The Infrastructure Podcast: Episode 68

Guest:  Thomas Ableman, Director of Strategy & Innovation at Transport for London

The public transport tech journey

In today's podcast we focus on public transport - and specifically how investment in innovation, and in data and digital technologies can underpin a new era of passenger centric services. 

Certainly, technology is already transforming the way that we plan our travel and the way that we use public and private transport services. But the goal goes wider and deeper. 

The goal is to create a truly interconnected transport experience; to provide greater access to transport; to deliver more reliable, more effective end-to-end transport solutions for all. And to make those services a total delight to use.

Creating a public transport system so good that it makes any decision to use the car seem utter madness, as my recent podcast guest Rory Sutherland put it.

Whether it is through enabling truly integrated ticketing, providing better service information, boosting the efficiency of maintenance or underpinning a new breed of micro-mobility solutions, data and digital systems will be at the heart of our future transport services.

However, it remains unclear how all this tech will shape the passenger experiences of the future, not least as transport evolves and funding becomes tighter. But we do know that the opportunities are both exciting and daunting and will be central to creating services that the public actively choose to use.

To help us to understand more about these challenges, it is my pleasure to welcome Thomas Ableman, Director of Strategy & Innovation at Transport for London, to the podcast - the person who is literally driving innovation and change across the biggest public transport system in the UK, and one of the biggest in the world. 

Well, he is until next month when he steps away from TfL after three years to pursue a new start up business idea – more of that later I’m sure.

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