Augment Your Planning Process with Scenario Planning

Technology is rapidly reshaping the trans­porta­tion ecosystem: changing the way goods move, how people get to work, and travel. As advance­ments, such as connected and autonomous vehicles and shared mobility, are implemented on a wider scale, they pose new challenges to trans­porta­tion planners. In antic­i­pa­tion of emerging trends, trans­porta­tion planners and agencies can use scenario planning to better prepare for uncer­tain­ties and make smarter investments for future mobility. As an augmen­ta­tion to traditional planning, scenario planning—a strategic approach that develops a series of futures—can help trans­porta­tion agencies feel confident in investments, even as tech­nolo­gies and demo­graph­ics change.

Why Scenario Planning Works

Unlike traditional planning techniques, which leverage point forecasts, scenario planning has planners develop plausible “futures” for what mobility will look like and work backward. Following this approach, trans­porta­tion planning teams can identify a range of impactful investment and policy decisions to make that will support mobility in each future state.

This iterative process emphasizes change as a constant and focuses on how to better accommodate future uncertainty into the planning process to create a flexible environment receptive to change. What makes scenario planning so effective is that it encourages planners to anticipate change and prepare for the future rather than predict it.

This big-picture process reminds agencies that to success­fully create long-term plans, it is important to invest in mobility—not just technology. By considering a broad set of trends, tech­nolo­gies and business decisions that could impact the future, planners and agencies can make smarter decisions and flexible investments moving forward.

The Process

Scenario planning is collab­o­ra­tive and includes a continuous feedback loop, inspiring discussions across teams and emphasizing rela­tion­ship building. It puts significant value in stakeholder involvement, emphasizing education, awareness and under­stand­ing of infra­struc­ture and how it may change. The process generally follows these major steps:

1. Develop a vision. In this explorative step, planners establish mobility goals and objectives for the next decade and beyond.

2. Build a strategy. In this data-driven step, trans­porta­tion teams and stake­hold­ers collaborate and assess demographic, economic, policy, technology, safety and security data sources that could impact the trans­porta­tion network. It is key to engage a variety of groups—including ride sharing developers to car manu­fac­tur­ers, policy makers, distri­b­u­tion centers, transit and freight advocacy groups and more—in this phase to create the most plausible scenarios.

3. Create scenarios. Leveraging the collab­o­ra­tive vision and data established in the first two steps, the planning team can define the future scenarios they believe are most likely to occur. One key suggestion is to develop four scenarios to keep the process manageable yet realistic. These scenarios should be unique and differ one another to represent a variety of future states. That way, your scenarios capture a vast array of potential impacts so when planners and agencies work backward from each scenario, they can identify any existing common­al­i­ties that will lead to action items.

4. Analyze scenarios. Once the scenarios are developed, a framework model will test the impacts and possible outcomes. Planners can assess these outcomes and the degree to which they will affect future mobility.

5. Develop action items. Considering the outcomes analyzed in the previous step, the team can begin developing short-term action items and make decisions on next steps. In this final phase, because new trends will inevitably emerge, teams can revisit the previous steps to adjust the vision, scenarios or assumptions and reevaluate outcomes and path forward.

The Anatomy of a Scenario

So, what might future transit look like in the age of connected and autonomous vehicles? Scenarios could include: 

1) a reality where transit vehicles such as buses and rail cars have been retrofitted, or adjusted, to build in connec­tiv­ity capa­bil­i­ties; 

2) a reality where transit systems become more autonomous to cover larger areas, providing access to community members that didn’t have access before; 

3) a reality where transit systems work in unison with car sharing services to create entirely new trans­porta­tion business models; and 

4) a reality where no significant changes to the trans­porta­tion ecosystem have been implemented.

Based on the analysis of these scenarios, action items could include: assessing which vehicles should be retrofitted to enable or improve connec­tiv­ity; connecting agencies, such as highway partners, to explore building connec­tiv­ity in to existing roadways and infra­struc­ture; assessing data collection methods to better equip tech­nolo­gies, agencies and businesses for connecting equipment; or doing nothing.

Scenario Planning in Action

Action items are not meant to disrupt existing system processes but should focus on incremental changes that are manageable in terms of imple­men­ta­tion and cost. The iterative nature of scenario planning will help guide enhance­ments to an existing system rather than overhaul it. Agencies preparing for the age of connected and autonomous vehicles should:

• Consider the potential of data. Data collection, analysis and modeling will play a large role in the age of connected and autonomous vehicles. Agencies should consider how they will handle and take advantage of the increasing volume of data emerging tech­nolo­gies will bring and how this information can be utilized to benefit infra­struc­ture. 

• Bring the right people to the table. Scenario planning will be new for many, so identifying champions within agencies and planning offices that can help advance planning and uphold a collab­o­ra­tive environment is essential. 

• Think through the asset mix, test and invest. The best way to understand the impacts of emerging tech­nolo­gies is to test them. Piloting new tech­nolo­gies will help manage systems as well as bring private sector and other local or state partners together to understand the impacts of these tech­nolo­gies. Not to mention, it’s a great way to create and build new rela­tion­ships across both public and private orga­ni­za­tions. 

Connected and autonomous vehicles may shift our attitudes and expec­ta­tions about travel, technology and everything in between as they become a reality in daily life. Using the scenario planning approach, agencies can begin to consider the impact of tech­nolo­gies and prepare for how they might affect how we live, work and travel. Technology is a means to an end, and that end is to build better mobility, better economic development, increase safety, security, quality of life and overall access. The more we can test future impacts of tech­nolo­gies and trends today, the better we can inform planning and move through uncertainty.