Employment and transport

[Jay Forrest]

Hi John!

Thanks for asking the question. It is of the kind I address routinely as a
futurist.

>rest of the region will help. One view is that they will, because they
>provide better links to markets etc and encourage new businesses to set up
>locally. The converse is that better links will give the local workforce
>access to higher wages in the surrounding region so that local employers
>will be unable to recruit without raising costs, and the local economy will
>be hurt.

The answer is almost certainly that both will occur to a degree. The
question you raise relates not so much about either activity, but rather
focuses on the difference. You could easily have an excellent model of
economic growth related to transportation and a second excellent model of
labor migration and labor price inflation related to transportation which
were quite accurate. However, when you focus on the "net" between the two
you are taking the difference between two relatively large numbers and the
quality of that "net" will always be far less accurate than either of the
base models.

I would also suggest that the problem is too complex and with too many key
assumptions to lend itself to rigorous, detailed modeling. The accuracy of
your models ouput (in decimal places) will vastly exceed the accuracy of
your assumptions. Put simply, your model will never be very accurate and
while it will select a winner (economic growth vs. disaster) I would
suggest the value of that answer is quite dubious.

That said, I believe SD can provide a lot of insight into the issue. It
provides a great framework for bringing dissenting parties into agreement
as to what is important in this problem and for, hopefully, stimulating
analysis and creative thinking targeted at finding actionable items to
shift the outcome from disaster and toward success. I.e., not for
predicting an answer, but rather for shifting the behavior in the desired
direction.

I personally believe that a properly formulated higher level model will
stimulate more understanding in this case than a detailed one. (And dont
assume that the protagonists in this argument understand both sides of the
issue.)

I welcome this question for it should stimulate some interesting disussion!
(P.S. I am doing addressing a similar "economic development" issue in March.)

Good Luck!
Jay Forrest



11606 Highgrove Drive
Houston, Texas 77077
Tel: 713-503-4726
Fax: 281-558-3228
E-mail: jay@jayforrest.com

["Swanson, John"]

I have an interesting problem I am trying to use SD to help with, but have
run into trouble formulating it satisfactorily.

The study concerns a town in the UK, with a local economy that is primarily
low-wage and low-skills and is in slow long-term decline. The town has
relatively poor transport links with the rest of the region (which is
economically strong). The question is whether better transport links to the
rest of the region will help. One view is that they will, because they
provide better links to markets etc and encourage new businesses to set up
locally. The converse is that better links will give the local workforce
access to higher wages in the surrounding region so that local employers
will be unable to recruit without raising costs, and the local economy will
be hurt.

I am trying to use SD to demonstrate the possible dynamics of this. The
specific problem I have is formulating the way people move between
employment locations. People living in the town may work locally or outside
the town. Their preferences will vary with transport costs, the
availability of jobs and the wage differential. They may also be unemployed.
Although inward commuting is almost non-existent now, if the local economy
grew, and/or transport links improved, it might become more significant. I
can construct a measure of the accessible workforce from outside, and I
know how that varies with transport costs. Its the choice resident workers
make between the different employment locations and the competition with
inward commuting, all of which has to be balanced against the number of jobs
available, that is proving tough. (The migration of employers and residents
in and out of the area is not the issue - that is being handled rather like
in Forresters original urban dynamics model. We also have a detailed
conventional transport model for calculating transport costs etc).

I need to know how in/outward commuting varies because it feeds back into
the transport costs, and current thinking on transport policy prefers less
long distance travel rather than more. A key thing is that this model has to
be pretty easy to demonstrate and explain to my audience, so Im seeking a
balance between simplicity and validity.

Has anyone experience of formulating this, or something like it that they
would be willing to offer?

John Swanson
Steer Davies Gleave
UK

tel: +44 (0)20 7919 8500
fax: +44 (0)20 7827 9850
email j.swanson@sdgworld.net