Continued...
The Transportationists: Garrison and Levinson

Radical Changes Produce Radical Results

Although Garrison and Levinson argue that our transportation system has reached maturity and its benefits are rapidly falling off, they remain optimistic, and say there is opportunity in this winding down. Transportation thinkers should capitalize on this occurrence to focus on "how new systems are created, what happens to them once they are born, and how transportation technology works generally."

New systems of transportation will encourage innovations in other sectors, which in turn will stimulate economic growth by permitting economies of scale, connecting resources across broader geographic and temporal spans and enlarging market areas. The trick, however, is not to rely on "myopic" ways of measuring transportation's impacts, mainly over-reliance on macro- and micro-economic measures developed in the post-World War II period.

Under the conventional wisdom approach, investments are made to lower costs and improve services, with an emphasis on "making existing systems work better." But such activities may eat up funding that could be used for more fruitful avenues that are overlooked or neglected. For example, conventional wisdom suggests we improve highway congestion by introducing ramp meters and advanced traffic management. The writers suggest the great effort expended on tinkering with the highway system might be better spent seeking new technology and services, or enacting new policies.

They encourage their readers to think in terms of "development pathways" that are open-ended and flexible. They cite the urban interstate highways as an example of a failure to think in terms of pathways: "At the time they were planned, no one said 'What next?' They were constructed with no room for more capacity within rights of ways, and the social and economic costs of more freeways...were soon apparent."

On the other hand, they point to the invention of container shipping and its pioneering use by the Matson Line in the 1950s, which radically altered maritime transportation. Small locked boxes had long been used aboard ships to prevent theft, but it took a trucker, Malcolm McLean, from North Carolina to make the leap from small boxes to large boxes—essentially truck trailers with their wheels removed—to change forever the way goods were loaded and unloaded in ports. The true significance of the Matson experience is that it shows that even a hidebound highly regulated system such as maritime freight can be reinvented, which supports the hope that legacy systems can be invigorated and re-directed.

Radical changes such as this produce radical results. The key is not to focus on the marginal changes, but to intervene in the "deep" structures of the system itself. Less developed nations should take to heart this lesson and not simply replicate what has gone before in more prosperous countries. By pursuing alternative pathways, instead of “well-worn” paths of the developed world, these countries have an opportunity “to surpass rather than merely catch the developed world."

Steam's Long Path to Success

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The deployment path of the steam engine is a good example of how things might proceed, they suggest. It had its origins in 1673 as a solution for pumping water out of mines. By 1704, a blacksmith and a plumber had devised a steam-powered pump, which, by 1712, was used in many mines. But it wasn't until 1774 that a key development that made the engine more powerful was invented and patented by James Watt. Watt, however, never saw its application as the basis for a transportation mode. That didn't occur until 1803, when the first steam locomotive was produced, and the first scheduled service didn't start until 1824, 151 years after the first explorations into steam power.

Major leaps like this require new ways of seeing things and putting them together. The inventor of the steamboat, for example, did not successfully launch the innovation of steam-powered sail. That distinction goes to Robert Fulton, who "innovated a rather crude design suited to a market niche." And, they note, the technological innovation led to a "social innovation," because it was successful.

Similarly, they point to developments in physical chemistry in the 1930s and 1940s that led to today's electronics and materials technologies. The building blocks were there long before they were put together in new ways, in more complex systems that yielded the possibilities for later developments.

Getting to the next new and unforeseen technology is very difficult, the authors acknowledge. To do so requires transportationists to "learn to do better." That, poses a challenge, they say, because it requires societies to "improve and adjust to changing conditions." But it is especially urgent that transportation and communications be done better because they influence so many aspects of life.

Garrison and Levinson do not prescribe solutions, because they do not want to restrict possibilities and they don’t presume to know what they are. They acknowledge that this goes against many popular approaches where what is desired is specific, what-to-do guides—build this, build that.

They, too, want those kinds of answers. "But we want specifics to be found in a world where people holding rich understandings of transportation and using integrative ideas are identifying a large number of options." In the end, they write, "We would like a learning, self-organizing world in place of an accepting, reacting world.”