SOMETIMES change in local government seems to happen at a glacial pace - like when there's little incentive to do things differently. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
But at a time of severely straitened budgets, councils are having to re-evaluate everything that they do - just as businesses have to do constantly if they are to survive.
So we're seeing some interesting ideas coming along. Buckinghamshire is rightly questioning why there needs to be walls erected between transport and energy and housing and health, when the connections between them are profound. Why have people who job has transport or highways in the title at all?
And Matthew Lugg, the new president of the Association of Directors of Environment, economy, Planning and Transport, presents a very different argument to the old county surveyor of old.
Their job was to provide roads, and structures, so people could get from A to B. That was an imperative at a time prior to motorways when journeys across the country were difficult. But Lugg has put the nail in the coffin for the old silo based approach in a new interview with Local Transport Today.
He says: “We look across interventions. People don’t always have to travel to get to work so it’s not always transport that an area needs to build its economy,” he says. “Our members have a role in reducing the need to travel, including by identifying the biggest spatial priorities for installing high-speed broadband.”
This presents profound challenges for the industry. Why study for a Masters in transportation if there isn't a job that is specifically in transportation? Why belong to a transport-specific professional association, or read a magazine devoted to transportation? Do we need instead professionals able to say when to bring people to jobs, new homes have a stronger business case than a new road?
Transport is not going to go away as a concern or as a necessity. But if the writing is on the wall for a silo-based approach to providing it, the industry needs to respond to that, and quickly.
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