear what is meant by rapid policy change and what conditions might be needed to support its delivery. Our contention in this paper is that notions of habit and stability dominate thinking about transport trends and the policy responses to them. We ignore variability in our data collection and seek to design policies and transport systems that broadly support the continuation of existing practices. This approach limits the scale of change required and the scope of activities and actions that could be used. This is, in part, due to the complexity of the mix of policies that will be required to deliver more radical change. This paper finds evidence, from a range of contexts, of very significant and on- going behaviour change. Change which can go well beyond the scale of that planned for through current transport policy. This can occur at different levels from the macro-economic changes we are currently experiencing, through the meso level local and regional environmental disruptions generated by the changing environment to more micro-level changes which occur throughout the natural life-course. The population is far more adaptable to major change than we currently assume. Disruptions are major opportunities for policy change and provide a window on the range of adaptations that are seen as possible and acceptable. Policy change itself can also be seen as a positive disruption which could open up a raft of new opportunities to align policy implementation with the behaviour of users. However, disruption can also be a major policy embarrassment when set against the current framing of stability and habit. This paper argues for a change in the current framing and an exploration of the data required to understand change through the lens of disruption.