Arthur D. Little has published a studt that explores some emerging threats to revenues in the transport sector and investigates potentially significant business opportunities to overcome these. The white paper, “Journey 2.0,” represents the findings of Arthur D. Little’s initial stage of research into sustainable transport and looks at how and why transport providers’ revenue streams are under threat in the absence of realistic public transport alternatives and tougher operating conditions.

The paper considers how public transport in the UK and elsewhere is not perceived to be meeting travellers’ needs adequately due to high costs and lack of routes and/or technology support (for entertainment or work applications) on board.  Even those people who choose to drive themselves must accept their travel time is lost as far as work or social pursuits are concerned; many are making that choice in the absence of realistic public transport alternatives.

Apart from these barriers to successful growth, transport providers have faced toughening operating conditions due to rising costs, tightening environmental legislation, growing expectations from the government and society to reduce their carbon footprints and other emissions, disgruntled travellers becoming more vocal and rail travel networks operating at saturation levels at peak times.

Arthur D. Little's latest work provides insight into the gap that is opening up between actual revenues to be drawn from traditional transport service provision and the revenues that would be available if people were not making alternative choices, and if transport providers were able to improve the efficiency, usefulness and/or enjoyment of travel. The research is underway and ADL is embarking upon the upcoming new challenges.

“Within and around these challenges our research has investigated that the next five years hold significant business opportunities for companies that can deliver new ways of making personal travel more efficient and public transport more attractive and competitive,” reflects James Catmur, Director of Arthur D. Little's UK Sustainability and Risk Management Practice. “In the first part of our ongoing study in sustainable transport, we’ve identified collaborative technology strategies as potentially the fastest route to realizing these opportunities.  We are currently looking at how product and service innovations in the transport sector can deliver added value to the traveller while at the same time justifying higher prices or creating completely new revenue streams.  In light of current values, trends and challenges, the next step of our research is to identify particularly promising innovations to make transport more sustainable. We expect to release a further report outlining these ideas later this year.”