‘Traveller Needs’
What has been described as the UK’s largest ever traveller experience study has identified key areas of development in the country’s transport network. Entitled ‘Traveller Needs’, the research was carried out by Elite Innovation Centre, Transport Systems Catapult, an organisation created to drive and promote smarter transport for the nation. The study suggested 75% of journeys are characterised by pain-points. According to the research, 57% of travellers are always looking for ways to optimise their journeys. The study found public transport is considered to be poor value for money with the ‘high cost of the journey’ being the most cited pain-point (17%). For private cars, the ‘start-and-stop’ nature of driving, along with parking, are the most cited pain-points (12% each).
Multi-modal journeys are especially painful for UK travellers and each interchange increases the number of pain-points experienced. The study says that 31% of journeys would not have been made if alternative means were available that didn’t necessitate physical travel. The research conducted comprised of 10,000 online questionnaire respondents, 50 company interviews and 100 expert interviews. The study indicates that the answer to the issues lies in the emerging ‘Intelligent Mobility’ industry – utilising emerging technology such as autonomous vehicles, with 39% of those surveyed indicating they would consider driverless cars today, as well as exploiting mobile data to enable user-focused, integrated, efficient and sustainable transport systems.
Transport Systems Catapult CEO, Steve Yianni, said, ‘We’ve identified four transformational themes in the study – Access, Automation, Demand and Supply and Integration – which offer roadmaps towards smarter “Intelligent Mobility” service for travellers. On their own, the long-term visions for each of the four areas we have identified would revolutionise how we move people and goods around the world, but they will exhibit even greater step change when they are combined. There is also a clear economic argument for doing this. The study has identified ten Value Spaces for Intelligent Mobility with estimated £56bn of revenue opportunities in the UK alone and previous research has suggested that this global market will be worth around £900bn annually by 2025. If we focus on increasing capability in areas such as Data Privacy, Connectivity and Traveller behaviour we can have the opportunity to create a world leading “Intelligent Mobility” industry – bringing jobs and economic growth to the UK.’