Will we all be banned from driving in 30 years time? Will platooning trucks on a road network, built over the rail network, take the place of trains? Will computers facilitate more shared loads?
These are just some of the questions the Ministry of Transport posed as it launched a new future planning programme last month.
The ‘Transport Future Visions’ project features the publishing of a number of ‘stories’ looking at sectors of transport, and how technology will change the way we get around – and move goods – in the future.
The public will be surveyed, having seen the stories – there are four initially, with more to come – as to what future they want to see.
Much of the vehicle-related technology mentions hark back to autonomous vehicles and intelligent transport systems – plus more intelligent transport and logistics planning, using software.
Some of these technologies are already beginning to have an impact, but the project looks far enough ahead to where humans may be removed from the transport process.
“Autonomous vehicles, they are coming, that is the reality,” ministry chief executive Martin Matthews told journalists at the release of the stories in Wellington.
“This work is really about exposing people to some ideas of what the future could be about,” he explains. “How do we think about how the transport system might evolve in the next 20, 30, 40 years?”
Some people, he expects, may find some of the changes suggested far fetched, but he notes that in his own grandmother’s lifetime, technology moved from relatively rudimentary cars to jet-aircraft crossing the world in a day.
“There have been points in history where we have seen massive changes in mobility that people saw, but perhaps didn’t recognise the importance of.”
He notes New Zealand is already seen as a world leader in its approach to ITS planning and technology.
Matthews says the visions were not predictions of what will happen, just what could happen.
“We don’t present this work as the views of industry or government policy, but we think it is important to have a broader discussion about what New Zealanders want from the transport system, now and in the future.”
The stories can be found at transport.govt.nz/futures.
