Issues in Transportation Planning #6: The Stick and The Map

Over the years, I came to believe that people held two very different views of transportation models. I call these views The Stick and The Map.

My goal is to write a fictional book or make a movie about transportation planning. My interest is not to advocate one or the other view, but to use the conflict to drive my story. That isn’t to say that that I do not have strong opinions about the right way to view a model.

The Stick and the Map

One view is the stick model. In this view, people see the model as a stick or weapon. It is something they can use to attack people. In this way, they hope to force others into agreement with them.

The other view is the map model. In this view, my view, people see the model as a map. A model, like a map, provides a simplified view of the lay of the land. In the case of a map it is the real land, while in the case of a model, it is a metaphorical land of the future.

These two views are in conflict.

Stick Models

Stick modellers want the model to make the decisions. To be effective as a weapon, the forecasts it produces must be unquestioned. If there is any doubt about the validity of the model, it has failed.

Stick modellers add more and more features to the model so that no one can say they have missed something. This approach will not work. The more complicated the model, the harder it is to understand. People will not trust a model they can’t understand. In the end, stick modellers will always miss some important factor, so they can never make a model that no one can question.

Map Models

Map modellers want the model to help them and others understand the implications of the decisions they must make. Map modellers accept that the model isn’t reality, but it can help them and others understand the real world. Map modellers may even deliberately leave things out of a model if it helps them better inform the decision at hand. They believe that credibility lies with the modeller, not with the model.

When you think of the model as a map, you change how you use it. Map modellers use the model to explore possible futures. They learn to recognize problems and opportunities when they arise in the real world.

They also recognize that the model is not the only tool they will need. When you go for a drive, no map can be a substitute for looking out of your front window as you go down the road. If you don’t know where you are, a map isn’t much help. In the same way, no model can be a substitute for a monitoring program. Every now and then, you need to have a reality check.

The Nature of the Conflict

Stick modellers are afraid of map modellers, because of their openness about the shortcomings of transportation models. This is a threat to stick modellers. The map modeller’s insistence on monitoring is an anathema to stick modellers.

Map modellers are disdainful of stick modellers. Where the stick modeller believes they have a big stick, the map modeller sees only a rolled up map. A rolled up map isn’t a very impressive or effective weapon, and it isn’t much use as a map either.

Story Conflict

Since these two views are often subconscious, the people in conflict would not necessarily understand why they are in conflict. None of the characters could address it directly, since they would be unaware of it. People will see it as a personal conflict, which would lead them to discount the importance of the conflict.

In a story, we want to have the hero resolve the conflict. Since I never found a way to resolve this conflict when I worked as a transportation planner, it is hard for me to imagine how it can be resolved in a story. In my experience, stick modellers do not like to discuss what they see as an esoteric philosophical point. On the other hand, in a fictional story I can create a wish fulfilment fantasy where I solve a problem that I couldn’t in real life.

An analogy helps to understand the complex. However, like a model, any analogy has its limits. The analogy of the stick and the map does not capture the full complexity of transportation models. When I write a story though, I can use poetic license to ignore some of the complications.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Transportation Infrastructure as Status Symbol

I won’t name names since every city will have its own examples.

When I first began to work as a transportation planner I wondered why some projects were ever even considered. I thought that they could not be justified on strictly economic grounds. Even so, these projects had broad public support.

The explanation I came up with was that the projects were status symbols. It was like a person who bought an expensive car when a typical econo-box would have served their needs quite well.

It got a little more complicated later when some of these projects turned out to perform much better than I thought they would. In retrospect they could be seen as visionary. They couldn’t be dismissed as just status symbols.

More recently there was a lot of controversy over a particular bridge. The debate focussed on the relative merits of the bridge as a transportation facility. I never thought of it as a transportation project. I saw it as a monumental work of art. They could have just as easily built some else. The transportation aspect of the structure was secondary.

Are these kinds of projects justified? I feel that in these cases the question is beyond the purview of transportation planning.

I do think that you can justify projects like these, but as a transportation planner I’d like the aesthetic component of the project to be addressed separately. They can stand on their own and there is no need to confuse the issues.

Most people would agree that attractive and even beautiful infrastructure contributes to a better life in the city. Of course, it is hard to get many people to agree what is beautiful.

I’m not sure right now how I can incorporate this idea in the transportation stories I plan to write. I’m not sure it would be a good choice for the main plot. It might work well as a subplot or as some ambience.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Transportation Planning Movies and Stories

When I started to work on my ideas for a story featuring transportation planners, I didn’t think that it had been done before. I thought I should check before I go too far. So far I haven’t found anything quite like what I have in mind. I have found some movies and a novel that do mention transportation planning.

In the movie Mission Impossible III there is a scene where Tom Cruise pretends to be a transportation engineer. This isn’t really about transportation planning though. His character is really a spy and the transportation planning reference has no relevance to the story.

A transportation planner appears as a character in an episode of Law & Order. I think it was Pride, the final episode of season five, but I’m not 100 per cent sure. The story has nothing to do with transportation planning and the character could have been any other city worker.

I’ve read that a character in the movie Singles is a transportation engineer or planner. I haven’t seen the film myself, so I don’t know for certain. From the descriptions I’ve read, transportation planning is not an element in the story.

John Paizs’ 1985 film Crime Wave has a minor character who is a traffic counter and there is a brief scene where he counts some traffic. When I met John Paizs, I asked him where he got the idea. It turned out that he had worked as a traffic counter for a number of years.

The movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit has a transportation planning issue as a major element of the plot. The bad guys in the movie want to shut down the street car system and replace it with freeways. None of the characters is a transportation planner and bulk of the plot is the murder mystery.

The movie Chinatown was intended to be the first of a three part story. The second movie, The Two Jakes, but the third film was not made. The description I read of it sounded a lot like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and also features the Great American Streetcar Scandal. Since the movie was never made, we can’t know how much it would have gotten into transportation planning.

In the movie Quick Change Bill Murray plays an urban planner who robs a bank. He isn’t a transportation planner, and in any event, that has nothing to do with the plot.

Frank Osgood’s novel Region Aroused is a fictionalized version of his experiences when he was involved with the Southern California Association of Governments. I have only read a review of this book by Wendell Davis. This book comes as close to what I have in mind as anything else I’ve found. Although, it seems to me that the author’s objective is to use a fictional account to make it easier for non-planners to understand urban planning. The book is also available in a Kindle edition.

I am sure that these are not the only times that transportation planning has been depicted in fiction.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Transportation: Planners versus Modellers

I just published a new article: Transportation: Planners Versus Modellers. In it I talk about some of the conflicts that develop in transportation planning.

I wrote this article because I want to make a movie set in the world of the transportation planner. They say to write what you know, and that was my life for 30 years.

The article is part of a series I want to do about transportation planning. I want to identify and explore issues that I can incorporate into my stories. I published one article on forecasting earlier: A Review of "Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway" .

I also plan to write some short “transportation planning adventure stories” to practice writing stories about transportation planners. So far I have published one story: The Glencoe Project and I have started on a second. I have several other ideas for stories.

It would be a big help to me if people tell me what they think about my articles and stories, so I hope you will read them and write some comments. Thank you.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog