This article is the first in a series aimed at outlining the concept of Social License as it pertains to operation and management of road networks. Social license is a term that is used colloquially as well as in its formal sense, so this paper starts with an exposition of social license and its relevance to another colloquially and formally used term – asset management.
Social Media is empowering the community and enabling it to influence government policy. More and more communities are speaking out on particular issues and retrospectively influencing their implementation. Decision makers need tools to ascertain the attitude of the community before policies are implemented to direct them more in line with community attitude and needs.
This article is the first in a series aimed at outlining the concept of Social License as it pertains to operation and management of road networks. Social license is a term that is used colloquially as well as in its formal sense, so this paper starts with an exposition of social license and its relevance to another colloquially and formally used term – asset management.
During an earlier study funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Transport Organisation (ARRB) as part of the ARC Nanocomm Hub, the authors explored perceptions of desirability and likelihood of various road management and related actions. This exploration is described in detail elsewhere (Young et al 2021).
At the time, social license as it pertained to particular private sector initiatives was a topic much in the public mind. Two questions arose as the exploration, mentioned above, continued:
This paper is intended to stimulate discussion and debate, rather than present a proven validated method for measuring social license as it pertains to road network operation.
Roads are a fundamental transport infrastructure.
They carry the lion’s share of today’s people movement. They provide people with day-to-day access to work, education, play and retail activity. They facilitate the logistics chain through allowing movement of goods and resources from their extraction to manufacture and public outlets. They provide the framework for car, truck, bus, tram, light rail, motorbike, bicycle, e-scooters and pedestrian mobility. Identifying how different stakeholders and members of society currently use and view roads is an important step in determining how roads should be managed in the long term. Social license has a role in this.
This paper is part of a larger ARRB project looking at the future of roads. It focuses on the general public’s view of roads’ future through the exploration of the social licence to operate the road system (SLORS). A SLORS can be seen as means of continually gaining views of the community’s view and/or acceptance of the operation of the entire road system, particularly regarding future operation and potential policy measures and characteristics. This is challenging to measure over time but needs formal quantification if decision makers are to increase the like between planning and implementation.
The intention of the work was to set in motion discussion, activity and progress towards understanding how to measure social license prior to the implementation of policies as it pertains to road network operations and determine quickly whether social license is just another trendy, short-lived buzzword, or a useful measure for road network operators and their stakeholders.
Road infrastructure operations require a co-ordinated, efficient and well-informed assessment process, to ensure that efficient, sustainable, safe and cost-effective transport outcomes are achieved. The views of the community about the future of roads are an essential input into each of these processes as they are the system end-users and the effective setter of community expectations.
Road asset management, broadly defined, refers to any system that monitors and maintains road operational value to an entity or group. Road asset management is a systematic process of developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets cost-effectively. As such, it can refer to shaping the future interfaces between the human, built, and natural environments through collaborative and evidence-based decision processes. Social license can improve and assist in making this process more sensitive to community expectations.
Early pavement and asset management systems were configured to optimise only total transport costs, with safety included as a cost, and environmental and social considerations being practically non-existent. Nowadays, road networks are expected by their custodians and users alike to be:
Asset management success is therefore as much a matter of community and user expectations nowadays as it is the preserve of transport economists. Indeed, many transport economists routinely include, or seek to include, all these benefits in their calculations. It is this evolution that caused the authors to consider the concept of social license in a road asset management context.
For the purposes of this article and work, the definition proposed by Kenton (2019) provides a usable and relevant description of the concept of social license.
“The social license to operate (SLO), or simply social license, refers to the ongoing acceptance of a company or industry’s standard business practices and operating procedures by its employees, stakeholders, and the general public.” (Kenton, 2019)
The triple bottom line (TBL) is an important part of any evaluation of success nowadays. It is a framework or theory that recommends that companies commit to focus on social and environmental concerns just as they do on profits. The TBL posits that instead of one bottom line, there should be three: profit, people, and the planet.
A social licence in operating a road system (SLORS) would relate to the ability to gain and maintain the support of the people that live in a road system’s area of influence for the manner in which or extent to which the road system meets their needs. A SLORS is granted by the community and is formulated by the beliefs, perceptions and opinions held by the local population and other stakeholders. It is dynamic and temporary because such beliefs, opinions and perceptions are subject to continual change. A SLORS needs to be measured, earned and maintained by those with custody of the road network as well as by those providing a service on the infrastructure, such as public transport providers and freight carriers from the micro level to bulk freight.
Initial applications of the SLO to transport projects have three levels of approval or licence (Coffey, 2020). These are
Examples of each level in a road context might be:
Level 2: local residents supporting traffic calming measures outside a school (noting some road users may not offer the same degree of license)
Level 1: speed-limit enforcement
Licence withheld: resorting to legal action over expropriations of land for projects, alternative routing of projects etc.
A social model for road safety is being considered in Australia (Australian Government, 2020). It is thought that involvement of the public in improving road safety can be enhanced through the adoption of a social model. The social model is layered, with the individual at its heart. It expands from responsibility for an individual’s own behaviour to their ability to influence other individuals and organisations, to organisations actively prioritising safety, community influence and advocacy, right through to systemic change at a macro societal level. The aim of using a social model approach is to build road safety into “business as usual” through various touchpoints and mechanisms across multiple sectors of society. The specific layers are:
The measure of performance on this approach is improved safety outcomes; in terms of loss of life and seriousness of injuries.
An objective measure of social license – or likely social license – granted would assist decision makers in formulating an implementation strategy for packages of measures they deem necessary.
As part of a broader project on the future of roads, regular surveys of road users – not just motorists – were undertaken over a period of five years. In these surveys, users were asked to express their views on a range of possible actions that road owners might take in terms of whether the measure should happen and whether it would happen.
This was a large data set, so the authors used it as a first step in investigating the notion of social license.
The rationale was that a user’s view that something should or should not happen was at least a proxy indicator for whether they would grant or withhold social license. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that the degree of that sentiment – strongly agree, somewhat disagree etc. – might give an insight into degree of license.
The response to ‘would happen’ was hypothesised to be driven by more by external factors; trust or lack of trust in road owners to do the ‘right’ thing, or to do the ‘wrong’ thing. However, it was considered possible that strong feelings about the wrong things being done or the right things not being done could influence resistance or support for the measures, our efforts focused on using both ‘will happen’ and ‘should happen’ sentiments in looking at models for measuring social license.
The 18 measures (statements) listed below were those available for consideration in hypothesising a SLORS model. Because of the origins of the data, some were actions that a road owner might or might not implement, while others were characteristics of the network.
Responders were asked to rate from1 to 5 the likelihood of each statement being true in the future (5 being highest likelihood), and on a similar scale the desirability of it being true in the future. A subset of the data – a single annual survey’s results – are shown in the following diagram (Figure 1) on a ‘Should Happen’ vs ‘Will Happen’ grid
The 18 are grouped below:
Some points of interest from the diagram are:
The community is likely to have more and more direct impact on the acceptance of policy as technology enables its views to be more widespread.
This article has outlined some key concepts and a possible approach to measuring social license as it pertains to management and governance of a road network. The approach is however equally applicable to rail, port and airport infrastructure, as it is user-focused.
The next paper will attempt to use the two indices to hypothesise a social license model and explore differences in an indicated social license parameter between different demographic groups.
In the meantime, constructive engagement and criticism of the ideas or an exchange of ideas on the same, would be welcomed by the authors.
9 Technology improves level of service of roads
13 Increase in number & capacity of roads
15 Parking on major roads not permitted
11 Cars/ trucks separated from cyclists & pedestrians
14 Road and rail tunnels more common in the future
16 Smart road infrastructure become necessary
1 Driver behaviour improves
3 Physical quality of roads improves
7 Public transport more common mode
2 Roads much safer for all users
5 Road travel more environmentally sustainable
8 Local roads priority to pedestrians/cyclists
4 Roads and their use remain the same
6 Car, truck and bus travel all driverless
10 People pay a toll or road charge for each trip
17 Increasing congestion on our roads in the future
12 Private companies have a larger role
18 Increasing traffic on our roads in the future
