Ethical Challenges and Professional Responses of Travel Demand Forecasters

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Transportation engineers and planners are often called on to model future demand for travel and its potential impact on built and proposed transportation facilities. These demand forecasts are often hopelessly optimistic. Why is this the case? The accepted answers remain inconclusive. Studies indicate that flawed methodology alone cannot account for errors in travel demand forecasts. It may be tempting to surmise that travel demand forecasters as a group are corrupt. However, the conclusion of universal corruption is probably too simplistic. Experience and an abundance of anecdotal evidence do not support it. Investigators must look beyond the most conspicuous explanations to answer why travel demand forecasts are seriously and systematically incorrect. This requires an examination of practice and an understanding of how modelers make decisions having an ethical cast. The objective of this research is foremost to understand why, and, to a lesser extent, how modelers generate biased travel demand forecasts and tolerate the misuse of their work. A secondary goal of this study is to collect data necessary to suggest practicable steps to reform. Investigators plan to test three primary hypotheses - self-deception, role-singularity and role-schizophrenia - to describe how ostensibly thoughtful, well-meaning transportation professionals systematically make questionable ethical decisions. The self-deceived modeler knowingly fails to think about a question in the way she believes most likely to give the right answer. Role-singularity refers to the tendency among modelers to accept the role of dispassionate technician to the exclusion of other roles. The single-role modeler of this type ignores or dismisses considerations for which reasons of a certain type cannot be given. The role-schizophrenic modeler covertly, and alternatively, accepts two conflicting models of his role. Metaphor theory is the single unifying thesis that provides a stable theoretical framework and common thread with which to weave together these positions. It promises to provide the theoretical grounding necessary for understanding the systematic failures of travel demand forecasting. To accomplish the stated objectives, the investigators propose a detailed survey of approximately 1,300 travel demand forecasters. In addition to framing the problem, the survey results will help identify a number of researchable questions in the area of ethics and transportation planning. The results will also provide a rich sample frame for more in-depth qualitative research involving thirty interviews with travel demand modelers throughout the United States aimed primarily at testing the hypotheses of this study. The research proposed here is significant because it represents the next step towards crafting practicable solutions to a costly societal problem. Additionally, it has the potential to provide a new perspective from which to re-evaluate professional codes of ethics and furnish a more nuanced vocabulary for ethical discourse. Finally, this research is valuable because it provides scarce empirical data needed for the study of professional ethics.