A guide to using behavioural insights in local government

I wrote this for Sunderland City Council, following some work using behavioural insights in a range of projects. Although written for an internal audience, they’re happy to share it. I really enjoyed working there, especially all the co-production with wonderful front-line staff; I got a lot out of it and I hope that by sharing these insights, you will too – if you work on local public services and are interested in how behavioural insights (BI) can help.

There’s not much in here on demand management (which is the theme for most of my BI work in local government), since all the projects it was based on were for the Health & Wellbeing Board. But there is a section on how demand management (DM) work differs. I guess the next thing I need to write should cover DM in more detail and include the dozens of non-Sunderland examples I have.

You can download a copy here: A guide to using behavioural insights in Sunderland or from the Sunderland Partnership here.

Using behavioural insights to manage demand for public services

This is about an award-winning project carried out by the Housing team at the London Borough of Ealing, supported by With The Grain (that’s me). We think we achieved a 70% reduction in the number of families being placed in temporary accommodation by the Council, and the main principles are now being scaled into the Council’s ‘business as usual’ approach. We think it has the potential to save millions and improve the wellbeing of hundreds of families. So, if you’re working out how to do Demand Management in practice, or wondering how to make the most of behavioural insights in local public services, you need to read this.

The approach we took was co-designed. Council staff were involved in developing ideas, drafting scripts and specifying content. Get in touch if you want to know more about how we did it.

Helping people take control

We did this by helping families who are likely to become homeless (typically due to eviction or a breakdown of an existing household), to take control of their situation: to look for a new home for themselves if they are able to, rather than being funnelled into Bed & Breakfast (B&B) and Temporary Accommodation (TA) to wait for the Council to find them a home. This matters, because the reality of living in TA and B&B is not good for families’ wellbeing. It is also expensive to provide at a time of unprecedented cuts in local government budgets.

Our approach

Our ‘Reframing First Contact’ pilot consists of a conversation. We call it an advice session, with potential follow up phone calls and sometimes meetings.

We use a number of materials:

• a script for officers to use
• a leaflet shown by Customer Services Advisors to callers, to help residents frame the conversation. This helps identify people who are eligible for the pilot
• a tablet computer with a front page of hyperlinks to the most useful sites/pages when searching for a home
• an action plan for residents to take away.

I’ll explain the process, so you can see how the materials are used:

• Resident arrives at Customer Services front door and is given a ticket for housing advice
• When called, the housing Advisor makes eye contact and shows them the framing leaflet, to immediately establish whether they meet the criteria set out:
• they say they risk becoming homeless
• they have dependent children
• they indicate that they do – or might – need to find a new home
• If the Advisor judges (usually within a minute) that someone is eligible, the Advisor calls a pilot officer and asks them to help the residents as part of “our new service”
• The officer collects the resident, and takes them to a room where they sit alongside the resident. When they can, they give the resident the best chair, to help them feel ‘in control’

Photo posed by officers

• They then have a conversation based on the agreed script, with a tablet computer available – so they can search for homes and other information
• We don’t collect any personal data, except contact information. We found collecting personal data tended to steer conversations away from residents’ capabilities, and also enforced an unequal power balance between the expert/gatekeeper officer and inexpert resident.

Behavioural Effects we used

Throughout, our intention has always been to present it as normal for people to look for their own home – one that they can afford – and then to make doing so as easy as we can. To achieve this, we used around twenty identifiable heuristics, including the ones listed below. We also stopped the inadvertent use of effects that were having an adverse impact on behaviour.

• People are primed to frame the conversation. The What Do You Want To Do? framing leaflet tests that the resident is comfortable saying they are someone who needs to find a home, as distinct from being given one. (The business as usual – BAU – approach is to assume that someone wants to be a ‘homeless applicant’ – and therefore a customer.)

• Scarcity effect – when the Customer Services Advisor calls the pilot officer, she says: “I know the new service is really busy, but it would be great if you could squeeze in Mr A right now”.
• Talking about looking for a home, we set the default as ‘looking for yourself’
• We increase salience by referring to a time-limit. “This is about finding the home where you’ll be tucking up the kids at the end of next month”
• We have an emotional ‘reward’ in mind – settling down and being happy – and we talk about a ‘home’ (whereas the BAU approach is to refer to a ‘property’)
• We make social proof available – to demonstrate that others like have done this and are happy
• We reduce cognitive load – avoiding jargon and unnecessary concepts (of which there are many in the BAU approach)
• We avoid endowment, like “duty” and “entitlement” (which anchor the conversation unhelpfully in the BAU approach)
• We avoid scarcity effect when it’s unhelpful, like telling people how tough it is to get a council home. (In the BAU approach, this was seen as “managing people’s expectations”; however, Prospect Theory predicts that this encourages risk-taking behaviour).
• We have a commitment device – an Action Plan – so that residents can note the websites, agents, etc they will contact

• We increase the salience of, and of plans and information by asking people to write them down themselves
• We help people visualise their plans – asking them to explain where and when they are going to search – so they’re more likely to do them
• Reciprocation – “when you find somewhere, we will be able to help you with the deposit”

What did we find out?

We think the approach we took, and the way it worked, showed three main things:

1. Co-production works for behavioural techniques. Drawing from a wide range of behavioural effects, council officers worked alongside a behavioural practitioner to create a new approach. It’s their project.
2. Using behavioural insights, we can increase demand for an ‘upstream’ service that supports independence and self-sufficiency, and so reduce demand ‘downstream’ for services that are expensive to provide, may not improve wellbeing and may increase dependency.
3. Local services can use behavioural insights at an operational level. It doesn’t depend on developing or changing local policy. This work has been commissioned and sponsored by a Director and service heads.

What was the impact?

We didn’t have enough control over the front door of Customer Services to set up a randomised control trial. However, we think the two main measures we do have are pretty conclusive:

• First, a qualitative measure at the end of the advice session, asking the resident if they plan to look for a home themselves (and whether they will look further afield if they cannot find somewhere local they can afford). Over a four month period from November 2014 to February 2015, the vast majority of residents who took part agreed to look for a home themselves (31 out of 34), including 21 who explicitly agreed to look for somewhere they could afford even if it wasn’t in the area they were living.
• Second, a hard Demand Management measure. Officers checked whether residents who take part in the advice session went on to become a ‘homeless applicant’ by cross-checking with application records. Just 2 of the 34 became homeless applicants, far fewer than would normally be the case.

How does this compare with Business As Usual? During the same period as the pilot, Ealing Council accepted 234 other families as homeless . These families did not benefit from the behavioural pilot service. This table compares the outcomes.

November 2014 to February 2014	Behavioural Pilot	Normal (BAU) method
Number of approaches about potential homelessness	34	1127
Number of homeless applications taken and accepted (leading to B&B/TA)	2	234
Acceptances as %age of approaches	6%*	21%

*NB small base

These results suggest that our behavioural approach has the potential to reduce demand – in the form of provision of B&B & TA to families designated as homeless – by up to 70%.

Why this matters

When families are helped to find their own homes, in areas of their choice, that they can afford, they are able to settle down and begin to re-establish the family life that households in B&B/TA often find difficult to sustain. For more on the impact on families of homelessness and living in B&B and Temporary Accommodation, see Shelter and this report on the impact of temporary accommodation on health.

There is another driver of course. Like most of my work, this is about Demand Management. The London Borough of Ealing has faced severe cuts of £96m over a four-year period. However, demand for homelessness services is rising – due to a vanishingly small supply of social housing, and rising evictions in the private rented sector. So reducing the number of families in temporary accommodation is vital to reducing the cost of this multi-million pound service.

Our behavioural pilot points to significant savings, more practical to measure than an increase in wellbeing. Accommodating a family of 1 adult and 3 children in London for a year typically costs the Council between £18,000 and £27,000 plus officer time. So the potential saving to the Council, if it is able to assist at least 100 families to find their own homes, is £1,800,000. No wonder the Council is working out how to scale up the approach.

Award-winning

We’re proud that our project won the Grand Prix at the inaugural Nudge Awards, ahead of projects from the world of advertising and finance. My thanks to everyone at Ealing who played such a big part, and to Professor Richard Thaler for choosing a local government project as the Grand Prix winner. Those of us who work in and with #localgov know that it’s rarely seen as glamorous, but it makes a positive difference to the lives of millions. And, right now, we need to ramp up the use of behavioural analysis and insights to deal with the reality of major budget cuts.

Deep blue water between policy and behavioural insights

Some stark news today illustrates a point I’ve been making for a while. Sadly, this is life and death stuff.

Last October, it was reported that Britain would “not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, claiming they simply encourage more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing”

This seemed like the Rational Actor Model gone mad to me. Even without the benefit of any ethnographic research (without which it’s often best to reserver opinion), was it even remotely plausible that demand for these crossings would be reduced by this decision? I thought not, so I tweeted:

UK axes £s for Med migrant rescues because 'it encourage Xings'. Evidence?? Or is this 'Rational Actor' nonsense? http://t.co/pfkGeCkbpN

— Warren Hatter is With The Grain (@warrenhatter) October 27, 2014

The flow of refugees has of course continued since this decision, with tragic consequences. A lead item on the news, amid much hand-wringing.

My point is not: I told you so. My point is about how immature the use of behavioural insights is in government and policy making. If government were systematically applying insights from behavioural sciences to policy-making, this policy (not rescuing people, in order to influence the behaviour of potential refugees) wouldn’t have got off the drawing-board. Not because it’s immoral, but because – in behavioural terms – it’s illiterate.

Yet we’re told how influential behavioural practitioners are these days (the Independent, for example, claiming a “profound effect on Whitehall” for the BIT). That’s not how it looks to me. I’d say that we’ve influence when commissioned, in a strict supplier-client relationship. This is not real influence.

Some of us in the behavioural trade have a chuckle from time to time at attempts to influence behaviour that don’t cut the mustard. Now, it’s about time we started calling out policy that is clearly flawed.

Beat The Clock

The clocks go back on Sunday morning, as British Summer Time comes to an end. We’ll all do it. It’s so normal to join in with it, that none of us considers not doing so. It’s a brilliant ‘behaviour change intervention’; it’s so easy and so normal to do, that we don’t even recognise that our behaviour is being changed. This got me thinking …

A few of my projects involve introducing a behavioural layer to local authority communications. To do it, I have to read through current comms (letters, leaflets, press releases) and identify why they don’t work behaviourally.

For fun, I’ve taken some of the tropes I’ve spotted in existing comms and used them to write a fake Council magazine article or web page trying to get people to delay starting their day by one hour for the next six months, in a parallel universe where the clocks don’t change seasonally.

Why? Because some of you might find it amusing. And because it might help me make my point that much current comms is not behaviour-smart.

‘One Hour Delay’ Project

As part of its policy to ensure that daylight hours are used as effectively as possible, the Council is preparing to launch an initiative aimed at increasing the number of residents who start their day an hour later.

Beginning every day an hour later is an easy way for us all to make a difference to the way light is used and help meet the targets in the Council’s Light Use Strategy.

Councillor Jones said: “Residents will need to set their alarms an hour later than they currently do. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide this service, due to cuts in our government funding.”

The tendencies I’m clumsily trying to illustrate here are:

• Not being analytical enough in identifying the target behaviour, so losing the chance to ask directly for the act that will make the most difference (in this case, changing the time on clocks and other devices).
• Describing the ‘reward’ for the behaviour in terms which relate to policy, rather than emotions that are vivid to people.
• Featuring the Council (and its decision-making) prominently, though this distracts from the ‘ask’.
• Introducing a ‘loss frame’, where we tell residents what we can’t do for them.
• Using convoluted language and concepts which (though many are familiar to officers) add to the ‘cognitive load’ of the piece, and so make behaviour change less likely.
• Not presenting a way of making the desired behaviour easy.
• Not having as the central message either the emotional reward for the target behaviour (“you’ll arrive at the right time”) or the clear behavioural ask (“put your clocks back on Saturday night”).
• Not using social proof or referring to social norms, when these would fall in our favour. “Everyone else is doing this,” is a useful message, as hardly any of us is comfortable being the odd one out.

OK, OK, I’m exaggerating in my imagined article. And I know I’m treading a fine line. Lots of Council communications is good now, and it has improved rapidly in recent years. Respect to those responsible (including LG Comms and Dan Slee). But, in my experience, very little of it yet reveals a sophisticated understanding of human behaviour, clarity around target behaviours, or an appreciation of what makes a real difference in influencing what we do. It’s no surprise: much of the evidence I draw on is recent and challenges the assumptions of many professions, that people are, essentially, ‘rational’.

Many of my workshops have as their main takeaway message: “stop trying to change people’s minds: make your target behaviour easy and normal“. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.

This is What We’re Like: how the most counter-intuitive thing you’ll hear all week will help you manage demand

(Originally published by the i-Network following my talk at their recent Shaping Demand conference)

You know how you sometimes lie awake at night planning to do something the next day – and then fail to do it? Well, you’re not the only one. We all do it.

Me, too. I’ll resolve not to have butter on my toast in the morning. Or walk to work. Or decide that, tomorrow night, I’ll wind down for sleep by doing the cryptic crossword instead of flicking through TV channels, because I know that screen time before bed makes sleep harder. And what’s more, I really, really, really mean it. Every time. But I almost never follow through on these decisions. Why not? It’s not because I change my mind and decide that I was wrong.

Here’s the counter-intuitive thing. The reason we don’t follow through on these good intentions of ours is that one of the main ways we understand human nature is wrong.

We’ve all grown up with a clear sense of self, believing that we’re in control of our actions. We take account of facts and opinions, make up our mind, then enact the decision we’ve made. And because I think I’m in control, I think everyone else is, too. So, when I want to influence someone’s behaviour, my instinct is to persuade them. If they’re doing something different, I assume that they’re doing it for a reason. So I try to change their mind.

Though we grow up with this understanding, there is a mountain of evidence that this isn’t what we humans are really like. Our evolution to be arguably* the most successful species on the planet has many quirks we’re beginning to understand better, but which are not yet in the mainstream and which overwhelmingly haven’t been reflected in how we have designed public services and shaped localities.

So what are we really like? Well, we have loads of mental shortcuts. Why? Because it gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage to leave much of their brain’s cognitive capacity available to spot and instantly deal with predators. This is why you find it harder to apply your willpower if you’re already doing an ‘effortful’ mental task. It’s also why you’re really good at pattern recognition; your ancestors who realised that the leaves rustling nearby might be due to a predator were the ones who got to influence the human gene pool by running for cover and living long enough to pass on their genes.

Life expectancy has typically been under 20-30 years for most of human existence, so it’s no surprise that we also have mental shortcuts that help us grab the resources that will help us through the night, or the winter, and hold on to what we’ve got.

We also have plenty of short-cuts that help us be social, since human co-operation has also give us a real advantage. These biases have a much bigger influence on us all than we’d like to admit; in short, no-one likes to be the odd one out.

As I said a few times in my session at iNetwork’s recent Shaping Demand conference: this is what we’re like. And I think these insights are really helpful in taking new approaches to managing demand.

Freed from believing that people always have a reason for their actions, we can try to systematically examine what people do that creates demand for public services, and understand how it happens (not why).Freed from the need to change people’s minds when we want to influence their behaviour, we can concentrate instead on making self-sufficient behaviours easier and seem more normal.

And we can make this evidence-based understanding of human nature accessible, in order to involve staff, citizens and others in co-producing new designs and approaches.

The question for each of us is: how are we going to make sure this happens, rather than going the same way as my late-night commitment to walk to work tomorrow?

[*ants might beg to differ]

Why debating the ethics of applying behavioural science is a red herring

Why the debate on Nudge is a red herring (tapped out on my phone during the #LSEnudge debate):

1. We’ve previously designed services thinking everyone is an in-control homo economicus. There’s loads of recent evidence on what we’re like. Why not use it?

2. “They can’t solve everything” is not a reason to not use ‘nudges’. If policy-makers commission ‘nudges’ & don’t deal with the food industry, that’s a problem with policy making, not with decision science.

3. If you want a policy/political narrative for it, work up the idea that we can do politics better if we better understand what we’re like as a species.

4. Behaviour is context-dependent, whether you/others are trying to influence it of not. So it shouldn’t be controversial to try to influence it.

5. There are ethical issues. Why not codify them? For example, behavioural practitioners and their commissioners should only use social norm messages that are true (so you don’t say 95% pay their tax on time if it’s really 80%).

Why behavioural practitioners should give a sh*t

A small, but growing number of people have studied decision science and/or use its insights to earn a living. I’m lucky to be one of them.

I’m delighted to see communities of practice developing, and I’ve noticed the (apparently) high proportion of jobs using behavioural insights that are in finance or pricing. It has made me think about what we want ‘our’ industry to be like. My view? In a nutshell, we need to give a shit. Right now, that means linking what you do to the impact of behavioural outcomes on lowering resource use and increasing human capital and social capital. For simplicity’s sake, I’m calling this sustainable behaviour.

Here are the three reasons you should be using your influence to make behaviour more sustainable, if you work with behavioural insights:

• First of all, you should, for the same reason that everyone with any influence should: that the data compels us, if we care about our species’s future. For one thing, every year since the 1980s, we have used more natural resources (on which all our wealth is based) than our planet can replenish; this year (2013), Earth Overshoot Day was on 20 August. Vitally, the additional GDP that has driven the resource use does not make us any happier. Climate change is part of this story: the recent IPCC report confirms what we already knew: that we need to leave in the ground over half of our confirmed reserves of fossil fuels. Second, inequality has grown rapidly in much of the West, particularly the Anglo-Saxon world, in recent decades, exacerbating crime, poor health, mistrust, mental illness and a host of other social ills.
• Second, it’s time. We’re starting to see ourselves (sort of, kind of) as a fledgling industry. So it’s time to decide – and state – what our values are as an industry. Do we want to uncritically use our insights into human nature to boost companies’ profits by helping them sell people more stuff (or to sell it more effectively), when we know the impacts this economic approach is having? Look to the Design industry as an example: for years, the trend in the industry has been for new, young designers to want to work on service design for social outcomes and, if working on product design, to want this to be sustainable in terms of material use and reuse. They see their industry’s impact on the world, and want to influence it. It’s not hard to find examples.
• Third, because it should make even more sense to us than to most other professions. Using behavioural psychology or behavioural economics gives a special insight into human decision making. We know that the basis on which it has been assumed that people (you might call us ‘consumers’, but we’re people, you know) make decisions is very flawed. Classic Enlightenment thinking is wrong; homo economicus doesn’t exist. Well, that is the same Enlightenment thinking that drove us to create an economy in which the pursuit of individual wealth is paramount, which encourages unfettered short-term thinking and which does not price externalities (such as the impact of economic activity on natural resources through pollution and soil erosion) because, well, we can’t see them.

That’s it. I’m not launching a campaign. I don’t have a statement of ethics to sign up to. And I don’t have an ask. To start with, I’d just like to see if anyone else agrees.

Doing it better

Below is a post I wrote for the Behavioural Design Lab a short time ago. The aspect that has attracted the most interest is the use of proposed use of defaults to move from a project management-centric view (where residents make a fresh decision at each stage of the process that has been mapped out) to a citizen-centric approach (where, once someone has chosen to have a warm home, the default is that they are taking part.

Two quick points, drawing on conversations that I’ve had with people since writing this.

First, this is a really good litmus test for whether we are comfortable using behavioural insights. Personally, my view is that our choices always have a context, and that framing the choice in this way makes it clear and easier to make a decision that is salient to the person making it. But I know that some people not used to working with behavioural insights are a little uncomfortable with it; because it seems a little, well, sneaky. In a world where there are numerous websites on which I can click a ‘buy now’ button, before verifying a host of details, I’m comfortable with it, and that’s why I see it as a litmus test: it only seems sneaky if you compare it with a context in which people have to repeatedly decide.

Second, reflecting that most of the feedback I’ve had has been of the “what a great idea!” variety, there is so much that we can do better in public services, and it is within our grasp. I hope that this helps demonstrate the value of what I’ve been trying to do with With The Grain over the past couple of years. There are so many behavioural effects that we know can affect our decisions; and there is an ever-growing body of evidence of how and when they work. So let’s generate new approaches drawing on this knowledge. This idea was generated in a workshop of stakeholders brainstorming ideas based on different effects, of which defaults was one. Most of them hadn’t been exposed to much behavioural science before; if they can do it, so can you. This is one of our best chances of meeting the demand management challenge.

“Did I just use behavioural science? But I’m not a designer!”

So said a dozen or so stakeholders of a project aimed at retrofitting 160 draughty homes in Crawley, West Sussex. With good reason. They had co-produced a wide-ranging set of design and communication ideas for the project.

The project offers work such as external wall cladding, funded by the Energy Companies Obligation, through which the Government is obliging utilities to fund energy efficiency work on Britain’s coldest, draughtiest and most energy inefficient homes. The problem many have found is that, in the absence of existing demand (that is, people who are aware that they want their home retrofitted but haven’t been able to do it yet), building demand for something free is tricky. Price perception tells us that if something is free, it doesn’t have value. Homo economimus might see free cladding as a no-brainer; real people don’t.

So, when introducing the opportunity to people, we decided to frame the choice as being between a cold home and a warm home – not as the chance to choose a named process or product. And we avoided terms (such as ‘retrofitting’), known by professionals but which may provide a barrier if not familiar to residents. 

Adding the use of behavioural insights to the team’s existing expertise in community engagement had a major impact immediately, speeding up recruitment 4-fold, compared with similar projects being undertaken elsewhere in the South East.

Another innovation is that, when people say ‘yes’ to a warmer home, this becomes the default setting. So, instead of initially agreeing to an “assessment” which leads to another choice once the surveyor has visited, householders make a single choice: the surveyor will make a recommendation of the measures to adopt “ … unless you drop out”. From a project management viewpoint, we’re moving from a process whose success depends on people saying ‘yes’ at several different stages to a process designed to support and prove people’s positive choice to have a warmer home.

There are a dozen other ways in which we are using – or plan to use – behavioural insights. Rob Bennett, who leads the community engagement team, says, “It is really important that we find ways to encourage communities as a whole to get behind these initiatives, So whether it’s the initial decision to participate in a scheme, or ensuring that residents communicate what works best by sharing good practice and experiences – we expect behavioural evidence to play a critical part in successful ”delivery”.

We think we’ve learned what the With The Grain tool has also demonstrated in other settings: that behavioural insights are accessible and usable; that these insights help make approaches more people-centric and therefore more efficient; and that it’s possible to get away from the default setting of trying to persuade people.

So we now have a platform for using behavioural insights in the future. And we have a group of stakeholders who are comfortable with knowingly using behavioural insights to affect the context within which people make decisions.

In the future, this won’t be unusual. Right now, it feels revolutionary.

Why being behaviour-smart trumps responding to demand

I’ve just come across a clear example of what I mean when I say that policy-makers and commissioners could be much wiser when it comes to using behavioural insights, and that being systematic about behaviour could lead to much better policy.  In a comment in response to a passing mention in a Bicycle Dutch blog on roundabout design, Patrick Lingwood (whom I believe is Walking & Cycling Policy Officer at Bedfordshire CC) gave this very detailed description (below) of how the authority arrived at a specific design.

It’s long, so I’m going to make my  response first; I don’t want to lose anyone here, so I’m not asking you to become experts in comparative cycle infrastructure and roundabout design. Before I do, can I just say that we should be grateful to Patrick for posting in such detail; it’s not often we get such a clear explanation of the rationale behind decisions.

Here’s my point: Bedfordshire’s design (effectively endorsed by the DfT) begins with an assumption about meeting demand for motorised traffic at the current level or higher, and of meeting current demand for cycling and walking, only more safely than at present. With this starting point, the resulting design is probably the best obtainable; personally, I’d love it, as I’m very comfortable taking prime position on my bike.

But I’m pretty sure that behaviour-smart policy-making would start with an analysis of current behaviours. A place-shaping local authority would identify the thousands of journeys of less than, say, 5km that pass through this roundabout daily and use a range of insights into the barriers to healthy, sustainable travel by the people who travel by car but are within walking or cycling distance of their destination. With a clear understanding of the behaviours it wants to encourage, the design process would then begin. And insights from behavioural sciences, along with experience elsewhere, would be used to identify how to make the behaviours being encouraged both easy and normal. This would be reflected in the final design, whereas the Bedford plan is unlikely to reframe walking and cycling as anything other than (as at present) low-status. A behaviour-smart approach might seem radical at the moment, but it’s the future, as policy-makers become more exposed to behavioural insights.

Anyway, I’ve had my say – here’s Patrick’s explanation:

“with regards to the Bedford turbo-roundabout, it is easy to misunderstand the impact of a design on the basis of a short article in LTT (Local Transport Today). The overall concept indeed was inspired by the examples in The Netherlands, but the concept has been adapted to the local environment.

First you need to understand the current arrangement in Bedford. It is an English-style roundabout in the middle of a very Victorian town. The roundabout itself is relatively small but has a relatively wide unmarked circulating carriageway where traffic either circulates as single lanes or doubles up depending on flow. Vehicles circulate too fast, entries are too close and it is difficult to predict vehicle paths, so that other vehicles, including cyclists, find it difficult to safely enter the roundabout. There are several circulating vehicle-colliding-with-entry-vehicle collisions as a result.

Most cyclists are also following a different path from most motorised vehicles. So there are conflicts as cyclists move across the different paths of vehicles. And of course there are the typical entry – circulating collisions where vehicles enter the roundabout without noticing the circulating cyclist.

On top of this, there are high pedestrian flows. There are 2500 pedestrian crossing movements of the arms without any assistance apart from the central islands, with several accidents resulting as crossing pedestrians are hit mostly by exiting vehicles.

So with 32 injury accidents, including 8 serious, over 10 years, at a cost to society of nearly £2 million, there was an urgent need to do something. The roundabout lies on an important route to the town centre and station for cyclists with over 500 cyclists a day, but it is also on a key interurban and intra-urban route with 25,000 motorised vehicles a day.

The council’s first choice was single lane compact (Dutch-style) roundabout. This was modelled but was found not to cope with the vehicular capacity, because whereas compact roundabouts can cope with those kinds of flows, the junction flows at this roundabout are not balanced. This is where the turbo-roundabout concept came to our rescue.

Ignoring the type of cycle provision for the moment, the essence of a turbo-roundabout is that it can cope with higher flows than a compact roundabout (up to 35,000 vehicles per day) because of 2 lane entries and 2 lane circulation. Secondly the raised circulating lane dividers prevent straight-lining through the roundabout so reduce vehicular speed entering, circulating and exiting the roundabout, thereby creating a safety benefit. Finally the spiral lane marking through the roundabout reduces the conflict points as vehicles enter, circulate and exit.

Our estimate, based on the radius of curvature of vehicular paths, is that in Bedford this will reduce motorised vehicle speeds from current 25mph to around 10-15mph, approximating much more to cycling speeds. The lower vehicle speeds allow us to put Zebras on every arm which will further change the way motorists use the roundabout, becoming more aware of vulnerable road users, and further reduce entry and exit speeds.

So with motorised vehicles and pedestrians now catered for, that leaves what is the best solution for cyclists. First it should be understood, notwithstanding the Dutch style preponderance of cycle tracks, if vehicle speeds are low enough, it is safer for a cyclist to go round a roundabout in the primary position. Annular cycle tracks create additional conflict points. In primary position on the road, a cyclist is most visible and has least conflict points, especially so in a single lane compact roundabout or turbo-roundabout.

Secondly, you cannot legally create a non-signalised annular cycle track and a pedestrian crossing in the UK context. This is the significance of the TRL work. It is the first stage in seeking a change in Government regulations to allow this. So either pedestrians get priority at a Zebra or cyclists have priority using Give Way markings (not a feasible option in this context).

Thirdly and most importantly, a cycle track is neither the safe nor correct solution for the Bedford roundabout. The four roads that lead to the roundabout have very high flows of pedestrians with adequate footway widths, but certainly not shared path widths. Most cyclists approaching this junction are on-road, using the cycle lanes on the most congested link. Cyclists going through the roundabout in primary position, i.e. taking up the whole lane, will have no more conflict points than in a Dutch-style compact roundabout, and around a third of the conflict points under the existing design. A detailed analysis of the accidents suggests a 75% reduction in serious accidents and 40% reduction in slight accidents for all modes, including cyclists.

So as long as cyclists are happy to take primary position in front of traffic, they will be safer and get through the roundabout faster than in an annular design. The conflict is between perceptual safety and real safety. The big question is whether cyclists will feel safe in primary position in front of slow moving traffic.

This is where personal feelings often cloud professional judgements. An analysis of Bedford data is that there are 2 types of cyclists – “Quick” cyclists happy to share with traffic and “Quiet” cyclists who want to be segregated from traffic as far as possible. The current division of cyclists in Bedford is around 60% Quick cyclists and 40% Quiet cyclists (on the basis of a survey of station cyclists and an analysis of road usage). Currently at this junction, 350 are on-road and 200 off-road (a lot of those are child cyclists).

So for Quiet cyclists we are creating a cycle track which leads to the Zebras. They will be able to go round the roundabout using the Zebras, 2 of which have been widened to maximum of 4m (on the main cycle crossing flows) to create as safe a crossing environment as possible.

In summary, the roundabout should definitely be safer for all users – pedestrians, cyclists and motorised users, than the current layout. Secondly, unlike now, cyclists will have a legal choice, depending on their nature, whether to go through the roundabout on-road or off-road. Hopefully this will create a virtuous circle of happier cyclists, eventually leading to higher cycle usage. We are thankful that the DfT Cyclist Safety Grant has been awarded to allow us to trial this innovative design.”

Using behavioural insights: commissioners need to get sharp

I spent an afternoon last week at Information Is In The Eye Of The Beholder, an event organised by the Design Councils’ Behavioural Design Lab. Maybe I’m lazy, but the main thing I took from it was a confirmation of something that has been becoming very in my work: that practitioners who apply insights from behavioural sciences in the policy sphere and in public services (and there aren’t many of us) need to challenge our clients to be very clear about the behavioural outcomes they want.

This may seem an obvious point to make, but I don’t think it is. Why? First, there is no established market for public service commissioning of behavioural insights, so commissioners have little experience to draw on. Second, so much policy is designed on the false assumption that people are rational, economic beings that there are likely to be some false assumptions built in to any default view of behavioural goals.

Let me illustrate this.

Felicity Algate from the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team showed a prototype smartphone app that would enable people to compare their energy bill with the putative bill from competing energy companies, and to switch supplier with one click. In terms of providing feedback, applying mere exposure effect, and reducing goal dilution (a real barrier to switching), it’s great. It’s a real “if only all public services could be like this” moment.

But it does raise plenty of policy issues. For one thing, what are the carbon implications (given that the UK has self-imposed carbon budgets to meet by law)? Well, first, let’s be clear that paying less for energy does not increase energy efficiency, which is improved by reducing the energy input required for a given output, not by making it cheaper! Plenty of switching campaigns make this mistake, which in policy or behavioural terms is a significant error (sorry Calderdale, I had to pick on someone). Second, switching suppliers to pay less could increase energy usage. Third, there is an (arguably underfunded) policy drive to help people reduce household energy bills be reducing usase, through the Green Deal, hence a real risk of lack of clarity on how to manage energy bills, with damaging behavioural outcomes.  (I should point out that, at the event, others raised risks around the potential behaviour of companies in a market operating in this way; I’m only thinking here about the behaviour policy-makers encourage in citizens). In summary, there’s a case to be made that this is great innovation using behavioural insights, to serve a policy goal that isn’t very smart behaviourally.

In contrast, Felicity also illustrated the use of text messages to encourage people to pay fines (already in the public domain). This is surely a good use of behavioural insights, bringing a public service into line with current knowledge, but also uncontestable in policy terms. Not only is justice being served, but ‘clients’ stand to save the £200 that would otherwise be added to their fine to pay bailiffs.

My point, in summary: taking behavioural sciences seriously means applying them to policy considerations, not merely applying them once the policy thinking is done. And for those of us working in the field, that means not always accepting a commissioner’s brief ‘as is’.