What can we do as transport professionals to help save the world?! (Or at least try)

My wonderful Mott MacDonald colleagues Leora Wilson and Anna Tyler decided to aim high with the first exam question of 2024 in their co-hosted technical webinar. The panel with the privilege of sitting the exam was made up of Kim Yates, Damian Price, Stephen Luke and myself.

Here is some of what I had to say....

 

Cheating in the exam?

Here's one answer to our exam question – in 50 words. Please listen carefully:

“Transport professionals can help save the world by promoting sustainable transportation modes, optimizing traffic flow, embracing alternative fuels, encouraging carpooling, optimizing fleet management, investing in green infrastructure, supporting remote work, promoting eco-friendly practices, engaging in environmental advocacy, and staying informed to adapt to sustainable technologies and practices.”

There you have it. I cheated as you may have guessed because I asked ChatGPT to produce that answer for me.
 

Avoid-Shift-(but mostly)Improve
 

All its points make sense, and its answer echoes a lot of what we might associate with the day-to-day work of transport professionals. In fact I might summarise much of what ChatGPT has said as being reflective of the ‘Avoid-Shift-Improve’ approach: avoiding the need for motorised travel where possible; shifting travel that does take place to more environmentally friendly modes; and improving the efficiency and reducing the adverse impacts of motorised travel.

 "What we need is for transport to support the type of society we want"

However, what I observe (with some exceptions) is that in general there is little political appetite for avoiding or shifting. The aspirations or warm words may be there and some budgets may be announced (and possibly then taken away). Most effort is going into improving, as has been the case for some time -  improving vehicles, improving traffic management, improving infrastructure design and so on. Improving can be difficult enough itself politically (just take a look at the 20mph speed limit policy in Wales), but it is easier than playing with the fire of road pricing, low-emission zones, 20-minute neighbourhoods and other such measures that would seriously address avoiding and shifting.

Is transport just a servant to society?
 

When I did my inaugural lecture over 20 yeas ago, a central point I considered was how we understand, as transport professionals, the relationship between transport and society. I believe one of our problems is that we have a mentality of ‘transport serves society’. Predict and provide is a prime example. But the reality is that transport shapes society, and society shapes transport. Changing transport supply affects patterns of demand and in turn land use, which in turn puts pressure on further shaping transport supply. What we need is for transport to support the type of society we want.

Looking forwards, I think we want a society that is not struggling to cope or indeed to survive in the face of climate change and biodiversity collapse – and if we can have that, a society that is safe and inclusive.

In that case, we have some serious and urgent change we need to make to transport to help support us having that sort of society in future.
 

Saving us from wicked problems and from ourselves
 

And I don’t think plodding on with ChatGPT’s list is going to be enough unless it has real ambition and bite. Many of the things ChatGPT listed are not wild, new ambitious ideas - they have been long recognised and advocated, and yet here we are with a sense of needing to save the world because, in part, transport doesn’t look that sustainable; it’s still very much part of the problem.

If by 'saving the world' we really mean 'saving society' then it seems our collective problem is saving society from itself. After all, how have we got in this predicament in the first place (now that most of us can agree that human-made climate change is real)?

"Transport doesn’t look that sustainable; it’s still very much part of the problem"

Some transport professionals may be content to serve society and go with the grain of market forces, leaving the bigger headaches to the politicians. And there are some things we can do very well by simply serving our political masters. Indeed, we may think we are no match for the fossil-fuel industry, politicians and the mainstream media when it comes to trying to get the public on side to shape society.

The challenge is that to save the world is not just a series of simple technical problems to be solved. We face a series of wicked problems that cannot be solved but only managed; and effective management calls for greater collaboration across actors and across disciplines – which is not easy!
 

Change the exam question?
 

Okay, so can we afford not to try and help save the world as transport professionals? Maybe we say it’s not our responsibility, apart from doing a bit of serving? Maybe we argue it doesn’t need saving and life will continue to muddle along as it has in decades past. But maybe we are now in a period in history where we have to really ask ourselves whether we need to stand up and be counted and ready to play our part in unprecedented change.

Without shocks and revolution and a system that destabilises to create dramatic change and fundamentally new possibilities, I think it is difficult to imagine as professionals we can – by ourselves – hope to change politics, the media or the fossil-fuel industry in the current system to produce world-saving outcomes.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be ready to push at an open door of political change if that presents itself.
 

Answering the exam question
 

What can we do then? As might also be true of a large organisation and its system: we can work smarter within the system as it is; and we can work to change the system itself or at least weaken the inertia preventing change. These may all be small steps and minor victories but, as I’m told by a good friend of mine, ‘no snowflake thinks it started the avalanche’.

To me it means that as individual transport professionals we need to bring constructive challenge to our roles and our work - be prepared to go beyond our comfort zones and to speak up and speak out, to question practices around us in a belief that others may feel the same and will respect us for being our authentic, and perhaps braver, selves. I hope that’s the sort of culture we would relish cultivating or further cultivating in TMS and Mott MacDonald.

In conclusion, the nature of our technical excellence will continue to evolve with the times, but saving the world is going to need a different type of transport professional and transport profession. This is a philosophical battle fought with the heart and mind as much as a battle fought with technical competency. So, let’s try at least to make the most of the agency we do have as transport professionals to do our bit in trying to save the world.

Follow-on thoughts
 

There are three things I want to add here that came to mind as the event proceeded and audience questions came in: comfort zones, activism and organisations.

I learn the following saying from Hannah Smart: "A comfort zone is a safe place to be but nothing ever grows there". If, as professionals, we want to make a difference, part of that can come through us trying harder to be agents of change - even at the scale of an individual conversation or meeting. Try stepping outside your comfort zone to put yourself in what might feel like a somewhat uncomfortable, risky situation - questioning what you are being told, trying to change the narrative of what you're experiencing.

"As an individual professional you can always make a difference"

I learnt the following from Zoe Cohen in our recent Fireside Chat on climate activists and activism. If you think being an activist today sounds scary, imagine how scary it is going to be if we don't manage to address climate change. In my book, anyone who takes climate action is an activist. Activism comes in all shapes and sizes. By speaking up and speaking out as professionals, by trying to influence those around us and the nature of the projects we work on and the things that are developed, we can make some difference - we are activists.

Many years ago I was enlightened with regard to the notion of what an organisation is. It is not an artefact or an enduring entity. At its heart, an organisation is made up of a collection of individual humans with a code of conduct about how to go about doing what they do together. If individuals change, if enough individuals change in terms of what they want to see being done, then the organisation can change. As an individual professional you can always make a difference.
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Glenn Lyons is Mott MacDonald Professor of Future Mobility at the University of the West of England & vice president of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation