This paper critiques the state of the art approaches to studying transportation policy. It does so through analysing 100 papers sampled from the two leading policy journals in the transportation literature. On applying two different frameworks for understanding policy, the review finds that only 13% of papers consider specific aspects of the policy cycle, that 60% focus on 'tools' for policy, and that two-thirds of papers did not engage with real-world policy examples or policy makers and focussed on quantitative analysis alone. We argue that these findings highlight the persistence of the technical-rational model within the transportation literature. This model, and the numerous traditions and disciplines that have fed into it have an important role to play in developing the transportation evidence base. However, we argue there are important questions of governance; such as context, power, resources and legitimacy, that are largely being ignored in the literature as it stands. The substantial lack of engagement with governance issues and debates means that as a field we are artificially, but more importantly, disproportionately generating a science of applied policy making which is unlikely to be utilised because of the distance between it and the realities on the ground. The paper identifies analytical approaches deployed readily in other fields that could be used to address some of the key deficiencies.

This review provides a critical overview of what has been learnt about commuting's impact on subjective wellbeing (SWB). It is structured around a conceptual model which assumes commuting can affect SWB over three time horizons: (i) during the journey; (ii) immediately after the journey; and (iii) over the longer term. Our assessment of the evidence shows that mood is lower during the commute than other daily activities and stress can be induced by congestion, crowding and unpredictability. People who walk or cycle to work are generally more satisfied with their commute than those who travel by car and especially those who use public transport. Satisfaction decreases with duration of commute, regardless of mode used, and increases when travelling with company. After the journey, evidence shows that the commute experience "spills over" into how people feel and perform at work and home. However, a consistent link between commuting and life satisfaction overall has not been established. The evidence suggests that commuters are generally successful in trading off the drawbacks of longer and more arduous commute journeys against the benefits they bring in relation to overall life satisfaction, but further research is required to understand the decision making involved. The evidence review points to six areas that warrant policy action and research: (i) enhancing the commute experience; (ii) increasing commute satisfaction; (iii) reducing the impacts of long duration commutes; (iv) meeting commuter preferences; (v) recognising flexibility and constraints in commuting routines and (vi) accounting for SWB impacts of commuting in policy making and appraisal.

Well-being has recently risen rapidly up the political agenda in Britain and beyond, signalled most clearly by Prime Minister Cameron's announcement in 2010 that well-being measures developed by the Office for National Statistics would be used to guide public policies. Here we seek to explain why well-being has risen up the British political agenda, drawing on Kingdon's multiple streams approach. While this approach has considerable merit, it does not acknowledge the complexity of multi-level governance in which policy, politics and problem streams can operate at different territorial levels. As such, we argue that the match between policy, politics and problem streams has to be not only temporal, but also spatial. The consequence is that, while in relation to measurement a paradigm shift may be taking place, in terms of decisive action there is some way to go before well-being can be described as 'an idea whose time has come'.Well-being has recently risen rapidly up the political agenda in Britain and beyond. This article is concerned specifically with the idea and current proposal that a set of measures wider than economic performance be used to measure societal progress. A shift in this direction was signalled most clearly by Prime Minister David Cameron's announcement in November 2010 that well-being measures developed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) would be used for public policy purposes. 1 The ONS subsequently conducted a series of hearings and presented its findings in July 2011, with the first set of data to be made available to government within twelve months. 2 These developments signal that, in some respects at least, well-being is an idea whose time has come in British politics. Moreover, that Britain has gone furthest in this respect makes this case an important one to examine for understanding the significance of this idea.In this article we seek to explain why well-being has risen up the British political agenda, drawing on research conducted in the UK, Brussels and Luxembourg in 2011. 3 In doing so, we apply John Kingdon's (2011) 4 multiple streams approach to agenda setting. While developed in the context of US politics, it has become a landmark contribution that has been applied more widely and we also draw on some of these applications.This approach provides a very helpful way of understanding developments in the UK, explicitly theorising both structural and agential factors without privileging one over the other. However, we suggest that an important dimension of our findings that is not really signalled by Kingdon's approach is the importance of international networks through which ideas are developed. This is an indication of how national politics are often nested within broader processes of multi-level governance and of the potential territorial disjunctures between the policy and politics streams. bs_bs_banner

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