The mobility of the future 'believes' in the past The iron cage of technology
This paper aims to highlight the unbroken role and the increasing centrality that technological solutions play for coping with, e.g. environmental problems, in transport and mobility foresights since the 1970. Within the last four decades, technology was increasingly believed to solve the arising transportation dilemma of (politically intended) growth related increase of mobility, and ever rising negative side effects of pollution, congestion or accidents. Since that time the expectations of technology have been rising from merely providing mobility, to mitigating its negative effects, and to finally compensating future's uncertainty. But although new fuel technologies and efficiency increases have been continuously propagated and favoured against radical modal shift or mobility avoiding concepts, throughout the last four decades we today mostly see the business as usual model in the transportation field. Instead of enlarging the future transport debate with different approaches, politicians, planners and the public are assumed to commonly believe in the positive connotation of technology as a promising remedy for almost all problems. As a result, high technology approaches most often outweigh more efficient low tech solutions for the reason of not having to face the necessity of lifestyle or behavioural changes, or to gain more symbolic values from connotations of progress and modernity. A discussion about reducing mobility as a whole seems to be unimaginable, while modal shift approaches towards more public transport remain marginal in effect compared to the traditional car motorization. Thus, the transport and mobility field, underpinned by a hidden consensus of policy makers, industrialists and the public, still seems to be caught in an 'iron cage' of technology and seems to have a tendency of waiting for a 'train that never arrives'