Principio de culpabilidad

The second NOP workshop occurred a month later in mid-October. It was attended by two senior Council A staff (i.e. Planning and Infrastructure Directors), five Council A staff (i.e. project and junior managers and five VicRoads staff (i.e. project and junior managers). Aside from a few new participants, all participants from the first meeting participated in the second meeting.

The objective of the second NOP workshop was to provide Council A staff more detailed background information regarding the various aspects of SmartRoads. This process was detailed at the end of Chapter 7. In summary, staff within the Network Operating division of VicRoads had developed a decision-making framework SmartRoads. Information was presented via a PowerPoint presentation by a VicRoads Network Operating division manager. The presentation summarised the four-steps of SmartRoads (VicRoads, 2012a):

1. Develop Road Use Hierarchy: to identify the priority of each transport mode by route, place and time

2. Identify operating performance: to enable the network operation performance to be assessed against specific operating objectives, and to identify gaps in network performance

3. Development operating strategies: to define the network level management strategies that are required to support the Network Operating Plan

4. Use the Network Operating Plan

As we saw at the end of Chapter 7, the Road Use Hierarchy helps stakeholders identify different travel mode priority by route, place and time. An NOP physically and metaphorically reflects a roadmap for how road measures might be implemented, based on the trade-offs and conflicts identified during discussion. As the second NOP workshop was principally intended as an information exercise, the meeting ended and participates were asked to return the following month.

The third NOP workshop occurred in November 2011. It was attended by two senior Council A staff (i.e. Planning and Infrastructure Directors), five Council A staff (i.e.

project and junior managers), five VicRoads staff (i.e. project and junior managers), one DOT staff (i.e. junior manage), and three local government staff from adjacent councils (i.e. project and junior managers). Aside from new participants, all participants from the first and second meetings participated in the third meeting.

The objective of the third NOP workshop was for participants to begin engaging SmartRoads. Participants were divided into three groups to elicit what participants perceived were the primary issues facing the road network within Council A’s jurisdictional boundaries. Each group was provided with large laminated maps of the Council A municipality, on which participants could physically mark issues with a felt-tipped marker. The VicRoads Network Operating manager made sure participants identified issues, as they related specifically to Council A’s road network. Aside from a few small differences, the three groups generally identified identical problem areas and similar concerns. Identified issues centred on peak travel demand routes, and future travel needs generated from projected redevelopment slated to occur within council.

8.2.1 Organisational conventions and road space allocation

To place the second and third NOP workshops in context, we briefly trace aspects of organisational conventions around road space allocation. For example, in Chapters 6 and 7, we saw how uptake and enactment of a demand stance has continued to evolve, yet remains contested. Crucial to uptake of the stance rests on the need to differentiate developing professional relationships from maintaining and nurturing professional relationships.

Working in large state authorities was identified by many transport planners as problematic. A lacking “front door” into VicRoads, DOT and DPCD was explicitly identified by many transport planners as a major barrier to disseminating and obtaining information and fostering more collaborative work (Participants 14, 40, 46).

State government is so big and the government portfolios are so big, particularly in a department with, well I’ll make up a number here, over 1000 or maybe even 1,500 employees. A lot of time is wasted just trying to find out who the right person is to speak with about a particular initiative. And that’s two ways: that’s outsiders trying to get into the right area within the department to make a decision or give the appropriate advice so that outside area can move forward. That might be, “What do we need to do to develop a bit of surplus railway land?” And they may waste three to six months just trying to find the appropriate area within the Department or the state government, the appropriate area that will make a decision as to whether they can proceed with that sort of thinking or not…. Outside people do acknowledge that, that the Department is a great big behemoth machine. And Public Transport being the biggest part of the Department, I think it accounts for about 400 of whatever the thousand people, is just complicated which is why the current government has been talking about creating a face of Public Transport (Participant 46).

In turn, individuals with multiple-authority experience were found to unintentionally embody a unique communicative role. They became conduits to help a professional in one state authority navigate “big mammoth organisations” to locate an appropriate contact in another state authority (Participants 14 and 46).

Council A’s CEO had recently introduced cross-directorates with the specific aim of ensuring cross-pollination of ideas and developing better communication between departments and between staff. To some extent SmartRoads mirrors similar changes occurring in professional planning circles more generally. Thus, the process does help with issues associated with cross-state authority collaboration. SmartRoads also fills an important transport planning gap in Victoria. Local governments in Victoria are not required by state law to have a local transport planner or professional with transport planning expertise and/or experience on staff. Methods for the telephone survey used to collect this information are detailed in Chapter 3. Of the 12 councils surveyed, only three had a local council transport plan: Council A was not one. The three councils that did have a transport planner on staff also had a transport plan. SmartRoads therefore fills an important gap in road space allocation.

Although not explicit, SmartRoads also contains the potential to nurture professional relationships between councils and VicRoads, and between VicRoads and other state authorities. Evidence as to whether this objective has been successful is conflicting.

For example, when asked whether the process had helped improve the relationship between VicRoads and Council A, the Council’s Director of Infrastructure replied that Council has a relatively good relationship with VicRoads, “but we have a lot of

disagreements with VicRoads. We don’t necessarily agree with what they tell us; we have issues that have never been resolved” (Participant 59).

Towards the end of the NOP exercise, the role of Council A’s VicRoads liaison shifted within VicRoads, resulting in the liaison’s position being replaced. The “constant”

changing of VicRoads staff was identified by Council A staff as detrimental to building and nurturing relationships. Both Council A Directors cited this as a big issue—one they believed was found with all state planning authorities.

The problem with the (VicRoads office with jurisdictional boundaries containing Council A) is that they are constantly changing their staff. People disappear, come and go. You never quite now; you’re dealing with someone on a matter and you’re starting to get somewhere, when all of a sudden, the person is off to (another VicRoads office). And then you start again (Participant 59).

Constant organisational restructuring (identified in Chapter 7), along with changing state liaison contacts, were identified as impacting professional relationships, and therefore road space allocation. During an interview with Council A’s VicRoads liaison, the transport planner reflected on a previous SmartRoads exercise they had participated in with an inner-urban council. Relations between that council and VicRoads had historically been strained; exacerbated by the recent clearway controversy. When asked whether the process had improved relations with the council, the transport planner responded that the process had provided a structured way to come up with both the answer and problem together (Participant 52). VicRoads staff had assumed only a few meetings would be required, but after five meetings, participants remained at odds on several points. The liaison ended up acting as a

“relationships manager” between council and VicRoads (Participant 52). The process was further strained by continued absence of key VicRoads staff knowledgeable with council’s traffic signal operations.

8.2.2 Organisational conventions and the NOP workshop

Returning back to the second and third NOP workshops, the motivation of Council A staff to engage SmartRoads stemmed from a desire to mitigate probable impacts to its road network from projected redevelopment. This motivation was a product of three years of debate, discussion and unanswered enquiries made by Council staff to VicRoads regarding this concern. The delay resulted in Council moving forward with the Industrial Land Management Strategy. As such, engagement itself is as important

as engaging road space allocation tensions. This point further supports understanding how road space allocation emerges from the intersection of four constitutive elements.

Council A’s Director of Planning and Director of Infrastructure both remarked that the NOP exercise should have been conducted prior to the completion of the Industrial Land Management Strategy (Participants 59 and 60). The Council had formalised the Strategy around 2008. Consequently, the capacity of NOP exercise to guide development already in motion was significantly reduced. As one Director remarked,

“once you start to change zoning, then the ball is truly rolling… there is an expectation of landowners of certain things” (Participant 60). The Director’s remarks highlight two important points. First, timing in road space allocation is critical. Engaging and resolving road space allocation tensions always begins with decisions that have already been signed off and processes already in place. Second, both Directors were adamant about the difficulty to “get the ball rolling”, and to engage DOT, VicRoads and DPCD. Evidence regarding this second point is conflicting and less certain. Questions remain if VicRoads had come to council in 2008, whether the Council’s Industrial Land Management Strategy would have turned out differently.

Transport planners thus engage road space allocation tensions with past decisions, mobility networks and procedures already in place. Evidence from interviews and observing the Council A NOP exercise therefore draws attention to how enactment of a demand stance rests on differentiating developing professional relationships from maintaining and nurturing professional relationships. In the inner-urban SmartRoads example, the VicRoads liaison sought to proactively engage council staff to overcome divergent opinions and develop consensus. In the Council A example, the liaison’s relationship with council staff was structured by outside influences, such as being shifted to other areas within VicRoads. During follow-up interviews, Council A staff remarked that the shift had probably contributed to curtailing some of the NOP exercise’s momentum (Participant 53 and 54).

Developing professional relationships therefore helps foster agency critical for transport planners to actively make decisions and enact change. Yet, organisational restructuring, conventions and norms constrain maintaining and nurturing professional relationships. As such, residue created from resolving past road space allocation tensions impact the level of trust between state and local governments. Ensuring transparent and active processes like SmartRoads help eradicate or at least peal back layers of residue, and therefore improve trust. Further, this alludes to how a

professional’s capacity to enact change is afforded, constrained and constituted by their professional relationships. To examine this point further, we examine how infrastructure shapes road space allocation.