Technological advances relevant to transport – understanding what drives them

Transport policy makers are increasingly perplexed by the pace of change in their sector and by the increasing influence of external actors. This leads to a variety of responses, including “business as usual”, technological optimism, technological fatalism and technological ignorance. To explore this perplexity and its justification, we examine four areas of technological advance relevant to transport: mobility as a service; unmanned aerial vehicles (drones); automated vehicles; and telehealth. In each case, we identify the principal underlying shifts which are driving these technological advances, concluding that there is considerable overlap: three of the advances rely on ubiquitous sensing and on artificial intelligence and all four rely, to some degree, on connectedness. We then explore these three “drivers”, finding that progress is steadier than may be generally thought. We discuss the implications for our set of transport-related technological developments, concluding that policy makers could approach the future with greater confidence than is currently typical. They could also draw on the concepts of anticipatory governance to support their management of emerging technology and, at the same time, of the influence of external actors