Commission on Travel Demand
Professor Greg Marsden chairs new independent panel of experts.
The Commission on Travel Demand is a newly formed independent group assembled as part of the Research Council UK funded DEMAND Centre. It has been established to bring together the state-of-art in understanding how travel demand is changing and may change in the future, recognising controversies which exist over current forecasting practice. The Commission also explores professional practice and what would need to change for alternative ways of representing demand futures to become useful and usable by decision-makers.
There are three main rationales for the establishment of the Commission on Travel Demand:
- Carbon obligations which will increasingly require demand reduction.
- Large scale uncertainty about what demand futures could be.
- Institutional inertia in changing the way we plan.
Further information about the rationale for the Commission can be downloaded here.
Its aims are to:
- Describe how demand is understood within the transport sector today and consider alternative approaches
- Understand how new types of demand are emerging and old types of demand disappearing and the influences on these processes
- Characterise the anticipated nature and speed of change in key elements of the mobility system and how this will interact with demand
- Explore how current practice would need to change to incorporate new insights, the barriers to change and how these might be overcome.
The Commission is made up of a mixture of academics and practitioners with a range of expertise in demand futures and decision-making from both within and outside the transport sector. View Commissioner profiles.
The work of the commission including events and calls for evidence will be reported via the website and social media. Queries can also be addressed to the Commission Chair Professor Greg Marsden.
