Towards a Transport Therapy:

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Towards a Transport Therapy
Communication and
Travel Behavior
Reflexivity in
Christopher D. Congleton M.S. Institute of
Transportation Studies University of California,
Davis August 2004
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What are we talking about?
Transport as the spatiotemporal mediation of
people and goods
Automobility as the personal (and commercial)
mobility afforded by the democratization of
access to systems that allow individuals to move
in a self-directed fashion through the space and
time of their daily lives (Kurani, Turrentine,
Heffner, and Congleton 2003)
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USA Transport in Context

• The Legacy of the System of Interstate and
  Defense Highways (1956 Legislation)
• Vehicle Mass Marketing from 0 to
  220 million in 100 years

• Geopolitics of Petroleum Supply Chains
• Postwar Boomer Suburban Sprawl

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(No Transcript)
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Pathologies and Disease (Disturbances?) in
Transport Systems and the Need for Collective
Therapies

• Marginalization of segments of the population
  without auto access (and therefore access to the
  benefits of automobility)
• Marginalization of transport alternatives to the
  auto
• Contributor of planetary emissions of CO2 and
  criteria pollutants
• Widespread dependence on a single fuel
• Current positive feedback in transport
• Development Patterns, Land Use, and Travel
  Behavior
• An Arms Race for Soccer Moms
• Congestion and Road Expansion
• Sprawl and Big Box retailing

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Carbon Dioxide Emissions and the Construction of
a Collective Thermostat
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Transport Therapy?

• Treatment of Pathology and/or Disease through
  communication and new habits
• Or Letting Go? (if there can be no control)
• Designing and Tuning Collective Thermostats
• Is there greater stability in the variety of
  collective self-regulation?

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Closing the Loop

• My role as I see it is to systematically remove
  constraints in the collective construction of
  expanding choice sets embodying increased
  collective benefits
• Collective Benefits a subset of public goods
  that no one gets unless many people act in
  concert to acquire them. Clean air, reduced risk
  of global climate change, and peace as collective
  benefitsno single consumer can buy them.
• (Kurani and Turrentine, 2002)

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A Simple Thesis

• People construct meaning regarding their behavior
  through their communication and reflection upon
  it.
• Further, such communication and reflection can be
  purposeful, transformative, and collaborative.
• In pursuing solutions to transport problems, vast
  potential is available for collaborative design
  of household lifestyles in the short-term, and
  transport technologies and infrastructure in the
  long-term through such practices.

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Lifestyle and Identity

• Kurani and Turrentine have focused on a portion
  of Giddens theory they call theories of
  reflexively organized lifestyle
• (Kurani and Turrentine 1997)
• They use a notion of lifestyle defined by
  Giddens as
• a more or less integrated set of practices
  which an individual embracesbecause they give
  material to a particular narrative of self
  identityit is adopted rather than handed
  down. Lifestyles are routinized practices, the
  routines incorporated into habits of dress,
  eating, modes of acting, and favored milieu for
  encountering others but the routines followed
  are reflexively open to change in light of the
  mobile nature of self identity. (Giddens, 1991)

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Reflexivity

• Giddens (1984) defines reflexivity as not
  merely as self conscious but as the monitored
  character of the ongoing flow of social life. To
  be a human being is to be a purposive agent, who
  both has reasons for his or her activities and is
  able, if asked, to elaborate discursively upon
  those reasons
• This process of reflexive conversation is the
  starting point for a households construction of
  subsets of activity spaces accessible by
  different modes. Time-space slices of life,
  referred to as lifestyle sectors, are enacted in
  a locale, a space defined by its properties as a
  setting for social interaction.

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Activity Analysis

• Activity analysis sees travel as a derived
  demand with daily and multi-day patterns, related
  to and derived from differences in lifestyle and
  activity participation across a population
  (Jones, et al, 1990).
• Households and members are the behavioral units
  under study, and travel is derived from changes
  of activity type that necessitate a change in
  activity location.
• Time and Space Mapping (Hägerstrand, 1970)
• Interdependencies and Constraints that define
  activity choices (Ibid.)
• Capability Constraints
• Coupling Constraints
• Authority Constraints

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Hypothetical Situation Analysis

• Learning Processes are critical in the spread of
  new technologies or practices
• Information acquisition
• Adaptive response (to limitations)
• Optimization (of benefits)
• Interactive Interviews
• Using charts of previous travel behavior (ex one
  week travel diary),
• Households simulate the substitution of new
  technologies for completing previous trips, and
• Compare the impact of new technologies in the
  context of previous experiences

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Does this technique work?

• Dont know yet
• We know people can form new preferences and
  beliefs, but what about changing behavior?
• Because our research has been hypothetical,
  technologies have not been available in the
  market, and we havent been able to evaluate
  behavioral changes
• In-home interviews with trained experts are
  great for researching hypothetical markets, but
  are expensive and time consuming if we imagine
  them as a means for widespread education and
  behavioral change

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Online Reflexive Tools for Consumer/Citizens

• Whats the minimum effort that can be applied to
  create a reflexive process for consumers in the
  real world and where should it be placed in
  their decision process?
• Could it propagate freely through social
  networks?
• If we create an educational and reflexive online
  tool that can save people time and money and is
  easy to use, will they pass it on to friends and
  transform their lives?
• Would you?

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Other Current and Future Projects

• Traveling through Europe for the first time(!)
  through September filming transport alternatives
  and Euro-transport professional's perspectives on
  transport for use in a film on Sprawl.
• Teaching an engineering course in the Fall
  entitled Human Hybrid Electric Vehicle Design
  for Low-speed Lightweight Mode Networks
• Publications in Process
• A qualified quantification of limited range
  vehicle markets in the U.S.
• An evolutionary game-theoretical paper on the
  size and safety arms race in vehicle types
• A policy analysis piece on the California ZEV
  mandate
• Upcoming Dissertation Study of consumer-citizen
  responses to a Dual Transportation
  Infrastructured Town
• initially entailing focus groups,
  interviews, simulated LLM network travel
  diaries, ride and drive clinics of existing LLM
  exemplars, and construction of a cost/benefit
  analysis comparison of Passtown vs suburbia.
• Observations and conclusions from this first
  phase would then be used to make  a research
  film on sprawl, which would be disseminated with
  before and after surveys to residents of these
  various towns. Along with a control treatment, I
  would study changes in respondents' preferences
  for housing and mode options, as well as the flow
  of the research instrument through respondents'
  social networks in order to construct housing and
  mode market segments.

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References

• Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society
  Outline of the Theory of Structuration.
  Berkeley, CA University of California Press.
• Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity in
  the Late Modern Age. Palo Alto, CA Stanford
  University Press.
• Hägerstrand, T. (1970) What about People in
  Regional Science? Papers of the Regional Science
  Association, v. 24 pp. 7-21.
• Jones, P. et al. 1990. Activity Analysis
  State-of-the-Art and Future Directions. in P.
  Jones (ed.) Developments in Dynamic and
  Activity-Based Approaches to Travel Analysis.
  Aldershot, U.K. Gower.
• Kurani K. and Turrentine T. 1997. Household
  Adaptations to New Personal Transport Options
  the Reflexive Organization of Household Activity
  Spaces. Institute of Transportation Studies.
  Davis, CA. UCD-ITS-RR-01-06.
• Kurani, K.S. and T. Turrentine 2002. Marketing
  Clean and Efficient Vehicles A Review of Social
  Marketing and Social Science Approaches. Davis,
  CA Institute of Transportation Studies.
  UCD-ITS-RR-02-01. August.
• Kurani, K.S., Turrentine T., Heffner, R.R., and
  Congleton, C.D. 2003. Prospecting the Future
  for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Markets.
  Institute of Transportation Studies. Davis, CA.
  UCD-ITS-RR-03-9. October.
• United States Department of Transportation,
  Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) (1976)
  Americas Highways 1776/1976 A History of the
  Federal-Aid Program. Washington, D.C. U.S.
  Department of Transportation.