Disruptive Transport Technologies: Coming, Ready or Not!

Abstract

The theme for the 2019 Conference is ‘Disruptive Transport Technologies – is South and Southern Africa Ready?’. For public transport in South Africa, the challenges are not so much those of transport technology, but rather of Information Technology as a whole – and we are far from ready. Very few, if any, academic or scientific papers have yet analysed the effect on the demand for travel of the changes in the world of work implied by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This paper offers a comment from the viewpoint of a public transport professional. Our public transport policy is still based on the 1996 White Paper on National Transport Policy. This envisaged government at local levels planning all public transport and contracting out the operations. Two decades later little has been achieved. The Competition Commission Market Inquiry into Public Transport has demonstrated a number of reasons for this, including lack of capacity for implementation and enforcement. In 1996 the internet was in its infancy, and social media had not yet been born. Today it is possible for transport operators to provide bespoke services to individuals. The threat to the established order has led to official resistance – for example, the grudging acceptance of ‘e-hailing’. This paper argues that we need to develop a new Public Transport Strategy which recognises (a) the limited capacity of government to achieve the objectives of the 1996 White Paper and (b) the impact of the Third Industrial Revolution (the IT age) – and to prepare for the Fourth, with its huge changes in the world of work.