Planning, organizations and decision-making: A research agenda

Tmnrpn. Ra:.4 Vol. 19A. No. 5%. pp. 521-531. Printed in the U.S.A.

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1985

PLANNING, ORGANIZATIONS AND DECISION-MAKING: A RESEARCH AGENDA MARTINWACHS Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, U.S.A. Abstract-Transportation research programs have emphasized and enhanced the rational comprehensive model of planning, and this has led to an emphasis on quantitative technical studies. In this paper alternative models of transportation policy are presented, including an “organizational perspective” and a ‘personal perspective.” Although research based on the rational comprehensive perspective can enhance our understanding of transportation systems, it is also useful to broaden research programs in reflection of the other perspectives that are equally valid. A review of these perspectives is presented in order to demonstrate the extent to which they can contribute to an understanding of transportation decision-making, institutions and planning processes.

INTRODUCTION:HISTORICAL EVOLUTIONOF TRANSPORTATIONPLANNING

A hundred years ago, Wocdrow Wilson introduced a concept of public planning and decision-making, which continues to be the basis of current ideas about transportation planning. Wilson argued that elected and appointed leaders, responsible to the citizenry, should give structure, direction and oversight to public policy, but that policy-making was too technical and complex in modem society to allow them to govern wisely in detail. He believed that there should be a new class of professional administrators, analysts and managers whose careers would be devoted to implementing in detail the broad mandates which should be the province of elected representatives. He proposed the establishment of schools of public administration to train these people, and the creation of a professional civil service to carry out the analysis and implementation of public policy. Impressed by the contributions of science to technological change in nineteenth-century industry, Wilson believed that public management could also become a science, and that bureaucrats, operating on the basis of scientific knowledge learned in technical schools, could be delegated a great deal of “administrative discretion” over decisionmaking. Scientific management principles, to him, could modernize government the way technology had modemized industry; professional administration could perfect rational tools of analysis and choice, the way engineers had rationalized industrial production (Wilson, 1887). Early in this century, the Wilsonian approach to policymaking was promoted and expanded as the writings of Frederick Winslow Taylor became popular to the point that they dominated Sunday supplements. Rational scientific methods of analysis and techniques for achieving “efficiency” in every aspect of life became the dominant theme of American intellectuals. The field of industrial engineering emerged from efforts to Taylorize industry, and “home economics” was born of attempts to Taylorize the cherished American ideal of home and family. Between 1910 and 1920, the first annual conferences on city planning were held, dominated by descriptions of

the promise of scientific, rational management of urban problems. These conferences were attended by architects, engineers, public-health advocates, settlement-house organizers and journalists, yet the diversity of their interests and backgrounds was overcome by their common commitment to Taylorize public policy through application of scientific principles. By 1920 the planning movement had led to the creation of hundreds of city and county departments of planning, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads and the first professional association of city planners. All were committed to the tasks of bringing rationality and efficiency to policy-making and administration. Interestingly, the timing of these events coincided with the widespread adoption of the automobile, and most of the earliest work by urban planners involved streets, traffic control systems and the management of land subdivisions, in such a way as to accomodate the automobile (Foster, 1981). It was no coincidence that the first national conference on planning bore the name, “National Conference on City Planning and the Problems of Congestion” (Scott, 1969). We are the intellectual progeny of Wilson and Taylor, to the extent that we embody their commitment to rational decision-making and systematic analysis. Although we tend to think of travel-demand models and benefit-cost ratios as having their roots in the advances of the computer decades following World War II, those advances really build immediately on the image of expertise and science espoused by Wilson and Taylor. For example, several recently reviewed highway and transit plans, devised prior to 1925, surprisingly included detailed analyses of interzonal traffic flows based on traffic counts (sometimes performed by boy scouts), and forecasts of future traffic based on the gravity model. Economic benefits and costs were estimated over a 20-year time horizon and recommendations were based on a comparison of alternatives in terms of cost-effectiveness criteria. Consultants’ recommendations were then, as now, reviewed by commissions and legislative committees, advocated and opposed for reasons similar to those with which we are familiar today, and implemented through funding mechanisms which approximate those in current use (Wachs, 1984).

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These brief comments about the historical roots of transportation planning reveal a dimension which is critically important to our discussion of research on planning, institutions and decision-making. They suggest that we might find it useful to distinguish the theories, methods and research that we use within planning from those which we might use to describe and understand planning itself as a societal activity. Within planning, we have perfected methods of data collection, analysis, modeling, forecasting and evaluation. Research has increased understanding of travel behavior and traffic, and of the social and economic patterns which explain and determine them. We know far less, however, and have made far less recent progress when it comes to explaining the social, economic and political meaning of planning and decision-making processes, and the institutions that we have created for carrying them out. Research is needed on the nature of planning, decision-making and implementation in their social contexts, as well as on the methods, models and technology of transportation. Planning has often been described as a bridge between knowledge and action (Friedmann, 1973). Knowledge, in transportation planning, includes data and theory which help us understand travel, forecasting methods that estimate future conditions, evaluation techniques that match anticipated system performance to estimated needs, and technological skills that help us use material resources safely, efficiently and economically. Decision-making is guided by data and methods, but also by additional factors. Institutions and planning processes also deal with ethical questions of right and wrong, with the distribution of costs and benefits among social groups. and with the restructuring of personal and social relations. To say that planning links knowledge and action, is to say that planning mediates between what we know and what we want. It is a process that blends fact and ideology. Within planning, it has proven far easier to determine what we know than what we want. Research on planning, institutions and decision-making in transportation helps us understand what we want and how institutions work to achieve their goals. This understanding, in turn, can guide technical knowledge and research into more productive directions.

CENTRALITY

OF THE RATIONAL

TRANSPORTATION

POLICY

PERSPECTIVE

IN

AND RESEARCH

The full flowering of Wilson and Taylor’s paradigm is the so-called rational comprehensive model of planning, institutions and decision-making. From Kant’s positivism, to Churchman’s “inquiring system” (1971) this world view has been the dominant one, shaping transportation institutions and research agendas. This world view includes the following characteristics (Linstone, 1984, p. 7): 1. the notion that analysis and decision-making are separable activities performed by different actors; 2. the definition of “problems” that are abstracted from a complex world, and the implicit assumption that problems can be “solved;”

3. an orientation toward optimization, or searching for the best solution; 4. a commitment to reductionism: research and study of systems that are defined by a limited number of elements or variables, and by their interactions; 5. reliance on data, models and combinations thereof, as modes of representation and inquiry; 6. quantification of information; 7. commitment to objectivity: the belief that the analyst or researcher is outside the system he or she is studying, and that knowledge can be found which is independent of the observer; 8. a commitment to problem solving as a sequence of logical steps: for example, problem definition, specification of altematives,.enumeration of goals, assessment of consequences, selection of a course of action and implementation of the selected course of action. We are so familiar with the rational comprehensive model of decision-making, that it barely needs elaboration. Indeed, the daily practice of transportation planning, and the past 30 years of transportation research can virtually be interpreted as an elaboration of this model of decision-making. The 1962 Highway Act, which required the comprehensive, coordinated and continuing (“3C”) transportation planning process, and the policy and procedure memoranda that implemented it, may be the most complete programmatic representation of this world view that any government will ever devise (Weiner, 1983). The more recent but ideologically similar requirement that applications for capital grants from the Urban Mass Transportation Administration be based on systematic “alternatives analyses” indicates that this model of planning and decision-making has remained dominant over at least several decades. Each of these requirements for analysis presumably leads to allocations of billions of dollars for projects only after carefully working out calculations derived from our shared commitment to the rational comprehensive model of decision-making. It would not be much of an exaggeration to claim that the entire research program of the U.S. Department of Transportation for the last 30 years has been oriented toward the support of decision-making processes that embody this model. From efforts to incorporate behavioral disaggregate travel demand models, to studies refining transportation system performance measures, to projects that determine transportation cost functions, most transportation research is oriented to “supporting rational deimproving objective models of travel cision-making,” demand, clarifying measures of system performance or designing new criteria for system evaluation. Although researchers and policymakers have often disagreed on specific programs or findings, and local and national officials have disagreed about the merits of particular transportation expenditures, there has rarely been a challenge to the rational comprehensive paradigm which so many of us have shared. As a result, debates and proposals are always couched in the language of this paradigm: alternatives, data, models, problems and criteria are concepts that survive for generations, even as programs and projects which they spawn come and go.

Planning, organizations and decision-making Planners have benefitted by the problem-solving ori-

entation of the rational comprehensive model because they are trained problem solvers and the paradigm legitimates what they do. By logically separating analysis from decision and implementation, the rational comprehensive model provides payoffs and escape clauses for both politicians and planners. Planners often explain failures or controversies as the results of political decisions that departed from technical recommendations based on sound analysis; while politicians often blame the same failures and controversies on poor analysis by their staffs. In rare instances, when politicians actually adopt programs on the basis of clear recommendations by planners, controversies and failures are explained on the basis of inadequate data, inherent shortcomings of models and changes in the definition of the problem. Thus, although plans may succeed or fail, the rational comprehensive model remains unchallenged as a metaphor describing transportation policy-making and technical planning. Researchers, perhaps, benefit as much or more from the persistence of this paradigm as do other actors in the drama of public policy-making. Commitments to reductionism, data, models and quantification produce a lasting market for research, for they imply that research can lead to refinements and improvements in policy-making. Furthermore, the paradigm dignifies research by linking it with objectivity. Adherence to the rational comprehensive model of transportation decision-making is formal and ritualistic. In actuality, recent planning requirements have given much more real authority to political and fiscal criteria than to traditional benefit-cost criteria, subtly shifting the emphasis in decision-making away from the rational comprehensive model and toward political bargaining. For example, the preparation of a “Transportation Improvement Program” in each region basically consists of the political resolution of differences in priorities for the expenditure of resources, and relies more on bargaining between interest groups than on analytical comparisons that characterize formal technical planning. The trend toward increasing the involvement of legislative bodies and local commissions in the decision-making process has not been matched by a parallel increase in attention to political decision-making by the research community, and this paper argues that political decision-making processes must be understood in terms of models that differ substantially from the traditional rational comprehensive model. MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON DECISION-MAKING Although the rational comprehensive decision-making model has served us well, it is important to recognize

that there are other useful perspectives on decision-making. Harold Linstone (1984) has assembled an excellent book based on the premise that the gap between analysis and decision-making, which so often troubles public policy analysts, may itself be an artifact of the rational comprehensive perspective. He argues that alternative perspectives exist, that some are very well developed, and that viewing problems through several perspectives is like

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lenses. We recognize an attribute of the object more clearly when viewing it through one lens, because we have seen it differently through another. Without rejecting the rational comprehensive model of decision-making and planning, we may grasp some of its aspects more insightfully if we consider them from other perspectives. Perhaps research on transportation planning and institutions has been SO bounded by the rational comprehensive perspective that we cannot even recognize its boundaries without depatting from that perspective. Thus, hopefully, a brief discussion of alternative perspectives can help formulate an agenda for research on transportation decision-making, planning and institutions. Graham Allison introduced the notion of multiple perspectives in policy-making when he studied the Cuban missile crisis in accordance with each of three different decision-making models (1971). Steinbrunner (1974) applied the same basic concept to an analysis of planning a proposed multinational force for NATO. Andersen (1977) used three perspectives to study policy reforms in special education, and Linstone argues that multiple perspectives help clarify the analysis of any area of policy-making, including transportation. As Anderson (1977, p. 2) concluded, “when taken together. . .three perspectives create a view of. . .bureaucracies that is richer, and more complex, and generates deeper insights than any view taken one at a time.” Although it would be possible to devise a large number of lenses through which to study transportation decision-making, just two alternatives to the rational comprehensive perspective illustrate the possibilities. Fit, consider an “organizational perspective,” in which descriptions of planning, decision-making and institutions are drawn more from the literature of organization theory than is the case for the rational comprehensive model. In this paradigm, the dynamics of competition and compromise and the enhancement of organizational status take higher priority than the “scientific” nature of analysis. The major attributes of this model of planning and decision-making can be summarized as follows: viewing an object through several different

1. There are multiple decision-making units, each pursuing its own goals and interested in enhancing its status. 2. There is greater reliance on standardized operating procedures than on formalized decision criteria. 3. Short-term consequences of decisions are emphasized over long-term consequences. 4. Innovation is less important than organizational security and enhancement. 5. Preferred policies are those most easily absorbed into an organization’s on-going values and programs. 6. There is greater reliance on relationships than on formalized technical information. 7. Technical analysis is suspect if it threatens institutional norms. 8. Action is more important than analysis. The rational comprehensive model of planning and decision-making emphasizes a stepwise process of analysis based on data and standardized criteria, whereas the

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organizational model emphasizes the institutional characteristics of planning and decision-making. A third perspective on phuming and decision-making, which we might label the “personal model,” emphasizes the fact that those participating in planning processes-though they may be committed to the rational model and may be part of an organizational structureare ultimately individuals who inevitably view planning from an immediately personal vantage point. From an individual cognitive perspective, major attributes of planning and decision-making take on the following characteristics: 1. Decisions are preferred on the basis of the extent to which they enhance one’s role in an organization or standing in a profession. 2. Intuition is at least as important as analysis. 3. Information processing is limited to simple concepts; inconsistent images and complex technical information are ftltered out. 4. Memory and personal experience are more important than technical analysis. 5. Decision processes focus on simple hypotheses and few alternatives. 6. Success depends on persuasive skills to a greater extent than on analytical sophistication. To suggest multiple perspectives for research on transportation planning, is not to suggest that one perspective is right and another is wrong. Rather, we can think of the three perspectives as three different blind people groping at the same elephant. Each perspective yields useful information, each is partial and each yields insights not easily drawn from the others. By recognizing the importance of multiple perspectives a research program can contribute to a fuller understanding of transportation policy-making, better than it would if a single paradigm of decision-making were adopted as the sole description of the elephant.

CURRENT

THEMES IN TRANSPORTATION

RESEARCH

Because the rational comprehensive model of transportation planning and decision-making has for so long been the widely accepted norm, the state of the art in transportation research is largely a reflection of this paradigm. With research on transportation planning funded largely by the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Transportation Research Board serving as our primary forum for the dissemination of transportation research findings, it is not surprising to find that cogent statements of research accomplishments and needs reflect the rational comprehensive model to which these institutions ascribe. For example, one of several current and concise statements of the state of the art in transportation planning and decision-making may be found in the report entitled, Travel Analysis Methods for rhe 1980s (Transportation Research Board, 1983), the proceedings of a Transportation Research Board Conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Reading this document led me to the conclusion that the state of the art in technical planning methods is certainly more advanced than in any

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other sector of public decision-making. In part, because technique in transportation planning is relatively advanced, research priorities are recommended with a great deal of specificity. In several areas the recommendations of that recent conference provide useful guidance for support of transportation research. I have summarized several research policy recommendations from this volume, which 1 consider valid statements of appropriate research priorities consistent with the paradigm of rational and comprehensive planning. These research needs are as follows:

1. For 30 years, urban transportation planning methods have focused on person trip movements and passenger-vehicle travel. To plan more effectively for urban transportation systems, it is appropriate to strengthen our data bases, modeling capabilities and technical understanding of urban-goods movement. 2. Changes in lifestyles, demographics, social patterns and labor-force participation rates are having profound effects on urban locational behavior and travel demand. Better techniques are needed to monitor, analyze and model the effects on travel and transportation needs of important recent changes, including female labor-force participation, the declining birthrate, changing household size, changing economic status of particular social and ethnic groups, and decentralization of economic activity. 3. Transportation planning methods during the past 30 years have done a better job of providing data and forecasting tools for systemwide or network planning than for microscale or community planning. Research should be encouraged that describes, forecasts and evaluates transportation impacts at more microscopic scales. During the coming decade, many transportation plans will involve smaller-scale management improvements. such as parking management, provision of ride-sharing incentives, variations in transit fare policies, and the development of a wide range of “alternative” services (subscription bus operations, paratransit, etc.) Finer-grained transportation planning methods are needed to provide for effective evaluation of such management strategies. 4. Though the database for transportation planning is extensive, the cost of large-scale regional origin-destination surveys is increasingly prohibitive, while census and NETS data are often too highly aggregated for complex analysis and planning. Research is needed on alternative forms of data collection, from panel studies to onboard surveys and to self-administered questionnaires, which would provide improved information in support of research on relationships between travel and its motivations; changes in travel resulting from changes in social and demographic conditions or activity spaces; and changes in travel resulting from transportation policy and planning. 5. Research is needed to refine our understanding of relationships among activity patterns, travel and land-use characteristics, including efforts to develop refined understandings of variables underlying trip generation and employment location.

Planning, organizations and decision-making 6. Although a great deal of progress has been made in the past decade in discrete choice random utility models of travel demand, promising areas for continued research include investigations of the dynamic aspects of travel behavior, such as the variability of travel behavior over time, and the estimation of time constants for the adjustment of patterns to changes in choice sets which are induced by policy-making. In addition, promising areas for further research include attention to the transferability of models from one setting to another, and the refinement of confidence levels associated with travel-demand forecasts based on such models. 7. Urban transportation planning methods were devised in an era of mainframe computers and should be reviewed and evaluated in light of dramatic changes made in computing capabilities during the last several years. Microcomputers make it possible for sketch-planning to be done directly by senior policy-makers, and for links between analysis of particular facilities at microscale and entire systems at macroscale. Planning tools originally used on main-frame computers have been adapted to microcomputers and to new graphics capabilities. Research is needed to evaluate the appropriateness of these adaptations, and to devise new methods which better link planning requirements and computer capabilities. 8. Urban transportation researchers recognize the importance of planning in the face of uncertainty. As the scale and time horizon of planning change, the effects of uncertainty also change. Long-range strategic planning for entire systems involves a great deal of uncertainty; whereas short-range planning for operational changes involves less. and perhaps a different kind of uncertainty. Research is recommended on the nature of uncertainty in planning analysis, and the relationships between planning tasks and the role of uncertainty. 9. Transportation programs are being funded in a variety of ways which are relatively new, and research is needed on the productivity, stability, equity and efficiency characteristics of novel financing techniques. These include a variety of user fees, user-side subsidy mechanisms, development fees for traffic mitigation and fare collection strategies for transit, which include time-ofday and distance-based fare structures. 10. In complex decision-making environments, transportation policies have impacts on environmental, energy, land use and social characteristics of our society. While the concept of benefit-cost or cost-effectiveness evaluation of alternatives is still considered valid in principle, the application of these principles is increasingly complex. A variety of promising evaluation techniques, including multicriteria decision-making methods may be applicable to transportation policy-making, and their application should be the subject of continued research. 11. Parallel with improvements to evaluation techniques, refinements, to the indicators of transport performance and cost, are. a promising area for continued and improved research. Capital and operating-cost models for transit systems, cost-allocation studies for highway systems, and performance criteria for a variety of transportation modes are areas in which research promises major payoffs.

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A research agenda of the sort outlined in the foregoing 11 points has several strengths and several weaknesses. First, it is a promising agenda because it builds on a history of 20-30 years of research accomplishment and a state of the art that is quite advanced. Second, it seems reasonable to expect research in these areas to produce results because there is a cohesive community interested in performing this research and qualified to undertake it. There are also, however, some shortcomings in such a research agenda. Because the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Transportation Research Board and our academic research community have all maintained an allegiance to the rational comprehensive model of planning, we may describe almost all of the foregoing research tasks as research within planning, rather than research on planning. Research agendas of this sort deal primarily with the data, models and evaluation techniques of planning as it is practiced by technical experts in relative isolation from politics and institutional arrangements. If we were to set aside, for a few moments, the rational comprehensive perspective on planning and were to adopt the organizational or personal perspectives on planning, decision-making and institutions, we would see that the foregoing research agenda holds open the prospect of some pitfalls. In their recent book, for example, Giandomenico Majone and Edward Quade collected together about a dozen papers dealing with a variety of Pirfafls ofAnalysis (Majone and Quade, 1980). which are directly interpretable in terms of transportation planning and analysis. They point out, for example, that technical analysis is not often used to narrow in on an optimal solution, but that it is often used to support arguments on the part of proponents and opponents of different undertakings. In policy debates, which differ in nature from policy ana/~+ses,the assumptions that go into models are as important as the technical characteristics of the models. The communication and documentation of technical analysis is often more important than the sophistication of the analysis, since it is often persuasion rather than precision which carries the day. Within institutions, technically precise enumerations of cost and benefits and multi-criteria decision-making algorithms may be less important than debates about the elements of cost and benefit which should most appropriately be included within a policy study. Decision-makers are often dissatisfied with the usefulness of analytical studies not so much because the work is incompetent or technically limited, but because it appears misguided and irrelevant. It appears misguided and irrelevant because decision makers and planning organizations do not necessarily behave in accordance with a rational comprehensive model. A research agenda drawn entirely from the rational comprehensive perspective is likely to be incomplete because we cannot assume rationality in a sometimes irrational world. To do so, in fact, is to be irrational! In structuring a new research program in transportation, we must build on the strengths of a research tradition in transportation, and must serve the research community of transportation planners. To a certain extent this means implementing a research agenda like that outlined above, and I don’t dispute the appropriateness of such research.

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I do wish to draw attention to the fact that it is likely to be partial and incomplete. I advocate a research agenda that also includes studies of the institutions and decisionmaking practices of planning agencies, and that might better be appreciated from the organizational and personal perspectives outlined briefly above. In the remaining sections of this paper, I wish to review the research traditions and make some recommendations for research on planning institutions and decision-making that go beyond the bounds of the rational comprehensive model.

TRANSPORTATIOX

RESEARCH

ORGANIZATIONAt

FROM AN

PERSPECTIVE

Although the rational comprehensive framework for planning is dominant in the transportation community, the alternatives are equally well developed in the fields of political science and public administration. Examples of research on planning institutions and the nature of complex decisions can be found in transportation studies conducted primarily by researchers grounded in the traditions of these disciplines. Alan Altshuler, for example, has described transportation in the political environment as a process characterized by little agreement on overall objectives, and a focus on achieving consensus for specific actions. Playing a game in which the biggest winners are likely to be those who can make the largest number of actors feel like winners themselves, advocates of particular plans are unlikely to urge dismantling favorite programs of other officials. Altshuler (1979) states, In such a system, a great many people must agree before any policy initiative can be adopted and effectively implemented; elected officials as a group are about as prone to disagree among themselves on the merits of any initiative as are the potentially affected parties; political timidity is the individual norm; and weak leadership is the institutional norm. Specific officials, of course, are frequently driven by conviction, ambition, and/or a taste for publicity and risk to champion policy departures. In order to achieve some measure of legislative success, however, they must secure the freely given consent of many others who are less impressed with the need for change, who feel more protective toward existing programs, and/or who have little taste for political risk.

As the years pass, new policies or actions are advocated by interest groups, whereas existing programs are rarely disturbed. Focusing on action and consensus rather than ideology, legislative bodies frequently adopt programs that seem logically inconsistent with their earlier actions, and that seem to contradict principles espoused by advocates of the adopted programs. Disputes between highway and transit interests over limited resources have often been resolved by compromising on proposals to increase funding to both modes. Recently, for example, Congress added five cents to the federal gasoline tax, ostensibly to cope with rapid deterioration of the nation’s roads. Potential opposition from transit interests was transformed into support by setting aside 20% of the tax revenues for transit projects. Such compromises frequently lead to expansions in capacity of underutilized transit routes while parallel highways are widened to ease automobile congestion. The consensus leading to action was

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more important to policy makers than these possible

out-

comes.

In a politically charged environment, new issues sensitive to some interests are addressed by adopting policies which confine action to the narrowest of possible bounds in order to avoid conflict with those who have a stake in other programs. In Southern California, for example, reaction to an extreme air pollution problem included legislation that requires special nozzles on gasoline pumps at filling stations to control evaporation of fumes. In contrast, little has ever been done to control the amount of automobile driving in areas having the worst air pollution. Although reduced driving would be much more effective at reducing pollution, and more consistent with the policy of increasing transit subsidies, it would be opposed by too many interest groups to make it politically feasible. To develop an understanding of transportation decision-making processes and institutions from an organizational perspective, it is useful to advocate careful case study research on complex decision-making situations in transportation policy. Altshuler’s (1965) detailed study of the Intercity Freeway in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the carefully documented case study of highway planning in Boston (Lupo et al., 1971; Sloan, 1974; Gakenheimer, 1976) and of transit planning in the San Francisco Bay Area (Anderson, 1980; Hamer, 1976; Zwerling, 1974) are examples of research in this tradition. Intelligent interpretation of planning and decisionmaking can reveal a great deal about the nature of transportation policy. Similar studies of current topics such as the planning of the Westway in New York, the Los Angeles Metrorail project, and the segment of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon would be equally revealing and should be undertaken. Because of the central role played by data and analysis in transportation policy-making, case study research on planning organizations and decision-making might be designed to focus specifically on the manner in which the decision-making process employed technical information produced by the rational comprehensive planning process. Case studies that focused specifically on the uses of technical studies in transportation planning include those performed by Boyce, Day and McDonald (1970) and Brewer (1973). Insights relevant to the use of technical information and forecasts in planning may also be gained by interpreting other case studies, such as Wildavsky and Tenenbaum’s (1981) study of estimates of American oil and gas reserves, Ascher’s (1978) study of the uses of forecasting in several sectors which included transportation, and Lindblom and Cohen’s (1979) analysis of the uses of data in social problem solving. Interpretation of these case studies sheds new light on the meaning of rational comprehensive analysis in planning, causing us to question the basic assumptions of data collection and modeling. For example, Wildavsky and Tenenbaum found, investigating the use of models to forecast America’s oil and gas reserves, that when various organizations were in agreement with one another on the promotion of certain policies, they tended to ignore the vast body of quantitative analysis supporting their posi-

Planning, organizations and decision-making

tions. When organizations differed dramatically over policy, however, they magnified tiny differences in the outputs of technical models in order to support their particular positions, ignoring in the process the extent to which those small differences might be statistically insignificant. Lindblom and Cohen also found that it was common to call on technical analysis to support an organizational position while ignoring all technical information which tended to counter it. They observed this: In performingany given research, the practitioner of professional social inquiry seems to work for one of a variety of possible audiences and takes this orientation not from an implicitly postulated “the” public interest, as is common, but from one of various explicitly recognized partisan interests, each playing its role in the resolution of policy conflict.

Technical analysis plays a role in organizational models of planning and decision-making, but not by clarifying issues with the light of unbiased analysis. Lindblom and Cohen go on to explain: It appearsthat in certain circumstances common especially in the bureaucracy, a tacit agreement comes into play according to which the victory goes to the superficial “winner” of the debate. We do not mean that those who concede are persuaded by the debate. But they in effect follow a tacit rule that declares that better evidence (especially better numbers) carries the day. . . .Such a practice makes further costly effort in a continuing struggle unnecessary, settles the issue peaceably, and does so by means of a ceremony that makes decision-making appear to be informed and thoughtful, as indeed it is to a degree. Evidence and argument can in fact be fragmentary, provided only that by conventional superficial standards they are judged better than contrary evidence and argument (Lindblom and Cohen, 1979, pp. 65. 66). It seems reasonable to view the traffic flows and costs used in transit alternatives analyses as examples of this process. Forecast patronage and capital and operating costs, when interpreted from the perspective of organizational advocacy, place urban transportation planning data analysis and modeling in a light not usually acknowledged by the technical community of transportation planners. When Ascher studied a wide variety of forecasts he concluded that assumptions of input parameters had a greater effect on the forecast quantities than any attribute of the technical models or data base. He wrote The core assumptions underlying a forecast, which represent the forecaster’s basic outlook on the context within which the specific forecasted trend develops, are the major determinants

of forecastaccuracy.Methodologiesare basicallythe vehicles for determining the consequencesor implications of core assumptions that have been chosen more or less independently of the specific methodologies. When the core assumptions are valid, the choice of methodology is either secondary or

obvious. When the core assumptionsfail to capturethe reality of the future context, other factors, such as methodology, generally make little difference; they cannot “save” the forecast (Ascher, p. 199).

For decades, transportation planning in the United States has given great emphasis to quantitative analysis, through computer modeling, of travel demand and cost. The evalt

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uation of transportation alternatives has relied on benefitcost studies, in turn dependent on computer models of travel patterns. Federal transportation policy-makers have reified 20- and 30-year forecasts of travel demand and cost through requirements that “alternatives analyses” be performed by local governments applying for federal capital grants. The alternatives analyses are intended to insure that federal grants are made only after a systematic evaluation of alternatives, and a reasoned selection of a cost effective capital improvement program. Maintaining commitment to technical objectivity by placing computer models of travel demand and cost in a central position, transit officials politely disguise the fact that allocations of billions of dollars in grants for new transit systems are politically explosive. Local officials win or lose elections on the basis of their success or failure in garnering federal funds for favored projects, and it seems inevitable that political salience, rather than technical objectivity, determines the estimates of future travel demand and cost produced by consultants. Alternatives analyses in two cities having similar urban form, automobile ownership and commuting patterns, often reveal that a subway is more cost effective in the first, where the business community has long been backing a subway; whereas express busways are more justified in the other, where public leaders have reached a consensus in support of that alternative. Within the past 8 years, transit officials in Los Angeles have made public a sequence of patronage estimates in support of their proposal to build an l&mile subway along Wilshire Boulevard. As inflation has driven the estimate of capital cost for the proposed subway from around 2 billion dollars to nearly 3.5 billion, estimates of daily patronage have grown from 180,000 to more than 300,000. The latter figure was recently presented to the public as the result of “refined estimates,” and portrayed as “our most conservative projection.” The dramatic increase in forecast patronage for a subway proposal which has remained essentially unchanged can conceivably be explained on the basis of refinements in estimation, but those refinements seem to have been motivated by the need to maintain a benefit-cost ratio in the neighborhood of 1.0 as the funding being sought increased with inflation. Forecasts, as Ascher stated, are always critically dependent on assumptions. A few years ago, for example, a consulting firm used a McLynn-type direct demand model to analyze future patronage for alternative potential transportation improvements in the corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego (Barton-Aschman Associates, 1976). The results showed that a high-speed rail line in that corridor might potentially attract 1.4% of the intercity trips. More recently, the American High Speed Rail Transportation Corporation, proposing a bullet train for this route, employed the same McLynn-type direct demand model to estimate patronage. They found that a rail line similar to that considered earlier-with somewhat more frequent service and two additional stations-would attract 46% of all business trips and 27% of all nonbusiness trips between Los Angeles and San Diego. The major difference between the two applications of the same

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model lies in different assumptions that were used regarding the effect on patronage of access distances to the stations, and the application of different “aggravation factors” to represent the annoyance associated with driving in congested traffic (Arthur D. Little and Company, 1982). Clearly, one modeler represented an organization having a greater stake in the outcome of the modeling than did the other, and their assumptions differed correspondingly . Examination of recent reports shows that patronage forecasts in support of rail investments are usually based on assumptions of dramatic population growth in the corridors to be served; assumptions of office construction booms during and after subway construction; assumptions that the ratio of parking space to office floor space will decline in the vicinity of the stations; and assumptions that the price of parking will double or triple in the near future in downtown areas. Similarly, subway patronage forecasts are typically based on assumptions that bus routes which parallel new subway lines will be discontinued or rerouted to become feeders of the rail lines, resulting in the capture of their patronage by the rail service. On the cost side, it is standard practice to support capital investments on the basis of supposed savings in operating costs, and forecasts of operating costs are usually presented which show annual increases assumed to equal the general rate of inflation. Although this may seem a reasonable assumption on the surface, transit operating costs in the past decade have exceeded the general rate of inflation by about 4% per year. Continuation of such trends for only a decade could easily yield operating costs more than double those which are widely forecast in support of new capital investments in transit (Wachs and Ortner, 1979). Such assumptions are not necessarily unreasonable taken one at a time, but the passage of time rarely brings about so fortunate a combination of events. Local elected officials who lobby in Washington for capital grants on the basis of forecast transit patronage and cost are under no obligation to support local legislation which would raise downtown parking charges to make them consistent with forecasts assuming higher parking charges. Proposals to eliminate bus service which parallels a new rail route are often abandoned under pressure from bus patrons who seek the continuation of their service and who are uninterested in the earlier assumptions of planners. Assumptions of decreased operating costs resulting from capital investment are similarly of no consequence when new labor contracts are negotiated. Computerized forecasts of patronage and cost are sufficiently concrete to be persuasive in debates over resource allocation, while being inherently unverifiable for decades to come. Thus, when seeking appropriations of federal funds, Baltimore officials carefully presented detailed forecasts of daily patronage exceeding 80,000 to justify their new 13-km subway. Now that service has been initiated, new estimates show that daily patronage will actually be closer to 25,000 during the first year, possibly reaching 45.000 when the full system is in service. When asked to comment on the disparity between the initial estimates and the current numbers, a local

planner was quoted as saying that “growth just hasn’t materialized” in the wake of the 1973-74 oil crisis and the ensuing recession (Hill, 1983). I would contend that the research literature of transportation planning gives scant emphasis to the role of assumptions in bringing about the estimates of patronage and cost which form the basis for comparisons of transportation alternatives. If Lindblom and Cohen are right and quantitative information is primarily used to advocate particuhu outcomes, while forecasts are more critically determined by assumptions than by methodological constructs, then differences in travel demand and cost forecasts are likely to be statements of preference which are converted by our methods from assumptions into advocacy forecasts. In research settings this is certainly not likely to be the case, whereas in consulting situations it may very well be common. I would contend that research on the uses of transportation planning techniques would reveal a great deal about the nature of assumptions and the advocacy roles that such techniques play in actual policy-making. It is important to observe that practitioners and theoreticians of operations research and policy science have been discussing these issues in far greater depth than has been the case in the transportation community, and much of their discussion may be directly relevant to our work (Anderson, 1979; Tribe, 1972; Orlans, 1975). The time has come to investigate the extent to which organizational goals and assumptions determine the outcome of planning methods along with the technical characteristics of those methods. Research is needed on the uses and interpretations of planning methods in organizational settings, along with more traditional research directed toward the technical improvement of those methods.

TRAXWORTATION

RESEARCH

FROM A

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

Participants in transportation decision-making, in addition to representing organizations that have differing interests, also are a highly variegated species in their own right. They bring to the tasks of transportation planning a variety of personal agendas, priorities, educational backgrounds and experiences that influence policy-making. Relatively little research has been done on the belief systems and organizational styles of individuals who participate in transportation decision-making, yet the personal perspective on policy-making reveals that individuals make a difference, and that the differences among people are researchable. Arnold Mehsner (1976) studied the behavioral patterns and styles of policy analysts in the bureaucracy, and found that they could usually be classified into four categories. The categories differed from one another in the extent to which individuals as analysts, or decision-makers, were concerned primarily with analytical skills and technical issues vs political skills and organizational iswas the name Mehsner gave indisues. “Technician” viduals who espoused the comprehensive rational model of decision-making, and who cast most problems in terms

Planning, organizationsand decision-making of their technical dimensions. Such people were noted to be less interested in the political dimensions of decisionmaking, and perhaps lacking in the skills necessary to advance in highly politicized environments. A second type, which Meltsner labeled “politician,” was weak in technical skills and background, verbal rather than quantitative in orientation, and sensitive to organizational issues rather than technical ones. The “entrepreneur” was the rare person who could operate effectively in the technical environment of data, models and computers, while also sensing the human dimensions of complex organizations and mastering the political skills that make one an effective team player. Finally, the “pretender” was the actor in political decision-making who was not particularly skilled at technical analysis nor effective as a politician. Meltsner makes the case that organizations are composed of individuals of all of these types, and that the organizational approach to analysis and problem solving is to a great extent a function of the mix of outlooks represented among staff members. In one of the few studies of planners’ attitudes and beliefs, Elizabeth Howe and Jerome Kaufman surveyed over 600 members of the American Planning Association, presenting each with a questionnaire consisting of situational scenarios in which “appropriate” courses of action were selected (Howe and Kaufman, 1979 and 1981). Changing input data to affect the outcome of a forecast, releasing confidential information to citizens and using the media to mold public opinion about technical issues are all illustrative of situations which appeared in their set of numerous scenarios. After statistically analyzing the responses, Howe and Kaufman concluded that personal differences, rather than training or organizational setting, explained the response patterns. They classified planners into categories which resemble Meltsner’s, including “technicians,” “politicians” and “hybrids.” Technicians were likely to be loyal to their organizations and to consider their own political beliefs subservient to their organization’s goals. They would follow organizational rules and believed that depth and quantity of analysis have a great deal to do with the effectiveness of an organization. Politicans, on the other hand, had stronger ideological commitments and believed in using their positions within organizations to attain policy outcomes which they considered important. They were likely to downplay the objectivity of technical analysis, and to believe that analysis was to be used to prove a point rather than to discover the truth. Politicians were more likely to lobby actively for what they believed, to organize citizens around particular issues, and to actively seek to neutralize those who opposed them, whereas technicians were much more likely to define such tactics as inappropriate for planners. Interestingly, the largest body of respondents was classified as “hybrids.” consisting of planners who were to some extent technicians and to some extent politicans. The majority were ambiguous about their roles, simultaneously espousing the objectivity and the political uses of analysis, sometimes siding with their organization’s right to determine their positions, while sometimes placing their personal and political commitments above the goals of their organizations.

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There are several ways in which a personal perspective suggests appropriate topics for research on transportation planning, decision-making, and institutions. First, it reveals that individuals can play a critical role in transportation policy-making, and that biographical studies are useful for understanding policy-making. The biography of Robert Moses, written by Robert Caro (1974). for example, provides a great deal of detail regarding the decision-making process for the bridges, highways and parkways of New York over a 50-year period. It reveals that personal loyalty and commitment were more influential than technical analysis, and that information was frequently manipulated by Moses’ staff to achieve intended results. It also reveals that a person of unusual influence and power can implement plans to a far greater extent than more technically expert but powerless bureaucracies. The personal perspective may also be used in other ways to contribute to research about transportation planning and decision-making. By highlighting the significance of individual views and interpretations of decisionmaking, the personal perspective suggests research which uses planners, politicians and citizens as subjects of analysis worthy of treatment, which is at least equal in promise to research which treats intersections and highway segments as units of analysis. Quantified opinion and judgment, expressed by individual actors in the process, holds promise for revealing a great deal about the nature of transportation policy-making. Questionnaire research, like that of Howe and Kaufman, can in fact be made much more specific in order to reveal important trends and issues in policy-making. Schafer and his colleagues (Scheibe, Skutsch and Schafer, 1975), for example, used the Delphi technique of quantified subjective judgements to arrive at ratings of criteria for use in evaluating alternative transportation plans. They used a panel of transportation experts who remained anonymous to one another throughout the process of quantifying their priorities. Similar techniques could be used to develop and compare evaluations of transportation plans by political leaders, businessmen and lay citizens, all from a personal perspective. Such research demonstrates the relevance of a personal perspective to the analysis of complex organizational decision-making about technical subject matter. CONCLUSION The state of the art in transportation research is somewhat unbalanced. In the technical areas of data collection, analysis and forecasting, our field has advanced far beyond the capabilities which exist for the planning of housing, health care and other social services. With respect to the understanding of the political and social roles of transportation planning and the nature of its institutions, our understanding is no deeper than that gained through research in other sectors. To the extent that we collectively accept a single paradigm of transportation planning and decision-making-the rational comprehensive modelwe concentrate our resources on the refinement of technical methods and models, while ignoring the rich po-

M.

530

tential for research on the political and social dimensions of our field. I do not wish to suggest that we should give little attention to the technical side of transportation studies. Much of the best research is that which builds on a solid base of accomplishment. and a base of accomplishment does exist in the technical areas of transportation. The transportation research community is a sophisticated one, and much will be gained from focusing future research funding on its areas of strength. All of the other papers in this volume address areas of strength in which additional research promises to promote improvement in our capacity to conduct transportation analysis. It is also important, however, to give increased attention to the social and political dimensions of transportation planning, because they are areas in which our understanding is more limited. There are two basic reasons for advocating that research on transportation from the organizational and personal perspectives be given a larger share of the resources for transport research than has previously been the case. First, research on the institutional context and utilization of technical information will clarify the roles played by technical information. This, in turn, will yield clearer agendas for those conducting technical research. More importantly, only by improving our understanding of transportation institutions and decision-making processes, as messy and ill-defined as they may be, can we focus the work of the research community on improving the quality of public policy-making and decision-making. This is the ultimate purpose of all research in the field of transportation.

WACHS

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Acknowledgements-Preparation of this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant No. CEE 8407918. The author gratefully acknowledges constructive comments made by Joseph L. Schafer and Gordon J. Fielding, and Genevieve Giuliano, whose suggestions have led to important revisions in the manuscript.

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