Chapter 4: Decline, Politics and Strategy

At the end of the previous chapter, we saw how London Transport’s financial results and ridership record were used politically to undermine the previous strategic consensus in transport provision and thereby sponsor two alternative visions of what transport in London ought to be. Broadly, I have characterised these choices as utility or welfare maximising versus profit maximising transport strategies. These approaches link back to theory and politics. Utility maximisation cleaves towards the efficient distribution of resources (Chandler, 1962) which in turn tends to uphold strategy as understood as centralised hierarchical planning (Ansoff, 1965). Alternatively, profit maximisation favours an understanding of strategy as the means by which advantage over competitors is obtained (Porter, 1980). This favours the free market.