What does the future of everyday transport look like?

Everyday transportation has remained unchanged for a long time. The introduction of commercial flights in the 1950s may have shaken up long distance travel, but for daily journeys from A to B, modes of transport such as cars, trains, buses and bikes have essentially stayed the same since their invention, albeit with some improvements to functionality.

But as we face into a multitude of global social and environmental challenges, the pace of change around transportation is set to accelerate rapidly.

The problem of the private car

Chief among the problems catalysing this change is the increasingly urgent climate crisis. According to the consultancy McKinsey, in 2020 the global transportation sector accounted for 20% of global greenhouse (GHG) emissions, with 40% of this coming from private cars.

Meanwhile, the global population is increasing quickly, and the infrastructure in place to support everyday transportation – much of which was built decades ago – can’t support its growing requirements. A huge uptick in the number of cars on the roads had led to increased congestion – and therefore increased pollution, diminished air quality and known health risks – while many developed nations are facing major problems as a result of degrading roads and bridges. At the same time, large swathes of land – which could be used for other purposes – are being given over to developers for car parks, garages, petrol stations, and so on.

Sci-fi solutions

Many of the proposed solutions to the transport challenge sound like they’ve come straight out of a science fiction movie, but every day they get closer to reality. Some of the ideas in the works include hover bikes and autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs), which would essentially act as human-carrying drones. Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, say these could be mainstream as soon as 2030.

Then there’s magnetic levitation (maglev), a technology that’s been around for decades but which is now being seriously explored as an alternative system for trains. The technology, which uses magnetism to ‘float’ trains atop their tracks, is already in use in China, with services now being considered in the UK, Germany, the US, India and Malaysia. The main draw of this technology is its speed, with the first planned line of substantial length between Tokyo and Nagoya – 350km – anticipated to boast a journey time of just 40 minutes. (It currently takes between one and a half and two hours.)

Perhaps the most sci-fi sounding of all proposed solutions is Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, based on the movement of people in ‘pods’ through tubes at high speeds over long distances. The technology uses low pressure and magnetic propulsion to enable the pods to travel upwards of 600 miles per hour. Prototypes of the design were launched in 2016 by Musk’s Boring Company, with Virgin Hyperloop conducting its first human trial in 2020, although it reached speeds of just 107 miles per hour.

It’s unlikely that we’ll be hoping aboard any of these innovations any time soon, though, despite many well-publicised pilots. The costs involved are immense, not only in research and development but in creating brand new infrastructure to support them, and then scaling them to the masses.

Near-term innovation

So what changes can we realistically expect to see in the near future? There are three key things to watch out for: electrification, smart technology, and autonomy – and the three will largely interlink.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are not a new concept, but we can expect them to become increasingly commonplace, especially as governments take stronger action on sales of petrol and diesel cars. The UK, for example, will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, while the EU, and New York state plans to do the same by 2035.

According to BP’s most recent Energy Outlook report, by 2030 there will be a projected 1.42 billion combustion vehicles in the world and 220 million EVs, but by 2050 those figures will shift dramatically, with combustion vehicles dropping to 480 million and EVs rising to 1.68 billion.

In terms of smart technology, we’ll see an increase in smart highways and smart traffic control systems that use machine learning and rely on sensors, cameras and automation systems to monitor and direct traffic to reduce congestion. And when paired with self-driving cars (autonomous vehicles), these systems will co-ordinate traffic to reduce accidents and optimise traffic flow further.

There’s a lot of speculation around exactly when we’re likely to see autonomous vehicles on the roads. According to McKinsey, more than $10 billion has been ploughed into the concept since 2010, with proponents claiming as recently as two years ago that they’d be commonplace by now. Indeed, many cars already have autonomous features, such as cruise control and lane centring, but according to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) classification of autonomy, these are considered low automation levels (SAE Levels 1-2).

Things get trickier when higher levels of automation are introduced, such as adapting for weather conditions (Level 3), automatic braking on collision detection (Level 4) and automatic navigation, lane changing and signalling (Level 5). There have been a number of high-profile accidents involving autonomous car trials in recent times, which has led many to suggest they won’t become the norm for some time yet. Research firm GlobalData, for example, says fully-autonomous vehicles are unlikely to arrive until 2035. Nonetheless, it’s still likely that you’ll be commuting to work in a self-driving vehicle before you will on a hoverbike or AAV.

Changing attitudes to transport

These innovations don’t address the problem of the car, however. Even if cars become electric, self-driving and governed by smart technology, they’re still cars, taking up space, needing infrastructure and requiring resources and materials to manufacture. It’s no surprise, of course, that so-called transport ‘solutions’ are still car-based. Towns and cities are built around cars, with alternate forms of transport – bus networks, cycle lanes and so on – often an afterthought. Indeed, analysis from McKinsey shows that private cars are used in 45% of all trips, outpacing public transport, bikes, ride-hailing and walking.

But as evidenced, this trend cannot continue, and analysts suggest that within the next decade we’ll see a major shift away from private car use. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, as the cost of living continues to climb, car ownership is increasingly financially prohibitive. As such we’re likely to see an increase in alternate forms of car ownership such as leasing, short-term or trip-based rentals, and more expansive ride hailing services.

Secondly, under various regulatory pressures to reduce emissions and improve standards of living, governments are taking steps to reduce the number of vehicles on the road, often in the form of improved public transport services and support for ‘micromobility’ start-ups, such as on-street bike rentals and e-scooters. According to McKinsey, 30% of those surveyed said they plan to increase their use of these types of transportation, while nearly one half (46%) said they’re considering replacing their private vehicles with other modes of transportation in the coming decade.

Of course, the transportation picture will look different across the world. Cities will lead the charge for public transportation and micromobility options, whereas those in rural areas will likely remain reliant on private vehicles for longer. Nations that are very car-dependant – such as the US – will have greater challenges around the creation of new infrastructure to support alternative transport options, whereas Europe – which already offers better access to other transport – may face less of a struggle in driving behaviour change.

Ensuring a just transition

It’s clear, then, that’s there a lot of activity in the pipeline. But if we’re to facilitate a massive change in the transportation landscape – something that has never been done before – then it’s critical that it’s done in a fair and equitable way, and this adds another layer of complexity to the challenges ahead.

For a start, we need to rethink what we mean when we discuss transportation, and instead approach the issue in terms of mobility. Sustainability non-profit organisation Forum for the Future makes a clear distinction between the two, noting that “transportation is the act of moving goods or people”, whereas mobility is the “ability to freely move or be moved”. In other words, transportation is something you do and mobility is something you have.

As Tim Schwanen, director of the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford, says, this isn’t simply about cleaner transport, but rather a ‘just mobility transition’ that allows energy questions to be integrated with concerns over equality, wellbeing, liveability, and our relation with the natural world.

“If we simply swap our current vehicles for EVs then we’re getting greener, but mobility isn’t becoming more just,” he says. “We’ll still have congestion, we’ll still have public health issues around inactivity, and we’ll still have equality issues around who can and cannot have access to an EV, because they’re still expensive and not practical for all residences.”

Cars aren’t the sole focus of a just transition either, he says. “Governments are upgrading public transport networks, but often these upgrades only happen around workplaces, which may not be relevant to the other things people need to get around for. And then there are further considerations for groups such as those with disabilities, single parents, the elderly and rural poor. We have to ask who is getting access to mobility, and at what cost.”

However, the Covid-19 pandemic has provided a glimmer of hope for a more equitable mobility transition, says Professor Schwanen. “It showed that we’re not as dependent on cars as we actually think we are, and that a lot can be done with walking, cycling and public transport. The pandemic catalysed a lot of pop-up ventures around micromobility and other transport options, which is encouraging.”

He adds that a just mobility system would still involve private cars, but in a more subsidiary role. Instead of owning a private vehicle, people would instead hire a car on a short-term or single-trip basis for journeys that would otherwise be difficult to do, such as buying furniture or visiting others in rural settings. “The default would instead be walking and biking, with public transport for longer trips, or some kind of ride-hailing platform,” he says. Although he notes such a platform would ideally be community-orientated and configured as a social enterprise, and not run in the “predatory capitalist form of Uber”.

Again, though, we’re not likely to see any of these changes overnight, even if the infrastructure would suddenly appear to support them. “What we often see is that people are averse to change,” says Professor Schwanen. “It’s the classic response to pedestrianisation, bike lanes and low emissions zones. People don’t like them at first, but once they’re in place they’re not as bad as people think they will be. So change will be slow.”

The future of everyday transportation

So what will everyday transportation look like in 10 years’ time? Probably not unlike it does now. In a decade there will be more EVs, more opportunities for shared mobility and bolstered public transport, but existing transport biases, the challenges of innovation and the attitudes of the public mean things won’t look drastically different.

Further ahead, however, where technology and just mobility have had more time to converge, where governments have rolled out more decisive action, and where there’s been a generational shift in attitudes towards car ownership, is where we’re likely to see more impactful change. But the question is, with transport and mobility so central to our lives and to future climate outcomes, can we really wait 20 or 30 years to make a meaningful difference in this area?