Using strategic niche management to evaluate and implement urban transport policy instruments

Abstract

Strategic Niche Management (SNM) is rooted in organisational innovation diffusion theory and provides a structure to evaluate and manage the introduction of new transport technologies. In brief, SNM involves: • Formation of a ‘technological niche’. • Identification and introduction of appropriate protection measures that support the new technology. • Analysing the technological regime of the ‘experiment’ (demonstration project). -Promotion and examination (by actors/partners) of 'second order' learning processes within the protected experimental space. • Management of experiment to encourage innovation diffusion. An existing transport case study is presented to demonstrate how Strategic Niche Management could be used in the development of new and innovative transport technologies. These were conducted as part of a research project for the CEC DG XII Strategic Niche Management as a Tool for Transition to a Sustainable Transport System. This paper briefly introduces Strategic Niche Management and focuses on the new research by Petros Ieromonachou that is seeking to use SNM to evaluate and manage radical local transport policy package measures. The possibility of producing an implementation guidance tool based on this concept is discussed.