Disruption and the mobility system: concepts, empirics and issues

Professor Greg Marsden

Infrastructures are Stable - How

they are used is not – non

‘transport’ change

• Pensions

• Work

• Education

• Ethnic diversity

• Technology

• Ageing

1. Change is prevalent and has not been fully recognised

2. Scale of changes dwarfs most of our transport interventions

Looking for change

• “when seeking to identify nascent transport tendencies there is little value in focusing on global or national averages” (p380)… Whilst millions of people might be locked in to car dependent lifestyles, “from a socio-technical transitions perspective these people are largely irrelevant” (Cohen, 2012: 380).

Disruption as a source of learning

• when things break down, new solutions may be invented. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that this kind of piece-by-piece adaptation is a leading cause of innovation, acting as a continuous feedback loop of experimentation which, through many small increments in practical knowledge, can produce large changes

Graham and Thrift, 2007

Disruption – Definitional Issues

Source: Network Rail

What has been disrupted?

• Infrastructure

• Services Running on Infrastructure

• (Some of) the activities which go on via the infrastructure

• The expectations of performance

• Nothing at all

Disruption to What?

• Vollmer (2013: 2) focuses his insights around a key notion that what is disrupted is the “coordination of activities and expectations” within a collective entity.

Disruption as a relative concept

• Level of service

• Expected journey times

• Use versus non-use

• This time versus last time

• Consequences (and insurance actions..)

Scale, Frequency etc… and the Tautology of ‘Normal Disruptions’

• Vollmer (2013: 1) …because disruptions are a part of everyday life “many disruptions happen and attract little further notice beyond the situation in which people confront them” he also suggests that others come to be regarded as “more drastic and consequential”. – Scale

– Frequency

– Familiarity

Coordination of Activities – Snow and Ice

Activity Delayed

Start

Delayed

Finish

Postponed Cancel New

Destination

Conducted

At Home

Other n

Commute 49% 32% 8% 41% 2% 12% 5% 974

Biz Travel 21% 17% 41% 41% 2% 5% 4% 126

Return Home 26% 46% 16% 16% 4% 0% 5% 74

Health 7% 7% 48% 37% 0% 0% 7% 85

School/ Child

Care

14% 5% 10% 80% 0% 3% 2% 278

Other Care 22% 23% 34% 25% 1% 8% 9% 77

Shopping 16% 8% 46% 34% 5% 5% 2% 250

Sport 3% 1% 24% 75% 1% 0% 0% 113

Leisure 5% 3% 28% 59% 2% 1% 7% 151

Family/

Friends

9% 4% 46% 45% 2% 2% 1% 194

Other 12% 8% 15% 24% 1% 1% 11% 95

York floods 2012

Coordination of Activities

• “The amount of time it would take me to travel both back to Stillingfleet – I left the office early, my office in town hall, to make sure I could get back to Stillingfleet to meet my son. And then I was worried about my mum, who comes to look after my son when I go out to work in the evenings because I’m a single parent

• “So did you think about “Can I trade favours with childcare?” “Yeah. I did have to do that on the Thursday actually. I had a friend’s little boy for most of the afternoon so that he could go there early evening”

• “So finally got out… I had to go to a golden wedding do yesterday in Middle Thorpe and I did manage yesterday morning.”

• “In fact today we’ve been to a christening so we had to get into the city centre...Traffic was an enormous problem”

Expectations

• “People just don’t go to work now if it floods. We were never off, we never missed a day, and my husband was in local government and worked at Malton and he got there every day...

• “I for one will try and get in

however it happens. And like you say, I’d expect my team to do the same. But I’m not going to get upset if they ring up and say I can’t get in because of bad weather.”

Expectations – Snow and Ice

Regression Model

• If the respondent is not physically expected to be in work then there is high probability that they will not make the journey, suggesting they will work from home.

• If the employer is not accommodating then there is a stronger possibility that the employee will make the journey into work.

Examples of Planned Disruption (1) Olympics

• Significant amount of change to commute journeys

– 54% of the sample made at least one change to their commute

– 25% made more than one change

– Reducing (31%) and Retiming (25%) most common response

• More changes for those with a greater preparedness to

change

Examples of Planned Disruption (2) City of York Office Consolidation

Mobility System

Radical Change

Business as Usual

Rapid Incrementalism

Politics?

Politics?

Conclusions

• Definitional issues we haven’t paid attention to • Disruption as an on-going ‘every day’ process • ‘Breakdown’ as a source of learning and innovation • Disruption to patterns of coordination and expectations • Implications are that we need to tie in the transport system

with the activities we take part in – mobility system – to effect change

• So for evaluation… • So for infrastructure management… • So for valuing assets… • So for understanding travel behaviour this means…

EPSRC Grant EP/J00460X/1

References

• Graham, S. and Thrift, N., 2007, "Out of order" Theory, Culture & Society 24 1-25.

• Cohen, M.J., 2012, The future of automobile society: a socio-technical transitions perspective, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 24(4) 377-390

• Vollmar, H. (2013) The Sociology of Disruption, Disaster and Social Change Punctuated Cooperation, Cambridge University Press