Transport Planning in a Technology Ecosystem

Abstract

While we can see that the pace of change in emerging technology is ever-increasing, many of our transport planning approaches and assumptions about future transportation and communities remain static. This paper examines research into the socio-technical transformation that occurred in transportation at the beginning of last century when motorcars replaced horses. Many of the same lessons learnt will still apply as we approach the next big transformation in transportation with autonomous vehicles and Mobility as a Service. This paper examines how the introduction of Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), open data protocols, artificial intelligence and other technologies will enable transport planning to engage the citizenry and enable change as we enter this next transformational phase in transport.

Author

Matthew Ensor

BE (Hons) (Civil), Cert Arts (Soc. Science), PGDipBusAdmin, INSEAD AMP, CMInstD

Business Director – Advisory, Beca

matthew.ensor@beca.com

+64 9 300 9234

Introduction

We are on the cusp of a transformation of transport technology with the potential impending introduction of, for example, autonomous vehicles and Mobility as a Service (MaaS). In this paper, I propose that any technology transformation in the transport system will only occur when both the social and the regulatory context allows it. In essence, transformations in transport technology in our transport system requires a “socio-technical” change.

To look at how this will affect the impending transformation, it is possible to examine another similar transformation which took place around a century ago when petrol powered cars replaced horse drawn vehicles. Horses had been the dominant motive power for millennia but the change to petrol automobiles becoming dominant took place over little more than a decade. It was not just the mode that changed but also social change that drove and enabled the technology transformation on the roads.

The implication of this is that transport planning must not just be focussed on analytical processes examining the likely traffic and land use effects. The transport planning profession is slowly changing, moving from predict and provide, through planning fairly dogmatic visions of urban form, to now being at the stage where we need to change again to planning transport in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). In a VUCA world, to avoid market forces dominating the future of our cities and regions, transport planning must more than ever not be distant from our “citizenry”.

The recommendations in this paper are that by using a socio-technical basis of technological transformation of transport, this will drive us to examine how we can use technology. As the pace of change in technology continues, it would be odd if the pace of change in how we consult and plan for transport wasn’t changing at the same pace.

Transport planners need to remain technical experts and also understand that as a technology transformation in transport approaches, our role now exists within the co-creation and socio-technical sphere. Transport planning exists in a technology ecosystem.

Socio-Technical Transformation in Transport (1885–1930)

The motorcar (horseless carriage) was invented in 1885. Between 1885 and 1930 there was an unprecedented transformation in transport with horses being replaced by motorcars. The peak of the transformation in places like New York City started around 1910.

Figure 1 shows the dominance of horse-drawn transport in New York City in 1900 alongside a photo taken in a similar location only 13 years later which shows the domination of petrol powered motorcars.

These images have been used by Morgan Stanley to illustrate the strong market cap valuation of Tesla by extrapolating this change to show how the transformation to autonomous and electric vehicles could suddenly occur quickly even with all the industry, regulation and social traditions around traditional vehicles.

Figure 1: The transformation of transport in New York City (1900-1913)

Geels (2005) describes the transition from horse drawn transport to the motorcar in the US as a series of steps. He demonstrates that the speed of the transition (transformation) was due to the public mood (landscape) changing negatively towards the existing dominant modes of transport (electric tram, horse-drawn carriages) which until then had been a stable transport market with strong tradition.

At that time the motorcar had already been a niche vehicle for over two decades, used for touring and promenading, and as a toy for the wealthy to race. The change in social mood, enabled the motorcar to move beyond these niche roles and start to get adopted in the mainstream.

Geels applied the socio-technical model of change to the transformation from horses to motorcars and demonstrated that the evolution of the motorcar was not luck, nor just based on the design technology, but rather a complex interplay of social, political and technological elements.

The socio-technical model of change that Geels uses is shown in Figure 2.

The basis of Geels’ model of socio-technical change is that technology fulfils societal functions, but only in association with “human agency” and “social structures”. Technology fulfils a social function, but only with a social license. So a transition of technology consists of a change from one socio-technical system to another.

A useful example of this is the transformational “Segway” transport technology introduced in 2001. It was expected (at least by its inventors and funders) to transform personal transport. Dean Kamen (the inventor) believed the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." However, even 16 years later, it has not achieved a transformation in transport as it could not achieve a socio-technical change. The public are apathetic about Segway, and even hostile towards the technology. In an analysis by Tokarski (2011), a key reason that Segway failed to commercialise was a lack of social acceptance: “People who ride the Segway look goofy which creates a follower barrier if only a few ‘eccentric’ people are using it.” Additionally, Graham (2010) points out that Segway “had focus groups aplenty [when developing the product], but they didn’t have people yelling insults out of cars when they were test riding.”

Compare this to e-Bikes, which are achieving massive growth in sales, which because of their close relationship with unpowered bicycles, have been able to begin to grow within the current socio-technical system.

Figure 2: Multi-level perspective on transitions (Geels, 2005)

Figure 2 explains this complexity of change. We can see that according to Geels’ model, there are 3 levels to a technology ecosystem:

At the bottom is emerging transformative technologies that start in niches, typically geographic and demographic.

In the middle is the socio-technical regime. This is the stabilising effect of organisations, regulations, funding, expectations, culture, market dominant players / monopolies, and vested interests. Stability at the regime level is not inertia, but rather dynamic stability, meaning that innovation still occurs but is of an incremental, not transformational nature.

At the top is the social context or landscape. This is the importance of social changes, political movements, in essence the importance of timing. Any change in the stable socio-technical regime can only occur from pressure from this level that opens windows of opportunity for change.

So transitions are complex processes that involve interaction between social groups, e.g. commercial transactions, political negotiations, power struggles and creation of coalitions.

Figure 3 is a tweet that uses sarcasm to put the view that it is foolish to assume that technology will be adopted and be the solution for everything. I think that this sarcasm resonates with most of the transport planning profession who are wary of technology being the answer. Intuitively we know that the transport system is a socio-technical system, and technology won’t just be adopted easily and quickly as there is a (socio-technical) mechanism that means transformational change is far more complex and slower.

Figure 3: “Driverless cars are coming”

Figure 4 shows a ride sharing sign. The age of the cars demonstrates that this photo is from almost 50 years ago. It may be convenient to think that Uber Pool or Lyft technology will finally drive a widespread change, but rather there needs to be a social change based on a successful niche that creates a window of opportunity at the regime (regulatory) level.

Figure 4: Will technology finally drive the uptake of ridesharing?

The importance of the socio-technical approach is that transformation in transport will need to start in a niche. For the motorcar a century ago this was touring and promenading. For the bicycle from the 1830s onwards it was a toy and for racing. We can now see niches developing for MaaS, and autonomous vehicles.

Rideshare systems Uber Pool and Lyft have achieved continued growth in global revenue to now around US$7B per annum. Their services are stabilising around a dominant design as users build up experience with the new technology. We will see consumer preferences refining the offerings, and groups forming to do lobbying work. But the innovation is still no threat to the control of the regime – until regulations fully enable the technologies, the niche will still not dominate the transport for hire market.

New technology may be stuck in these niches for a long time (decades) when they face a mismatch with the existing regime, and there isn’t a strong change in social context (landscape) to disrupt the regime (traditions). As long as the regimes remain stable then niche innovations have little chance to diffuse more widely.

There are technological innovations in transport that are already in niches, and some such as MaaS and autonomous vehicles that may enter them. Given the socio-technical framework, the role of the transport planner needs debate. The extant role of the transport planner has been working within the regime, getting incremental innovations. Cycleways, shared spaces are examples of good progress being made. An e-bike regulation is being developed which will include all electric transport up to a certain wattage.

To be fully effective in a period of transformative rather than incremental change, the transport planner needs to be more than working within the regime level and move in the social landscape level. At the minimum level this needs to be to provide information for informed debate in the community. For some it will go further, becoming involved in lobby and special interest groups. But where the role of the transport planner is assumed to be as an objective specialist then it is about engaging the citizenry with the issues. It is only through widespread engagement of the citizenry that socio-technical change can begin to occur through misalignment between the community and the regime.

We are at a good moment in time for this role of the transport planner to be significant. The regime is plagued by problems which can’t be solved by incremental improvements. There is a landscape level impetus for change, but unfortunately little direct citizenry engagement with the potential transformational solutions.

Based on the socio-technical approach, change can only occur when the citizenry become engaged, forcing instability at the regime level. I see a key role for the transport planner in fostering this engagement.

Engagement of Citizenry through Hyperlocalism

This relationship between transport planners and citizenry has traditionally been distant. People will engage on things that affect them directly, either geographically or through pricing or rules relevant to how they travel.

This is unsurprising as the basic premise of being human is being local. When a transport plan is presented, interested people will look to see whether the plans affect them negatively, and if they do not, then they disengage from the planning process. This silent majority is then neither for nor against the transport plan, just not engaged. So our current consultation with the community is generally with those directly affected. The implication of no wider citizen engagement with transport plans, means that the status quo with incremental improvements (or decrements) will remain the only achievable outcome.

Citizenry will more likely be engage through leveraging hyper-localism.

“Hyperlocal” is defined as information orientated around a well-defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of the population in that community. More recently, the term hyperlocal has become synonymous with the combined use of applications on mobile devices and GPS technology. Effectively information can be delivered to an individual that relates to their interests and location. Another description of this is narrowcasting, which is defined as being the opposite of broadcasting.

There is substantial evidence that people respond to hyperlocal. Facebook uses hyper-localism to target advertising to people within a few hundred metres, with particular interests and demographics that Facebook has observed. Neighbourly (New Zealand) uses peoples’ registration of their street address to provide targeted and crowd sourced news and information. Neighbourly is owned by Fairfax which is a major media company.

One challenge is that Facebook and Neighbourly are applicable only to a certain part of the population who are connected and use the application. For transport we need to be able to converse with everyone. So it is important to examine how the hyperlocal approach can be used more universally for transport content.

Figure 5 identifies my proposed four stage process to do this and leverage hyperlocalism for transport issues.

Figure 5: Process to leverage hyperlocalism

Open data approach

There is digital information on all active members of the population. This in itself is a source of concern to many, with privacy legislation being the key method to mitigate this. Organisations have over the last decades generally got to grips with what they need to do to comply and protect people’s identifiable information. Standards keep developing and in May 2018, the European Union’s new data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is set to replace the current Data Protection Directive (DPD) and will apply to companies globally.

In parallel with maturing data privacy, open data approaches are also maturing. This is where organisations share information so that others can create value from it. A recent example is where Uber has created “Uber Movement” to provide anonymised data from over two billion trips to help urban planning around the world. It is assumed that the open data approach will in general provide sufficient reciprocity for it to become widespread, and the maturing of data privacy regulations will support it.

In general the private sector holds more information on the citizenry than local government because of the commercial and competitive importance of this information for customer service. There is also more trust of communication from the private sector than there is from local government. A nationwide survey showed that only 12% of people would trust their local council.

Open data also includes information on local communities, including environmental and activity information. LPWAN (low power wide area network) is being rolled out in New Zealand, and this will enable cheap sensors to create local information, available to the community.

With even a limited open data philosophy, it is possible to identify hyperlocal issues that will engage those they affect.

Communication of hyperlocal issues

The Edelman Trust Barometer is surveyed annually to test global trust levels in business and governments. For countries similar to New Zealand, trust isn’t necessarily high for companies but it is higher than for government officials and government departments.

Hyperlocal information is best communicated via an intermediary, for example Neighbourly or FlyBuys. As an example, both of those organisations can communicate directly, and don’t suffer the same lack of trust as local government.

Wellington City Council’s virtual reality (VR) smart city demonstrator is another potential future method as through VR it can make things very local.

For example, a citizen may receive an email saying “Council are looking to put in a new boat ramp near you, click here for more information on how it may affect you.” The citizen may have been selected as their profile clearly shows fishing is an active pastime, and they live within 20 km of the boat ramp.

Listening

Then there needs to be a way that people can respond in a natural way. For many, it appears that needing to fill out a survey or online form is a sufficient barrier to respond. Using traditional thinking, what is required is a call centre capable of fielding multiple calls and collecting feedback. To get deep information the call takers need to be skilled in an approach that would be taken by an expert in consultation and the project itself, being able to delve into depth on the reason behind people’s views and be able to understand the emotional levels in the conversation including the views, biases and judgements of the respondent. So this is not a call centre solution.

A chatbot is computer software that is capable of having a human-like conversation with a user either by voice recognition or by typed text messages. The more advanced chatbots are grounded in Artificial Intelligence (AI), capable of understanding conversational phrasing, and are programmed to actively learn from previous conversations so they're constantly able to grow and develop.

Chatbots can operate at enormous scale and they are being introduced to perform government consultation in Jersey. Since June 2017, Jersey has been using a chatbot developed by apptivism, a London start-up. The chatbot works via Facebook Messenger; public servants pick topics on which they want to consult the island’s citizens, set up a series of questions, then use the chatbot to solicit responses. People using the chatbot are able to see fact-checked information from a range of sources, receive instant feedback and share the chatbot with friends and colleagues. The results have been good; 78% of users complete the chat, 68% re-engage and 50% share it with their friends.

Chatbot AI will become mature and common. Leading technology industry forecaster Gartner estimates 85% of all customer service interactions by 2020 will be managed by chatbots rather than humans.

With the ability of AI to learn, the skills of basic consultation can be continuously refined, both to increase engagement and refine how the information collected is analysed.

Hyperlocal response

The final step is how local government responds. In Jersey, the results of the AI-based consultation are published online but it is feedback loops that will keep individuals engaged.

It is possible to create an ongoing hyperlocal conversation through this process, expanding the conversation to wider transport issues and changes that are directly relevant.

The role of the transport planner is key.

Conclusions

Transformation in transport technology will occur within a socio-technical ecosystem.

Transformation requires creating instability in the socio-technical regime

This instability will come about through citizenry who are engaged with the possibility of the change. Currently they are mostly disengaged with objective transport planning.

Engaged citizenry will occur through changing the way we consult to leverage hyperlocalism. This requires working with an open data approach, collaborating with the private sector and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to achieve scale and tailor individual conversations.

Without changing our approach, we will see incremental improvements in transport network performance.

The implications of this on the role of the transport planner from this approach are summarised below:

THEN:	The transport planner provided expert specialist advice within a formal process, based on past experience

NOW:	The transport planner links best practise with forecasting the future

FUTURE:	The transport planner will also enable the transformation of transport technology in a socio-technical context.

Key Reference

Geels, F.W. (2005) Technology Analysis & Strategic Management Vol 17, No 4, 445-476, December 2005 “The Dynamics of Transitions in Socio-technical Systems: A Multi-level Analysis of the Transition Pathway from Horse-drawn Carriages to Automobiles (1860 – 1930).

Footnotes

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/5th-ave-1900-vs-1913-2011-3

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,186660,00.html

https://www.wired.com/2003/03/segway/

Tokarski, I. (2011) Segway Inc. – Analysis of an innovation that failed to commercialise. (https://woolmilk.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/segway-inc-analysis-of-an-innovation-that-failed-to-commercialize/)

Graham, P. (2010). “About why the Segway failed”: (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090730/1958335722.shtml)

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/motivate-me/100845075/ebike-popularity-gathers-speed-as-imports-hit-up-to-20000

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041816/rise-niche-ridehailing-services.asp

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-quebec-canada-montreal-regulations-new-rules-a7968841.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/02/uber-and-lyft-are-getting-pushback-from-municipalities-all-over-the-us.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/22/uber-licence-transport-for-london-tfl

Lieswyn, J, M Fowler, G Koorey, A Wilke and S Crimp (2017) Regulations and safety for electric bicycles and other low-powered vehicles. NZ Transport Agency research report 621. (https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/resources/research/reports/621/621-regulations-and-safety-for-electric-bicycles-and-other-low-powered-vehicles.pdf)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlocal

Downman, S., Murray, R. (2018) Hyperlocal Journalism and Digital Disruptions (https://www.routledge.com/Hyperlocal-Journalism-and-Digital-Disruptions-The-journalism-change-agents/Downman-Murray/p/book/9781138044081)

https://www.eugdpr.org/

https://movement.uber.com/

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/306555/survey-finds-low-trust-in-auckland-council

http://www.communicationstoday.co.in/company-news/18750-lpwa-iot-gains-traction

https://www.edelman.com/research

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurencebradford/2017/07/24/how-chatbots-are-about-to-change-communication/#54a433424aa8

https://apolitical.co/solution_article/chatbots-government-what-jobs-can-they-do/

https://www.nbr.co.nz/mob-tim-warren

http://www.apptivism.je/conversations