Forty years ago, our transport needs were mostly met by a holiday train ride to a seaside resort somewhere in Britain and buses for day-to-day movements. Cars were rare. Flights were for the elite: a flight cost more pounds than the same trip costs now, without considering inflation.
So while transport now uses the same technologies, there is a lot of sense in the statement "Meaningfully discussing the future of transport, especially 40 years ahead, requires not only significant expert knowledge, but a lot of courage and some imagination."
These words come from 'The Future Of Transport – Focus Groups' Report', an EU document that is a part of the discussion that Brussels wants to encourage in the run-up to producing a 'Communication on the Future on Transport' for the Commission to adopt in June 2009.
The exercise assembled around 50 transport experts from throughout Europe and threw them into three focus groups. Much of what they say is not new. But, perhaps because I have recently been involved in scenarios work on a completely different topic, I did find some novel thoughts when the report looks at the question "What type of society are the current trends leading to?"
Essentially a slim-line scenarios exercise, with one rather than the more usual set of four possible futures, this is not an attempt to predict the future, but "to try and provide some insights into the future challenges, so to better prepare a policy response".
The scenarios themselves are usually about the future of society. It is then down to the participants to think about the implications of these futures for their sector, in this case transport.
We may be going through bumpy times at the moment, but the focus groups still were of the view that globalisation is a fact of life. "Europe in 2050 could be part of a world in which the economic differences with Asia have declined and the world economy is further integrated." They see Russia and North Africa is promising growth spots, with the latter likely to attract significant foreign investment".
The upshot of this globalisation could be that "EU companies could settle in other parts of the world in order to have better access to local markets. Europe might retain a competitive edge in complex services and research based industries."
When it comes to the implications of this future for transport, the experts' view is that there will be a growing demand for mobility. They also consider the challenge posed by an ageing population.
One consequence could be to "reduce public resources for investments and maintenance of infrastructure". This could then mean that the "transport sector might be obliged to become increasingly more self-financed through the 'user-pays' and 'polluter pays' principles". The economics of transport could be "further aggravated by the need to decarbonise the economy".
In general, the view is that the days of cheap transport are over. But there is much more in the way of fine detail in the groups' assessment of the implications of the scenarios.
The Commission wants interested parties to submit their own views on the future of transport. A good place to start would be to look at the scenarios from this document, ideally embellished with alternative views of the future, and to see how they might affect your bit of transport. Even if you don't share your thinking with Brussels, such an exercise could help you to think about some of the nasty surprises that might come along and make life even more difficult than it is today.
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/strategies/2009_future_of_transport_en.htm
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