Travel is central to our lives. The transport system is what makes travel possible. We have become dependent on its smooth functioning. Yet operational failures on the roads and railways, and at airports, cause personal inconvenience or worse and attract much media interest. In Britain, the benefits of substantial investment in improved rail services were delayed by a botched introduction of the new timetable in May 2018, leading to mass cancellations and long waits for travellers. In December of that year, hundreds of flights were cancelled at Gatwick Airport following reports of sightings of drones near the runway. In October 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, flooding subway and road tunnels and disrupting travel for many days. The scale of disruption is greatest when transport systems are operating at close to maximum capacity.

Even when systems are running smoothly, we experience crowding and congestion, the consequence of increasing numbers of us wanting to access the destinations that modern means of travel make possible. So we invest in the transport system to increase the capacity of roads, railways and airports; but the extra capacity seems to fill pretty quickly as more of us take advantage of the additions, and crowding and congestion reappear.

There is much wishful thinking about improvements from transport infrastructure investments. Politicians are keen to promote new roads and railways that they hope will benefit the voters by speeding travel and boosting the economy. Transport professionals naturally wish to provide better services for their users. Yet the adverse impacts of transport seem to persist – road vehicles damage health from both air pollution and crashes, while road traffic congestion is a ubiquitous and seemingly insoluble problem.

Until the early twenty-first century, investment in the transport system was very largely more of the same. But now we have new technologies that promise an improved travel experience – electric vehicles, digital navigation devices to help us find our way, digital platforms to match supply of mobility to our demand and autonomous vehicles that could transform the driving experience. The likely impact of these new technologies is the main theme of this book.