Embracing uncertainty and shaping transport for Scotland’s future

Lyons, Glenn; Cragg, Stephen; Neil, Malcolm

Abstract

A growing number of transport bodies are trying to make sense of how to inform and shape policymaking and investment in the face of deep uncertainty. Potentially disruptive transport technologies are only part of a more complex picture of societal change that will determine the nature and extent of future travel demand.

Our National Transport Strategy is being reviewed and will set a vision for Scotland’s transport system. How can we reconcile our capacity to shape that system and its use on the one hand with external drivers of change that bring uncertainty to future conditions on the other?

Scenario planning has been turned to as a means of exposing and exploring uncertainty. However, this has commonly produced a set of divergent plausible futures without becoming more integral to the policymaking process itself. In the first half of 2018, Transport Scotland is seeking to address this through the development of a scenario planning process and tool to inform and test the development of the revised National Transport Strategy.

The following is envisaged. A model will be developed to numerically translate input values of drivers of change into output values of parameters that approximate the resulting future scenario. A series of baseline future scenarios (and accompanying narratives) will be established to depict a range of plausible futures. This then forms the basis for using the tool to explore the potential consequence of a policy intervention in each of the plausible futures. The tool can be run for multiple baseline-policy pairs and will allow compare and contrast insights to be shared with policymakers. By ‘sifting’ future possibilities in this way it is intended that particular baseline-policy pairs can then be examined in more detail using the National Land-use and Transport models (TELMoS and TMfS).

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: European Transport Conference
• Start Date: Oct 10, 2018
• End Date: Oct 12, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 10, 2018
• Publication Date: Oct 10, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jan 3, 2024
• Keywords: Uncertainty, scenario planning, decide and provide
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11548521
• Publisher URL: https://aetransport.org/en-gb/past-etc-papers/conference-papers-2018?abstractId=5915&state=b