4 ways to solve traffic problems: let’s use perspective shifting

Ever been stuck in this? On a regular basis the motorway in Brisbane is a car park. As I am in process of building more content for this blog and in my travels I came across this video:

In this case De Bono has asked us to come up with some creative thinking to see how we can solve the traffic crisis. To show you the basics of perspective shifting, I am going to offer four ways to solve traffic problems. The four perspectives I am going to use are based on different assumptions. These are: Political, Economical, Social and Technical.

The Political perspective

The political view is one that says, ‘Traffic is the government’s problem’. To fix it we would require politicians to mandate to us an effective legislative solution. A political solution I think is a legislative one because we are creating a rule that stops traffic flow. This means, the government could tax us more to build new roads, more carparks and provide incentives for the use of public transport. These things (in Australia) are state supported and funded. This really means changing the law to restrict the flow of traffic in someway.

The Economic perspective

The economic view says, why not build bigger faster and better roads. In reality, you rephrase this view as ‘turn on the money hose’. I have been working in aid circles on and off for many years… I can assure you if more money was the answer we would be there by now. There are many circumstances where the economic view is substantial and correct but the majority of the time it’s wrong. To summarise this view the traffic crisis could be solved if we decided to build a bigger road system or spend more money on transport infrastructure.

The social view

Ex-leader of the Australian Labor Party Mark Latham once said that we need to go back to building grassroots movements for things to change. In short, in order for things to change we need to form together to become groups so that we can facilitate change in our social lives. This is community building and things like that. To change the traffic crisis from a human/social point of view you need to understand behaviour and ask what causes traffic jams to exist? Why do we all want to be on the road at the same time? This give rise to challenging solutions about the work weak, what jobs need to be done when and the ways in which we define work. A challenging task but not one that is entirely out of our reach. An example solution would be to create new work conditions that allow the burden on our roads to be shared more equally.

The technical view

The technical view always resolves things down to a scientific or engineering solution. So every problem has a simple/linear cause and effect view that will resolve the problem at hand. So for the traffic problem is viewed as a technical issue. The roads aren’t wide enough or there isn’t enough people taking public transport. Every problem is viewed as being a technical one and hence cannot be solved through any other method. A solution to the traffic crisis that’s technical involves making the roads better, or wider or some other technical view.

Combining different views in one setting

So what would a technical, social, political and economic solution look like? It might be a solution that saw the encouragement of staggering work hours (economic and social) or created wider roads that were toll based (social/economic/technical). Say for a moment we redefine the traffic problem as something else. It could be the problem is: too many people needing to go to different places at the same time. How could we stop that from happening?

Redefining the traffic problem

The first thing to do is ask the question: why do people need to be at different places at the same time? The most obvious answer is work. Secondly, school times are structured around work times. Thirdly, people tend to group activities around the same things at the same time. So they drop the kids off at school and go to work in one action and then conduct other activities. Stuff like playing bills, going to the shops. So say school starts at 8:30, work at 9:00 which finishes at 5:00 (when the kids are picked up from day care or after school care or not depending on your personal situation) and oh by the way honey can you get a carton of milk on the way home?

Now lets add more to it. Fourthly, the roads are too thin to handle everybody going everywhere at once. So when Jenny drops little Xavier off at school … everybody is using the road at the same time because they have to go to work or the shops or wherever at the same time. Fifthly, we have no control over which roads to use or when to use them. In Adelaide for example they have roads that are only available at peak times and are bi-directional. Not so in Brisbane. We have a bunch of one-way streets and narrow bridges! That said Brisbane is the greatest city in the world! Alas, I digress.

So we have work times (social and economical), school times (political), the grouping of activities around similar times (social), thin roads (technical/political), ability to access to roads that are only crowded part of the day (political/technical) and so on I go. See how just by combining different views I am able to uncover more perspectives of the problem. I even redefined it. Now, I am not that smart (handsome surely but smart?) anybody can do this. Yet, we fall hook line and sinker for simple answers from a singular point of reference. And, I have only picked four perspectives. Imagine if I had ten?

Some off the top of the head ideas for solving the traffic crisis

So what we really need is a solution that stops the constant flow of traffic being caused. We could use a variety of at hand ideas to do this. We could implement flexible work schedules for working parents and school parents. An example of this worked well on the Sunshine Coast. A staggered set of hours were offered for school times for older children. This meant they could walk to school later and traffic around the school reduced.

Remember the problem is why do we need to have everyone on the road at the same time? If we change that we change our problem. Technically we could build bigger roads that are only open in peak hour. That didn’t work well here in Brisbane… it actually made things worse some would argue. We could redesign work so that people could work from established targets (bi annual) and didn’t have to come the office as often. We could also offer incentives for people to work at night. Politically we could have a road toll that was twice as much as the bus and offer financial incentives to car poolers. For the biggest employers we could have incentive based payment systems for people willing to work flexible hours. So now we are starting to touch on the centralised work system that is really at the heart of the traffic crisis. I could go on and on … so could you.

This is just a handful of quick ideas that might work. All I did was begin to look at the problem from a different set of values. As you learn to perspective shift you begin to see more of the problem. At times I have found this process so useful it has gotten me out of some sticky situations. I have also found that sometimes I have also noticed that I can’t see beyond the problem. Like Australia’s housing affordability crisis. Hmm… maybe I will make that my next problem solving post?

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