-
Asked by jopole on 8 Nov 2017.
-
Craig Allison answered on 8 Nov 2017:
I think the biggest change to travel that we’ll see is the introduction of automated vehicles on our roads. The automated vehicle has the potential to fundamentally change how we use our travel time, and removes some of the biggest issues of driving, such as the required concentration, alertness and issues relating to both physical and mental fatigue.
Its going to be a long journey towards the main stream introduction, and we’re going to be faced with a large number of technical, legal and ethical issues but going to be an exciting transition and a real opportunity.
-
-
Kayleigh Messer answered on 8 Nov 2017:
I agree with Craig about automation – we already have things like assistance keeping in lanes on the motorway, braking when the car detects a vehicle in front and cruise control on cars now, so automated vehicles aren’t a huge leap from an engineering perspective (maybe a bigger leap for other reasons such as insurance).
Also I think hybrid / electric vehicles will become a lot more mainstream than currently, there are new charge points popping up all over the place and as battery technology improves I think it will become more attractive as batteries will be cheaper with longer range. -
Emma Grayshon answered on 8 Nov 2017:
The biggest change will be automation of our modes of transport as people have identified. But I also truly believe that as we fully embrace technology and strive to a more sustainable lifestyle that we will design our infrastructure and landscape to remove the need to travel and use technology to help us reduce the need to travel.
-
Eleanor Sherwen answered on 9 Nov 2017:
I wonder about whether there’ll be a shift from air travel back toward land and sea travel. Limiting climate gas emissions might mean within our lifetime we won’t be able to fly as often as we’ve become used to and that means prioritising our most important journeys. Leisure travel could perhaps move more towards sea and rail journeys with the travel/exploring becoming part of the holiday and people fly less frequently for “big” holidays. Business travel might have to lower in volume. Some of it isn’t necessary any more due to video conferencing; I do most of my day-to-day business with overseas suppliers via Skype. But there’s still times you need to send someone in person to get all the communication that videoconferencing misses in tone, body language, cultural context. So it’d be difficult to see the need for business travel by air reducing significantly unless there’s also some technological development to allow that really subtle communication to travel over the internet.
-
Miriam Ricci answered on 9 Nov 2017:
There are already very good answers to this question… I got here a bit late 😉
Concerning land travel, I could add that connectivity between vehicles (V2V) and vehicles to infrastructure (V2I) could really change how we travel on the road. Vehicles, which could also be automated, could communicate between each other, for example on speed and direction of travel, and with an intelligent infrastructure, like intelligent motorways, to make travel more efficient and get real time information on what is going on, e.g. road works, emergency vehicles needing priority etc. Vehicles could also become information and entertainment hubs, connected to social media and apps like our smartphones. Which brings about questions about data security and the risk of hacking, on which I don’t have answers… 😀 -
Rhys Phillips answered on 15 Nov 2017:
More automation / driverless transportation and more fuel efficient / lower emission vehicles I suspect. Both are interesting fields to look at too.
Comments