Breaking the Habit – The Challenge of Transport Management.

The last decade has witnessed a considerable change in the objectives of urban transport policy and hence in the methods employed for solving transport problems. In particular, there has been a significant switch from high cost additions to the transport infrastructure to low cost measures designed to manage the existing infrastructure more efficiently. Most of the successful developments, however, have been in traffic management techniques, such as bus lanes and mini-roundabouts which have been designed solely to reduce travel time for existing patterns of movement. By contrast, transport management measures, such as fares subsidies and restraint, which are designed to encourage a change in the pattern of travel, have met with far less success.

This paper, which is the text of Professor May's inaugural lecture, reviews these developments, discusses some examples of both successful and unsuccessful transport management proposals, and identifies the aspects of these proposals about which there has been greatest concern and uncertainty. It suggests, from this analysis, the changes which need to be made in techniques of prediction, experimental design and policy implementation if the role of transport management is to be more clearly understood.