ABSTRACT
The first half of the 1990s was marked by an unusual conjunction of events surrounding transport policy and planning. Their effect was not so much to bring about an immediate change in the nature of transport programmes but rather to change the terms of reference within which their underpinning policies were debated. The prevailing view of transport altered fundamentally and, dare one say it, permanently – a so-called ‘paradigm shift’. The erstwhile dominant view of ‘predict and provide’ (Vigar 2002) did not simply swing to its opposite pole of ‘predict and prevent’ (Owens 1995) but there was no longer the implicit assumption that forecast traffic volumes should be catered for wherever possible. In many ways this transformation was but a more general application of the principle of demand management which had come to be accepted in urban transport planning in the 1970s – and for not dissimilar reasons.
