We keep doing the same, but expecting something different to happen… til now?
Finally, it seems, we may be getting less insane (in Einstein terms) in how we plan, build and experience transport infrastructure…
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
These great words (attributed to Einstein) come up a lot when we think about transport.
You know the feeling: we want people to behave differently – use our cars less – but we build everything around people to encourage them to keep driving heaps, and even discourage those who might think about doing something different.
And we invest billions of dollars in doing the same stuff, usually knowing that what we’re doing won’t make any difference (except burn up money we could’ve better spent)…
Infrastructure: a new way of thinking, a new way of doing?
It’s great to see some new philosophies gradually (very gradually) becoming more mainstream.
“Vision and validate”, also called “decide and provide”, is a new approach to transport infrastructure investment and planning that doesn’t just take the problematic past and present, and project them out into the future. It’s also applicable to other areas, like stormwater infrastructure.
Here are some great explainers!
- A good blog post
- Another good blog post from SEMLEP
- Smart Transport UK (though we’d argue that many folk in NZ’s transport orthodoxy appear to have missed the memo that Predict and Provide is dead)
- A really interesting webinar that humanises things
Where are you seeing “decide” or “vision” approaches in our infrastructure investment? And where are we seeing “predict and provide” approaches, still?
Banner image:
Albert Einstein, by Jack Orren | Princeton University
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