Today about 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. Most people need transport every day – to and from work, to pick the kids up at school, to go to an evening course or to meet some friends. People spend on average 2 hours and 20 minutes commuting every day in big cities like Hong Kong, London or Moscow.
But even if you stay at home, most things that you use or consume in your everyday life have done their fair bit on the road, sea or in the air. The transportation of people and the logistic networks for transporting goods are a fundamental part of the world economy, and things are about to change in this field in a big way.
What we see happening right now is that connectivity is starting to change how transportation is done. Right now regular people and startup businesses are the drivers for change, focused on new transport services connecting free transport capacity with transport demands. Services like Lyft and Uber for personal transportation, BlaBla Car and Zip Car for rideshares. This development is leading many to question the necessity of private car ownership. However, if you are a car owner, you could turn that into a business by renting out your overcapacity to people in a need of a car, using services like RelayRides or Getaround.
Another movement driving change is crowdsourced data. Traffic management apps like Waze and Moovit now allow people, businesses and city governments to streamline their use of public infrastructure in real time.
The digital connectivity of these services opens up transport assets and information to more people, at more times and in more forms. People have started managing all their transportation needs through apps and services in their smartphone, whether searching for a ride, looking at different transport options, choosing the best transport option or route or getting something delivered to their house.
And connectivity is being embedded throughout the transport infrastructure in vehicles, roads, parking spaces, traffic controlling system and the whole logistical chain changing the role of nearly every player in the industry.
Connectivity is the starting point, and the next thing that will come is cooperation between all these assets, between vehicles, transport infrastructure, users, service providers and operators.
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