In 2023 the Panel focused on the big issues for transport in the coming years.  In 2024 the Panel has sought to build on those ideas.  It has been thinking about how to design for uncertainty, how to capture attitudinal change and in all of those circumstances how best to deliver on that first principle: accessibility without social or economic boundaries.

In the course of the year, the Panel heard from Professor Laurie Pickup, an expert in his field of social science, psychology and the whys, wherefores and consequences of generational attitudinal change.

We created four sub groups.

The Evidence Gathering group sought evidential connections between what we hypothesized design would achieve, and what it actually achieves.  

We started looking much further into the future than we had in our 2023 discussions, often 20 years and beyond.

In order to stand any chance of using our evidence base to confidently forecast what we should be doing in those timescales we determined that we had to start from a viewpoint well in the past, look at social trends as they relate to shifting policies, and apply that intergenerational divide method to future forecasting.

Instead of ‘evidence gathering’ we talked about ‘vision gathering’.

We spent a great deal of time and energy in the Regulatory Framework Group.  This is the topic that is controversial, influencing of current and future trends, and which guides and protects people and the environment from an unconstrained sprawl of future technologies and actions.

We discussed airborne drone deliveries, the digitization of roads, trackless trams and the opportunities for ‘maximum convenience’ and minimizing ‘travel poverty’.

We see a big shift coming in the Flexible Use of Space.  The sub group drew evidence from places that already adopt a different use of roads in 2D depending on the time and season.  However, in chime with the EU research on this matter, we felt that there is great deal more to come.  We discussed 3D flexible use of space, including in the air for drone corridors, and subterranean for utilities and freight.

In the same vein we considered flexible use of transport systems and buildings as well as space, including ‘freight trams’ and delivery ‘super hubs’.

We considered the shift towards ‘buying rides’ as opposed to owning the asset, and the potential for that to intensify with the onset of autonomous vehicles.  We considered the way in which this would change our streets, in various regulatory scenarios, and the effect this would and could have on kerbspace.  

We considered the options that this created for exceptional materplanning and placemaking design.