Coping with Complexity in America's Urban Transport Sector

This paper explores multiple dimensions of complexity in a U.S. transportation-policy context, discusses the implications of these dimensions for policy change, and to the degree appropriate, suggests strategies that might be pursued to overcome, or at least better "manage", complexity. Three major spheres of complexity that are addressed relate to mobility markets, problem definition and analysis (technocratic complexity), and decision-making. The paper closes with a review of promising developments in coping with the panoply of complex problems faced in America's urban transport sector, with a particular focus on progress made in better integrating public transport and urbanism in the world's most car-dependent cities.