Skip to main content

Traveller experience study identifies key themes for improving transport network

The UK’s Transport Systems Catapult has identified key areas of development in the transport network in its traveller experience study, Traveller Needs, which comprised of 10,000 online questionnaire respondents, 50 company interviews, and 100 expert interviews. The research found that 75 per cent of journeys are characterised by pain-points, with 57 per cent of travellers always looking for ways to optimise their journey. Public transport is considered to be poor value for money with the ‘high cost
October 14, 2015 Read time: 3 mins
The UK’s 7800 Transport Systems Catapult has identified key areas of development in the transport network in its traveller experience study, Traveller Needs, which comprised of 10,000 online questionnaire respondents, 50 company interviews, and 100 expert interviews.

The research found that 75 per cent of journeys are characterised by pain-points, with 57 per cent of travellers always looking for ways to optimise their journey.

Public transport is considered to be poor value for money with the ‘high cost of the journey’ being the most cited pain-point. For private cars, the start-and-stop nature of driving, along with parking, are the most cited pain-points.

Multi-modal journeys are especially painful for UK travellers and each interchange increases the number of pain-points experienced. The study found that 31 per cent of journeys made today in the UK would not have been made if alternative means were available that didn’t necessitate physical travel, i.e. virtual mobility.

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 per cent 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. Such a solution would break down the barriers between distinct transport services to offer smart, seamless, end to end journeys.

Transport Systems Catapult CEO Steve Yianni commented: “The Traveller Needs and UK Capability Study offers a clear pathway to providing the improvements travellers desire in their journeys. 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 10 value spaces for intelligent mobility with an estimated US$86 billion of revenue opportunities in the UK alone and previous research has suggested that this global market will be worth around US$1.3 trillion 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.”

Related Content

  • March 24, 2015
    Taking the long view of ITS
    Caroline Visser believes the ITS industry must present a coherent case for consideration of the technology to become part of transport policy and planning. As ITS advisor and road finance director for the International Road Federation (IRF) in Geneva, Caroline Visser is well placed to evaluate quantifying the benefits of ITS implementation – a topic about which there is little agreement and even less consistency. She is pressing to get some consistency in the evaluation of ITS deployments through the use of
  • February 1, 2012
    Cooperative road infrastructures - progress and the future
    Robert Bertini, deputy administrator of the USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, discusses the research and deployment paths of cooperative road infrastructures. High-level analysis by the US's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the potential of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure/Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (V2I/I2V) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technologies indicates that V2V could in exclusivity address a large proportion of crashes involving unimpaired drivers. In fact,
  • October 17, 2016
    Two seconds – the difference between life and death
    Professor Donald Fisher has spent 15 years identifying factors that increase the crash risk of novice and older drivers. His findings highlight the difference between living and dying, Colin Sowman reports.
  • January 11, 2013
    Machine vision develops closer traffic ties
    Specifiers and buyers of camera technology in the transportation sector know what they need and are seeking innovative solutions. Over the following pages, Jason Barnes examines the latest developments with experts on machine vision technology. Transplanting the very high-performance camera technology used in machine vision from tightly controlled production management environments into those where highly variable conditions are common requires some careful thinking and not a little additional effort. Mach