David Smith: Toddling with a toy lawn moor and rationality

Two questions: When were you last on a bus? What is your favourite transport app?

The conversation always takes many directions.

David and I are partners in Fuse Mobility where we do transport and transport technology consulting 

In the early part of our relationship we led the design and delivery of Scotland’s first Mobility as a Service app (NaviGoGo – check out the link for our younger versions!).

But that’s not important here.  This was a chat about David and his transport life.  His mobility stories. His choices.

When we first worked together I used to tease David that his “to do list” ran his life.  In our podcast chat I put him in a “rational” box.  But our subsequent chat was about how rationality is context specific – what is rational depends on the person and the situation (the context).  

Listen to David and his family’s travel choices* and parameters.  What are they governed by? 

• Lifestyle trends (in housing)
• Availability of long legged dog
• Residential location
• Job locations
• Car ownership
• Household composition esp children
• Toy lawn moor availability and use
• Location of distracting stones 
• Pram space availability on bus

I could go on…

Yes, David is into travel apps and is, by his own admission, at the edge of a normal distribution of travel app users.  

But those apps are a drop in the ocean in determining travel – a support tool rather than a determinant.

I learnt something about my partner and colleague of eight years.  It really is good to talk

*Transport choice modelling has kept lots of academics and practitioners busy for a long long time.  If you’re interested here is a recent paper in which a literature review gives a flavour. (My first transport job was running a large traffic model to predict demand for travel in London Docklands as it was being built.  I learnt a lot but didn’t enjoy that job very much.)

Music Credit: Life of a Wandering Wizard by Serge Quadrado