Time travel? Has the future arrived?

10 October 2012

Both the bus and rail industries tend, often understandably, to concentrate on the short term. Passenger Focus is wary of trying to gaze into the future as predictions often turn out to be wrong – we prefer to focus on what drives current passenger satisfaction and project that into the future….

However, sometimes it can pay to raise your eyes a bit. So, Passenger Focus has done a bit of future gazing. The report, done in conjunction with Go Ahead, is published on November 8. I will talk about some of the themes at today’s Travel 2020 conference.

While the underlying technology is remarkably enduring maybe the time of public transport has really arrived. Some of the drivers of change seem fairly set: more people living alone, more people living in towns and cities, shifting working patterns and the blurring of on and off line lives…all of which should play into the hands of public transport.

So maybe the message about any future planning is keep it simple and keep it flexible – things will keep changing, maybe driven more by us passengers in future.