Three quarters of all UK journeys are marred by 'pain-points', or negative experiences, according to a major survey from the Government-backed innovation centre, the Transport Systems Catapult.
Based on the views of 10,000 respondents and interviews with 50 employers and 100 transport experts, the survey found overall public transport was regarded as poor value for money, with the ‘high cost of the journey’ being the most-often cited pain-point (17%).
For motorists, the most often cited issues were the ‘start-and-stop’ nature of driving and parking (12% each).
Multi-modal journeys were highlighted as being especially difficult, with each interchange increasing numbers of pain-points.
Other key findings:
- Over 30% of current journeys would not happen if people had access to alternatives to physical travel, ie 'virtual mobility'.
- 72% of travellers have smartphones and 54% of these consider them essential for journeys.
- 39% would consider driverless cars today.
Catapult CEO Steve Yianni said the exercise offered roadmaps towards 'a world-leading 'intelligent mobility' industry'.
Key recommendations include:
- Making interoperable payment and ticketing standards mandatory, allowing travellers to buy multi-modal tickets covering routes from any operator.
- Creating a central multi-modal marketplace for all transport operators to input real-time service and capacity information. The eventual outcome of this could see operators bidding for end-to-end journeys or portions of them, the Catapult report suggests. This would give travellers a new real time freedom of choice, for example to get off an overcrowded train and complete their journey on a dynamically timetabled bus.
