The Role of Predictions in Transport Policy Making and the Forecasting Profession : Misconceptions, Illusions and Cognitive Bias

This paper investigates the quantitative forecasting methods and procedures in transport policy making and criticises the existing applications based on the forecasting profession. Although many scholars presented predictions for transportation purposes, many of these predictions are out of the principles of forecasting and their validity is suspicious in terms of data preparations, stationarity theory, out of sample control, selection of accuracy metrics, residual control and benchmark selections. This paper presents a holistic view to forecasting principles and purposes a number of suggestions to validate and improve the existing approach