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Sustainable mobility has proved to be a perennial challenge to realize. Scholars have argued that experiments could point the way forward towards sustainable mobility (cf. Loorbach, 2007, Markard and Truffer, 2008). In doing so, literature attributes a vital but complex task to those who engage in experiments. However, an important knowledge gap pertains to whether and how experiments contribute to learning about transitions and in what way they should be managed to break-up the more or less inertial mobility governance system. This paper aims to analyze how state-of-the-art literature on the governance of multi-actor systems considers experiments to contribute to transitions and highlight key dilemma’s that professionals engaged in the management of experimental face in the day-to-day management and decision making processes during the experiment. The paper will highlight these dilemmas and choices and illustrate their importance for experiments in the field of transportation and more specifically in the specific context of the Dutch mobility system and the TRANSUMO research program. Identifying these dilemma’s benefits practitioners who are engaged in the management of experiments to more consciously reflect on and include issues of second-order learning in the day-to-day management and decision making during the experiment to reach a more sustainable mobile system.

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Air travel demand is growing worldwide with an approximate worldwide long term average of 5 to 6% annually. This growth has both very positive and negative effects. Aviation is deeply embedded in our society. Dramatic decrease in ticket prices has brought to many the possibility of reaching many destinations worldwide in a day’s travel. It is claimed by some that the negative effects – such as noise pollution and greenhouse gas emissions - will not become more problematic in the future, because technologies are being developed that will compensate them. The starting point of this research is to discover whether this claim concerning the potential of current aircraft technology developments is true. In other words: is the current development in aircraft technology capable to contribute to a sustainable development in the aviation sector by keeping current positive effects, while mitigating the negative effects? Existing research on this issue is mostly trend research, focussing at the average technology efficiency increase and extrapolating this to the future. In a context where multiple actors have to decide about what to do, this extrapolation is not enough. An aggregated number does not reveal the concrete options and causal relations behind it. This paper, therefore, introduces the open and explicit method of systems analysis to answer the question if (and if so, how) new aircraft technology can mitigate the adverse effects of an increasing air travel demand, while keeping the benefits. It presents analytical results in terms of numbers and score cards in order to feed the policy process that eventually should lead to policy in order to solve the problem. In light of the results of the systems analysis, this paper concludes that current developments in aircraft technology are not sufficient to mitigate the adverse effects of growth. Our research suggests that the combination of the efficiency improvement rate, the growth rate of the demand for air travel, and the long replacement times for older technology do in fact not cancel each other out. In order to achieve a sustainable development in the aviation sector, this systems analysis approach shows the limited (though important) influence technology can have on the full concept of sustainable development. We suggest to not only invest more into developing ever better technologies, but to also search for non-technical solutions in order to address the full concept of sustainable development.

Globalisation and economic growth have led to aviation’s deep incorporation into our society. People and goods can be transported almost anywhere on the globe in a relatively short time and at relatively low prices. The rate of growth in air traffic demand has for decades been higher than that of the world economy. As world population increases, economic growth and ongoing globalisation are expected to continue fuelling air traffic’s explosive growth (Walker et al, 2008). As a result the large aircraft manufacturers in the world, Airbus and Boeing, specify in their market forecast annual growth percentages of around 5 to 6%. Since late 2008, the economic crisis has significantly reduced the demand for aviation (IATA, 2008; 2009). However, most authors consider this slowdown to be but temporary. In many occasions in the past, aviation demand growth curbed but growth figures always relatively quickly recovered picking up the growth lines followed before the crisis. The latest occasion has been the recovery in 2004 from the period of stagnation following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City in 2001. In the majority of designed future scenarios for air traffic, the increasing demand for air traffic is expected to continue. This continuing growth will have some valuable effects, but also some drawbacks.