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There is an active contemporary debate about how emerging technologies such as automated vehicles, peer-to-peer sharing applications and the ‘internet of things’ will revolutionise individual and collective mobility. Indeed, it is argued that the so-called ‘Smart Mobility’ transition, in which these technologies combine to transform how the mobility system is organised and operates, has already begun. As with any socio-technical transition there are critical questions to be posed in terms of how the transition is managed, and how both the benefits and any negative externalities of change will be governed. This paper deploys the notion of ensuring and enhancing public value as a key governance aim for the transition. It sets out modes and methods of governance that could be deployed to steer the transition and, through four thematic cases explores how current mobility governance challenges will change. In particular, changing networks of actors, resources and power, new logics of consumption, and shifts in how mobility is regulated, priced and taxed – will require to be successfully negotiated if public value is to be captured from the transition. This is a critical time for such questions to be raised because technological change is clearly outpacing the capacity of systems and structures of governance to respond to the challenges already apparent. A failure to address both the short and longer-term governance issues risks locking the mobility system into transition paths which exacerbate rather than ameliorate the wider social and environmental problems that have challenged planners throughout the automobility transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques the state of the art approaches to studying transportation policy. It does so through analysing 100 papers sampled from the two leading policy journals in the transportation literature. On applying two different frameworks for understanding policy, the review finds that only 13% of papers consider specific aspects of the policy cycle, that 60% focus on ‘tools’ for policy, and that two-thirds of papers did not engage with real-world policy examples or policy makers and focussed on quantitative analysis alone. We argue that these findings highlight the persistence of the technical-rational model within the transportation literature. This model, and the numerous traditions and disciplines that have fed into it have an important role to play in developing the transportation evidence base. However, we argue there are important questions of governance; such as context, power, resources and legitimacy, that are largely being ignored in the literature as it stands. The substantial lack of engagement with governance issues and debates means that as a field we are artificially, but more importantly, disproportionately generating a science of applied policy making which is unlikely to be utilised because of the distance between it and the realities on the ground. The paper identifies analytical approaches deployed readily in other fields that could be used to address some of the key deficiencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Travel behaviour is far more variable than policy makers allow for. [•] Factors external and internal to the transport system engender change in behaviour. [•] Accepting rather than problematising change could unlock more radical policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents results from a longitudinal study of the travel behaviour change associated with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (the ‘Games’). The research examines commuter travel behaviour through a panel approach enabling an understanding of individual behaviour across three waves (before, during and after), with the study utilising unique access to a Transport for London panel study (n = 1132). The findings indicate that a substantial amount of change occurred during the Games (54% made at least one change), with reducing or re-timing journeys being the most likely adaptations made. A key objective of this work was to advance the discussion about the theoretical constructs that are most applicable in the study of behaviour change associated with disruptive events, which was done through the application and critical evaluation of the Transtheoretical Model. The insights from the stages of change element of the model were relatively limited but the analysis shows significant differences in the underlying factors explaining change according to the type of change made (reduce, re-time, re-mode and re-route). Whilst the long-term behavioural impacts of events like the Games appear small, the study has uncovered a need to consider these behavioural choices as distinct rather than under the collective term of “travel behaviour change”, as is current practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]