TRANSPORT POLICY-MAKING: THE CURSE OF THE UNCOMFORTABLE CONSEQUENCE

In this paper we suggest that it is important for policy-makers to resist the notion that desirable change can easily be achieved through sea changes in the thrust of legislation. We utilise a range of examples to show how policy can often be resisted, circumvented or merely misguided, above all, that the outcome is rarely that which was predicted. At the root of the problem is the fact that to predict change we must try to assess how the population at large will react to the new realities. At any one time we can usually only see how they react to present circumstance: predicting how they will react after a change has been made is far more difficult.