Regaining the Fundamentals

Abstract

Transport policy and planning has relatively few but important fundamentals. Research has focused on marginal issues and not fundamentals. The paper reviews physical fundamentals, moves through economic and financial, then institutional arrangements, policy-making fundamentals, and finally takes a look into the future. Along the way conclusions are drawn that physical constraints narrow choice greatly; that the problem with growth as an objective is mainly in it’s definition as GDP; that pricing is under-utilised; and that the use of transport as a tax base will become unacceptable. A review of decision-making fundamentals points to a need to change institutional arrangements to better reflect the trade-off between technological scale, creditworthiness and responsiveness to demand, and to counter balance the current power of supply institutions. Finally a new organisational model is proposed that meets the criteria of the framework of the fundamentals discussed in the paper. The model is called a Community Infrastructure Corporation, and works by placing control of supply primarily in the hands of those demanding service.