Back in June, I gave evidence to the Transport Committee of the London Assembly on Autonomous vehicles on Tuesday and to the Transport Select Committee of the House of Commons on integrated transport on Wednesday. The coincidence of days was pure fluke.
The topics, however, are interesting as, at first glance, they look to be entirely separate - but I’m going to argue in this blog post that they’re not. In fact, they’re all one big debate.
The purpose of transport
At its heart, transport has a simple purpose: how do we connect as many people as possible to as much opportunity as possible, while doing the least possible harm along the way?
After all, connecting people to opportunity is why we’re all here. Even if our own company’s incentive structure is profit or politics; the connection to opportunity is our purpose.
But what about the harms? Well, transport generates a lot of them. It costs money, generates carbon emissions, poisons the air, consumes a vast amount of space and pollutes tranquil spaces with noise. Transport policy is about how we get the most connection to opportunity with the least harm. That is the basic equation of all our work, whether or not you’re talking about autonomous vehicles or integrated transport.
